Mark 9:38-50 (NASB)
David Bruce Linn,
Pastor-Teacher
30 December 2007
All Rights Reserved
This is the third in a series on following Jesus Christ, our Bright Morning Star, through the challenges of life even though he is, for now, not physically present with us. Christians are often ridiculed for following an invisible leader, especially when we are whole-hearted. The world is comfortable with half-hearted followership--it looks sensible to them. But the King of Kings does not ask for a little religious observance, a little spirituality, or an occasional random act of kindness. He asks for total life worship.
One would think that once we have chosen unreserved followership of Christ and joined in the body of people who have made that commitment there would be no further problems. After all, if we all seek Christ with the same zeal then we will see the terms of followership the same way. Nothing could be further from the truth. The history of the church is that the moment we start walking together in Christ, following our Bright Morning Star, we begin to observe our differences and divide over them.
If we could do this with a spirit of mutual understanding, it might work. We would just clump together with those of like mind and maintain unity with the other believers. Yet the reality is that the church has spent thousands of years splitting into mutually exclusive groupings by which we break fellowship over our opinions. The spirit of collegiality flees away, submission to Christ is pursued in vacuum-sealed chambers of mutually rejecting believers, and we can hardly proclaim to a lost world that we are walking together in unity as we follow the Lord.
FOLLOW THE PRINCIPLE OF NON-INTERFERENCE
What does the Lord think about this sad state of affairs? What does he have to say to us about walking together as we follow him? A portion of Mark's ninth chapter which I used to see as a collection of separate teachings speaks in a unified way to these questions. The background to the passage is that the disciples had just finished being rebuked for wanting to be first in Christ's kingdom. The disciples then revealed that, even before the launch of the church on the day of Pentecost, they had engaged in church-splitting behavior: "John said to Him, 'Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we tried to prevent him because he was not following us'" (Mark 9:38). The disciples had just returned from a mission of preaching and healing, and had encountered someone else doing what they were doing, only he was not a part of their group. To make things more annoying to them, he was successfully casting out demons when they had just experienced a failure to do the same (Mark 9:14-29).
Let us stop for a moment and smell the poisoned atmosphere around the disciples at that moment. As Jesus' response to them in the next verse will show, this was not a false disciple using the name of the Lord in vain, but some unknown disciple who had launched an independent ministry. Their main issue with this man was that "he was not following us." In other words, they thought of themselves as the approved group, this guy was not in their group, and so they rejected his ministry out of hand and moved to shut him down. Think of how distorted that thought is! People were being rescued from demonization, probably were delivered from diseases as a result, and returned to productive society--all in Jesus' name. Somehow the disciples saw him as an interloper, a competitor, and ignored all of the good he was doing to try to shut him down. This they did with no approval from Jesus, the One who they purported to follow.
Perhaps you have not yet experienced the reality of fellow Christians who not only cannot bring themselves to affirm your ministry in Jesus' name, but who actively try to hinder your service to Christ. I find this to be among the most difficult-to-swallow parts of the ministry. The only thing some believers say in response to my ministry is what they think I am doing wrong. Or they withhold all affirmation because there is some aspect of my followership with which they disagree. I do not expect others to follow Christ exactly the way I do, but I do expect that we will be able to walk together as we follow him. I have come to believe that this is one of the driving dynamics of the emergent church movement. They say that we have made it so painful for young people to worship and minister according to their understanding of Christ that they feel they must leave the existing church and start from scratch.
What is Christ's word to his disciples about rejecting the ministries of others? "But Jesus said, "Do not hinder him..." (Mark 9:39a). You see, the followership of others may meander, it may seem sloppy, or partly in error to you and I. There are ways to correct those issues, but the clear command of the One whom we purport to follow is that we do not actively hinder the ministries of other believers.
Why not? Jesus says that even though they may not be in our group, they are still members of his body "for there is no one who will perform a miracle in My name, and be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me" (Mark 9:39). I am not certain of all that Christ meant by this remark, but he implies that the behavioral transformation of such people demonstrates their adoption by the Father. If you call upon the name of the Lord, you will be saved. How do you know that you are saved? Your behavior changes, you are transformed by the Holy Spirit, and you begin to seek the things of God. While we do not know all the reasons why Christ saw this man in this way, he did.
