James Nisbet Commentary - Mark 3:5 - 3:5

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James Nisbet Commentary - Mark 3:5 - 3:5


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THE ANGER OF CHRIST

‘And … Be … looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts.’

Mar_3:5

Mark’s narrative has many notices, not only of what Jesus said, but also of how He looked, or what He felt in saying it—touches that irresistibly suggest impressions made on an eyewitness. Here we have one. It pained Him to be angry, albeit with a wholly righteous anger.

1. How was this anger roused?—The Pharisees had been attacking Christ, through His disciples, for non-observance of the Sabbath, and in the case of the man with the withered hand, He challenged them with the question, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?’ But they kept silence—a silence partly of shame and inability to answer, but more perhaps of calculated subtlety; they would ‘lie low’ and let our Lord commit Himself. Then He looked round in anger, grieved for their hardness of heart, and by one short, sharp utterance rent all their subtle toils. ‘Any touch would have been a work, a formal infraction of the law; therefore there is no touch, neither is the helpless man bidden to take up any burden, or instigated to the slightest ritual irregularity. Jesus only bids him to do what was forbidden to none’ (Bishop Chadwick). No wonder they were filled with madness and foolishness, and actually took counsel with their old enemies, the Herodians, how they might put Him to death.

II. How far does anger at evil cause any grief to our souls?—‘Those,’ says Archbishop Trench, ‘whom the truth mightily takes hold of, who are content to be fools for Christ, who would be content to be martyrs for Christ, who love the good with a passionate love, who hate the evil with a passionate hatred, are few: while yet it should be thus with all.… Is the sin which is in the world around us a burden to our souls and spirits?… When we look abroad on the world and see the works done against the words of God’s lips, does this fill us with any heaviness, with any indignation? Is it any part of the burden of our hearts, the sorrow of our lives? Or do we rather feel that if we can get pretty comfortably through life, and if other men’s sins do not seriously vex, cross, inconvenience or damage us, they are no great concern of ours, nothing which it is any business of ours to fight against?’

III. What is there in us akin to the Pharisees’ meanness that stirred our Saviour’s wrath?—They were ruffled at being reproved and worsted in argument. Their own little grievance filled all the foreground of their view; they wanted to avenge it. When unclouded and unbiassed they may have been individually kindly gentlemen. But they had no eye to human misery because they were preoccupied with petty pride; that sometimes happens to ourselves. We miss a good many clear opportunities of well-doing, because we are concerned about our dignity more than about the needs of other men. And do we never sneer at goodness displayed on lines that differ from our own? Are we not just a little pleased to find weak points in it, something at least that will prevent its seeming to entirely eclipse our own?

Rev. H. A. Birks.

Illustration

‘Let us seek grace that the emotion of anger in our breasts may more closely assimilate with the emotion of anger in Christ’s—a holy anger against sin, blended with a loving, yearning compassion for the sinner. Such is the Divine precept: “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath” (Eph_4:26). When this emotion springs from zeal for God, His truth, and worship, and glory, and when it prompts us to seek, in the spirit of meekness, humility, and love, the good of those whose conduct we condemn, it then becomes in us what it was in Christ, a holy, amiable, God-honouring emotion, unmixed with sin and self, and throwing no shadow of sadness upon the mellow light of evening, when the sun goes down at the hour of prayer. If, on the contrary, you find this emotion rising in your bosoms, in its sinful, fleshly, and corrupt form, lose not a moment in bringing it to the Cross, that by the love, the sufferings, the last prayer for the forgiveness of injury of Him who died upon its wood, that species of anger which dwells alone in the bosom of fools, may be crucified and slain in you. Seek not mercy from thy fellows, and ask not for forgiveness from thy Father, whilst unholy anger against a brother or a sister finds a moment’s lodgment in thy heart.’



JUDGMENT AND MERCY

‘And when He had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, He saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.’

