James Nisbet Commentary - Mark 5:43 - 5:43

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James Nisbet Commentary - Mark 5:43 - 5:43


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

FEEDING UPON CHRIST

‘And commanded that something should be given her to eat.’

Mar_5:43

This is one of those fine touches of tender consideration, of which Mark’s history is characteristic, and which so illustrate the beauty of the thoughtfulness of Christ. A great thing never made Christ forget a little thing. Remember always that God is the God of your little things; and that you never honour Him more than when you commit them, and rest about them.

I. God feeds the life He gives.—But the passage reads us a deeper lesson, that God always feeds the life He gives: wherever He bestows life, He is careful to add that which that life really needs for its development and perfection. We see this

(a) In creation. The whole earth is a table laid out, and amply spread for the sustenance of everything which God’s hand has made.

(b) In the life of man—body, intellect, and soul.

II. Spiritual food.—And now the great question is, ‘What is it which He gives us to eat, and which is the vitality of a soul? and how is it communicated?’ The answer to that question is only one—‘Christ is the food of the soul’ (see John 6). He will do wondrously with your soul when once He has quickened you. He will give you Himself to eat. The food must assimilate to the life which it is to cherish. The life is Jesus, and the food must be Jesus. ‘How can this be?’

(a) The written Word is the channel of the Living, that is, the Life-giving Word of the soul. You must find the Christ that is in the Bible before it feeds you. Only Christ feeds. And the more Christ you find in the Word, the more that Word will feed your soul.

(b) All spiritual acts between the soul and God feed.

(c) Christian intercourse and fellowship feed.

(d) Lastly, and especially, the Holy Communion was ordained for this very end. It is essentially feeding. It is the feast, where there is spread the richest, the sweetest, and the best! How can some of you expect your souls to live if you neglect this great sustentation of all spiritual life? Could your body live without its meals? The baptism of the Holy Ghost imparts life. The Communion of the body and blood of Christ feed and sustain that life.

Thus, Christ has, by many ways, not only given ‘command’ but fulfilled it for His Church—that ‘something should be given her to eat.’

Illustration

‘The Catechism teaches us what is required of them that come to the Lord’s Supper. The fact of God’s great gift does not depend upon ourselves. There the gift is, whatever we are or think or do. But its value for us does depend upon our worthiness. Indeed, the Bible and our Prayer Book repeat most solemn warnings against those who receive it unworthily. They eat and drink, as St. Paul says, not as we have it translated, “damnation,” but “judgment” to themselves. Being worthy does not mean being perfectly sinless or free from temptation. But it does mean that we may not approach the Holy Communion after committing any deliberate disobedience of God’s law for which we have not sought God’s forgiveness. It means also a sincere desire to be what God wills us to be, and to do what God wishes us to do; and therefore also honest ceaseless struggle and effort to be this and to do this. If we have not, and know that we have not, this desire, and are not making, and know that we are not making, this effort, then the Sacrament, which makes the union between Christ and His people most complete, only marks and increases our separation from Him, and this is what “judgment” really means. Every gift of the Sacrament turns into its opposite—the food which should strengthen the life of the soul only increases its deadness to spiritual things.’