EMBRACE GOD'S VIEW
OF THE OTHER CHRISTIANS
So our first approach to Christians who are following Christ in a different way than we do is to squelch any impulse we might have to treating them as enemies. I have had experiences of being treated as an enemy by other Christians that have been so severe that the only thing which kept me in the ministry was my calling from Christ Jesus himself. My emotions wanted to quit, but my faith would not allow it.
The only way to keep ourselves from demoralizing other Christians is to embrace God's own view of them. How does he see them? That is the question that should guide all of our behavior toward them. With respect to the supposedly unauthorized ministry of the mystery man and all others like him Jesus said: "For he who is not against us is for us" (Mark 9:40). In other words, we are on the same team! The spiritual reality is that once you hear of Christ there is no neutrality, so everyone is on one team or the other.
This means that all genuine believers, of whatever tradition, are on our side! Can we afford, in the middle of the spiritual war of the ages, to divide our own army into warring camps? Are we just a bunch of feudal lords with no pendragon, no leader above all leaders to direct our behavior? Our leader Yaweh Tsevaoth, Lord of Armies, tells us that we are all fighting on the same side, and we had better start acting like it. I have found that there are so many Christians who consider themselves feudal lords that if I publicly affirm born-again people in other traditions such as Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, or Seventh-Day Adventists I will generate a firestorm of rejection for myself and our local church. Ask yourself this question: When did Jesus check the doctrine of the mystery man who was casting out demons in his name? He was comfortable affirming his connection with the man in spite of the doctrinal weaknesses he no doubt had.
This is very different from affirming the specific confused and inaccurate doctrines of other traditions. I do not minimize the doctrinal and practical issues these other groups of Christians have (from my perspective), but we must remember that they all answer to Christ, not us! As Paul wrote to the Romans: "Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand" (Romans 14:4). Even people involved in the most minor of ministries done in Jesus' name--perhaps not even direct gospel ministries--will receive their reward without fail from him: "For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of your name as followers of Christ, truly I say to you, he will not lose his reward" (Mark 9:41). This is a reason to bend over backwards to affirm all genuine believers whatever their tradition may be.
The grave danger is that our misdirected attempts to purify the church will cause people to fall away from Christ, as the Lord went on to warn: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea" (Mark 9:42). Several terms require further definition in this passage. First of all, Jesus had a child in his arms at that moment as an object lesson. But he did not speak only of those young in age, but of anyone who qualifies as a vulnerable believer. At some point, we are all vulnerable believers. The Adversary would love to get us to abandon our faith.
Secondly, the term for "stumble" does not merely mean that the person stubs his toe, says "ouch," and then just continues on with his or her faith. This is a stumble which causes a fall into sin, a direct or indirect rejection of Christ. While this could be caused by precipitating sins of any kind, the context is about Christians hindering other Christians. Thirdly, this millstone is the larger sort, one which would have to be turned by a beast of burden. It was a large, disc-shaped rock with a hole in the center for an axle. You put that around your neck and you are drowned for sure. The point is that God is powerfully mobilized against anyone who acts to undermine the faith of other believers--even us! How sad to think that in our attempts to help other Christians be more faithful we might so discourage them by our criticism that they want to quit following Christ, and so be destroyed. Our pendragon, Christ the King, warns us that we will answer to him for such behavior.
PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR OWN WALK WITH CHRIST
In the next verses he warns us sternly that we have a bigger problem than the lacks of others. Sins which we tolerate ourselves may eventually cause us to stumble! "If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, where THEIR WORM DOES NOT DIE, AND THE FIRE IS NOT QUENCHED. If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than, having your two feet, to be cast into hell, where THEIR WORM DOES NOT DIE, AND THE FIRE IS NOT QUENCHED. If your eye causes you to stumble, throw it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell, where THEIR WORM DOES NOT DIE, AND THE FIRE IS NOT QUENCHED" (Mark 9:43-48, caps indicate OT ref.).