Mar_3:5

I. In this withered hand we behold the emblem of the moral withering of the soul of man.—The moment our first father stretched forth his hand to partake of the forbidden fruit, all his original righteousness, strength, and love withered, decayed, and dried up; and we, his posterity, are the spiritually paralysed and shrivelled limbs of a once stately tree God smote and destroyed.

II. What was the nature of this anger which our Lord here expressed?—We must acknowledge that never did He appear more unlike Himself than now, and yet never was He more truly so! Had He not exposed the hypocrisy and denounced the malevolence of these Pharisees, these whited sepulchres, with all the burning, withering, holy indignation of which He was master, then a cloud had shaded some of the brightest beams of His character. Christ was angry, but He did not sin. This could not be the case with us. Let us rebuke sin, let us chide the fall, the error, the inconsistency of a brother faithfully, tenderly, gently as we may, the infirmity and imperfection of our fallen humanity will yet taint and shade it. But Christ’s anger was holiness clad in its judicial vesture—it was the anger of holiness.

III. The healing of the withered hand, and its Gospel significance.—(a) The first step in the process was the separation of the man from the multitude, (b) The next step in the curative process was Christ’s command to the man, ‘Stretch forth thine hand.’ (c) With the command to extend the withered hand there went forth the Divine power to obey. ‘And he stretched it out.’ (d) We are thus conducted to—the cure. And now the Saviour appears truly Himself. Now He vindicates His proceedings from all suspicion of unsympathising trifling with the poor man’s infirmity, unveils His ineffable benevolence, and manifests His merciful design.

Rev. Octavius Winslow, d.d.

Illustration

‘If Christ is grieved at unbelief, what must be the joy which faith gives Him! If our hardness of heart shades His countenance, how must that countenance gleam with holy delight over the soul subdued in penitent love at His feet! Think it not presumption, then, to travel to Jesus with the withered hand—with a chilled love, with declension of grace, with weakness of faith, with low frames, and with a tempted, tried, and wounded spirit. Jesus Christ maketh you whole.’



THE HUMAN SIDE OF A MIRACLE

‘Stretch forth thine hand.’

Mar_3:5

By the command of the text three conditions were demanded:—

I. Faith was required.—Unbelief hinders God’s merciful designs, excludes the light of His presence, arrests the arm of His salvation. Faith is the handmaid of His goodness, the almoner of His bounty. Faith is the mysterious moral force which thrusts out the hand of humanity to take the gift Divine.

II. Obedience was rendered.—It was not a small matter to stand forth before that hostile company, and incur the charge of complicity with Jesus in the breaking of the Sabbath. Obedience to Christ, in this case, meant disobedience to the rulers and lawyers and scribes. It meant forgetfulness or disregard of the traditions of the elders. And this implied much more. One man, we know, was cast out of the synagogue because his life of darkness had been lit up by the Son of God. We know that the Jews sought to put Lazarus to death, because in his grave he had heard the voice of Jesus, and come forth. This crippled man, then, might well have much to apprehend. But undaunted he obeyed, and in the very act of obedience he found the blessing that he craved. This obedience was the fruit of his faith, and the faith which does not produce obedience is of little worth. Saving faith is always obedient faith.

III. A strong resolution was needed.—‘Stretch forth thine hand!’—the very thing he could not do—the very thing he longed to be able to do! We can well imagine the man exclaiming, ‘Behold, Lord, my hand is withered, powerless, nerveless, practically dead. Lord, give me the power, and I will obey.’ But he found that the law of Christ is, Obey, and thou hast the power. ‘He stretched forth his hand, and his hand was restored.’

Illustration

‘There is a great difference between the miracles of the Old Testament and those of the New. Compare the wonders of Moses with the works of Christ. The former were chiefly displays of judgment; the latter, of mercy. In either case they were designed to accredit their author as the messenger of God, but in the case of our Lord this was not the chief purpose. He claimed the faith and homage of men on higher ground, and only appealed to His miracles as a last resource. “If ye believe not Me, believe the works.” The works He did bare witness of Him, but He Himself was the true and perfect witness. His miracles were not so much to prove His Divine authority as His Divine compassion.’