Ed Walsh
Puritan Board Senior
Good morning dear sinners called the saints of God,
My title asked,
Do your friends and relatives occasionally think you are out of your mind?
Well, do they? That might not be a bad thing.
No more rational man ever lived than the Lord Jesus, yet there are several instances in the Gospels when his family members, who did not yet believe in him, thought that Jesus was out of his mind.
As you meditate on the verse below and the commentary by Lenski, consider the often-used phrase that we should "try to be more like Jesus." To which I often answer, "Are you kidding? Paul, maybe, but Jesus? Jesus was about as strange as they come compared to the rest of mankind. Are you sure you want to be like Him?"
From the commentary, Mark by Richard Lenski
Mark 3:20–21 (ISMG): Mark alone reports these details. But Matthew and Luke inform us that a demoniac was brought to Jesus, and that Jesus freed the man. This makes clear how the scribes could charge Jesus with working through Beelzebul. Jesus was back in Capernaum, back even in his own home, for εἰς οἶκον without the article does not mean to some house, Peter’s for instance as is supposed, but is like our “home.” It must have been almost immediately that the crowd “gathered together again” just as it did when Jesus was at home on a previous occasion (2:1, 2). At that time the crowd was so dense that no one could get through the door, now it interfered so badly that Jesus and his disciples (αὐτούς, plural) could not even eat bread. This hints at the fact that Jesus and his disciples had come some distance, were hungry from their travels, and would like to have eaten something. The crowd rendered this impossible.
21) Whether the demoniac was healed at once, before the kinsmen of Jesus tried to lay hold of him, or after that, is not indicated; he was perhaps healed at once, and the bringing him to Jesus may have helped to cause the crowd. Οἱ παρʼ αὐτοῦ means “one’s family or kinsmen,” R. 614, those who constituted the household Mark 3:21 (ISMG): of Jesus. One opinion is that they were sons born to Joseph and Mary, the so-called “brothers” of Jesus (v. 31); another view is that they were sons of Joseph by a former marriage; and a third that they were cousins of Jesus, Mary’s sister’s sons, and that she and they lived together with Mary in the home of Jesus. The question of the relationship cannot be convincingly decided from the records we possess. These relatives of Jesus “went out to lay hold of him.” From the aorists we might suppose that they succeeded, but what follows shows that they failed. The aorists thus express what the intention of these kinsmen was: they actually went out literally to get him into their power. From John 7:5 we learn that they did not as yet believe in him.
They were greatly concerned about this their kinsman. They knew how he was spending himself in his labors and his privations. Here he was now after an arduous trip, weary from his work, not having eaten for some time, and the multitude was again upon him. Not believing in him as the Messiah, they had only one explanation for his actions, namely: Ἐξέστη, “He lost his mind!” he is beside himself.
My title asked,
Do your friends and relatives occasionally think you are out of your mind?
Well, do they? That might not be a bad thing.
No more rational man ever lived than the Lord Jesus, yet there are several instances in the Gospels when his family members, who did not yet believe in him, thought that Jesus was out of his mind.
As you meditate on the verse below and the commentary by Lenski, consider the often-used phrase that we should "try to be more like Jesus." To which I often answer, "Are you kidding? Paul, maybe, but Jesus? Jesus was about as strange as they come compared to the rest of mankind. Are you sure you want to be like Him?"
Mark 3:20-21 ESV
Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”
From the commentary, Mark by Richard Lenski
Mark 3:20–21 (ISMG): Mark alone reports these details. But Matthew and Luke inform us that a demoniac was brought to Jesus, and that Jesus freed the man. This makes clear how the scribes could charge Jesus with working through Beelzebul. Jesus was back in Capernaum, back even in his own home, for εἰς οἶκον without the article does not mean to some house, Peter’s for instance as is supposed, but is like our “home.” It must have been almost immediately that the crowd “gathered together again” just as it did when Jesus was at home on a previous occasion (2:1, 2). At that time the crowd was so dense that no one could get through the door, now it interfered so badly that Jesus and his disciples (αὐτούς, plural) could not even eat bread. This hints at the fact that Jesus and his disciples had come some distance, were hungry from their travels, and would like to have eaten something. The crowd rendered this impossible.
21) Whether the demoniac was healed at once, before the kinsmen of Jesus tried to lay hold of him, or after that, is not indicated; he was perhaps healed at once, and the bringing him to Jesus may have helped to cause the crowd. Οἱ παρʼ αὐτοῦ means “one’s family or kinsmen,” R. 614, those who constituted the household Mark 3:21 (ISMG): of Jesus. One opinion is that they were sons born to Joseph and Mary, the so-called “brothers” of Jesus (v. 31); another view is that they were sons of Joseph by a former marriage; and a third that they were cousins of Jesus, Mary’s sister’s sons, and that she and they lived together with Mary in the home of Jesus. The question of the relationship cannot be convincingly decided from the records we possess. These relatives of Jesus “went out to lay hold of him.” From the aorists we might suppose that they succeeded, but what follows shows that they failed. The aorists thus express what the intention of these kinsmen was: they actually went out literally to get him into their power. From John 7:5 we learn that they did not as yet believe in him.
They were greatly concerned about this their kinsman. They knew how he was spending himself in his labors and his privations. Here he was now after an arduous trip, weary from his work, not having eaten for some time, and the multitude was again upon him. Not believing in him as the Messiah, they had only one explanation for his actions, namely: Ἐξέστη, “He lost his mind!” he is beside himself.