Let us not be confused about the point Christ is making. Any knowingly tolerated sin could become the seed of a heart rebellion from which we may never return. We have enough to do to make sure that we walk with Christ ourselves that we cannot afford to focus on the failures of others. I am reminded of a bright young man who was born to a brilliant theologian. During his lifetime the father had one of the biggest impacts on the church and the world anyone had in the last century. Originally the son took up ministry in partnership with his father, but then he went out on his own. The dad has now passed away, and now the overriding life goal of the son seems to be to catalog his father's failings and weaknesses and rub them in our faces. He has completely rejected the evangelical church which his father loved. There is a spirit of anger and bitterness in everything he writes, and it is all about the failures of others. Now in his fifties, this son, who could have had a remarkable ministry, is a casualty of this same spirit of condemnation of others which afflicted the disciples. What could be sadder than beginning with the grace and truth of the gospel and ending up in bitterness, tiptoeing on the edge of destruction? Christ tells us to turn our guns on ourselves first.
The teeth in that warning is seen in the next verse: "For everyone will be salted with fire" (Mark 9:49). This cannot be a reference to hell since everyone will be salted with fire and not everyone goes to hell. It also seems not to be a reference to persecution in this life, since that subject is not found in the context. I believe that the salting of fire is the Lord's holy judgment on the deeds we have done in this life. For believers his happens at the Judgment Seat of Christ, which Paul described in his first letter to the Corinthians: "For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. If any man's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire" (1 Corinthians 3:11-15).
The upshot is that we are not free to determine the nature and process of our own ministries. We do not serve on our own account. We serve solely at the pleasure of our Lord, who insists that we not spend our time policing his other servants. We must focus our attention on avoiding any so-called ministry for ourselves which is not according to Christ. This is not meant to make us so afraid to do the wrong thing that we freeze up. Remember the context. The disciples had confronted someone who was delivering people from demonic bondage in Jesus' name and insisted he stop because he was not in their group. Christ's warning is meant to cause us to focus upon doing our own ministries faithfully, and he promised to worry about the other Christians. As Paul wrote to the Romans: "But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, 'AS I LIVE,' SAYS THE LORD, 'EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW TO ME, AND EVERY TONGUE SHALL GIVE PRAISE TO GOD.' So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this-- not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother's way" (Romans 14:10-13).
The final verse of our text in Mark is what convinced me that the whole section is about walking together after our Bright Morning Star: "Salt is good; but if the salt becomes unsalty, with what will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another" (Mark 9:50). Christ warns us that we court the danger of becoming useless to the kingdom of God when we spend our precious time focusing on the faults of other Christians. We become an absurd thing--unsalty salt. In the first century that meant trying to use gypsum on your food since it looked like salt but tasted like drywall! If we focus on walking with Christ in an honorable way ourselves, we will have peace with all others who are walking with us, in spite of our differences.
Having salt in ourselves means spending our personal energies actually living the life of true disciples. The highest thing on the Lord's mind is found in some of his last words to his followers: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:34-35). How clear does Christ have to make this? Real disciples stay connected, they allow love to cover a multitude of sins, they focus on maintaining the worthiness of their own walk with Christ, and they speak the truth in love, not a judgmental spirit. Real disciples are willing to sacrifice in order to walk together with all others who are following the Bright Morning Star.
I fear that the world looks at Christ's church and thinks that what Christ said must not be true because his church seems so little concerned about the main things on their Lord's heart. How will people ever see the shining dividing line between the saved and the lost when we have drawn lines between ourselves and other Christians who have likewise trusted Christ for salvation? We have allowed our knowledge of the truth to puff us up, to inflate us with pride, when we should be weeping over the divisions among all who name the name of our Lord, some of which we have caused.
Take a look around at all of the different kinds of Christians who are genuinely trusting Christ for salvation according to the word of God and affirm out loud: We are all on the same team. They will, at some point, vex and embarrass you. You will inevitably perplex and frustrate them. The questions we should ask ourselves every morning are not: Who is in the wrong today? and How can I correct them? but Who can I love? and How can I love them the way Christ would? Fighting to stay salty and keeping our team together are two of the main battles of the good fight of the faith.
We've been commanded to love one another--before others' confusions are dispelled, before they gain victory over every sin, and before they treat us the way we think they should. If that sounds unreasonable, remember the example and words of our Lord: "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). That is how our Bright Morning Star shined out in the darkness for us, that we may walk together as we follow him.