BINDING THE STRONG MAN
Mark 3:20-35
Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’ And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered. ‘Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’--for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’ Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.’ And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’
Introduction
Jesus said, “… whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Not exactly words to which we want to joyfully respond , “Praise to you, Lord Christ.” But, we did in my church on the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost as I concluded reading this Mark passage.
I volunteered to preach, despite knowing what the Gospel lesson was about, because I foolishly felt confident enough to preach a passage, embedded in which, are these rather disturbing words from Jesus. I mean, I know many Christians (including myself) who have, at some point in their life, wondered, with just a little anxiety, whether they had already been “guilty of an eternal sin.” I didn’t feel quite so brave on the day I preached and set out with a little fear and trembling, even though I was glad I’d had an opportunity to examine this passage more carefully. I came to understand Mark and his purpose just a little better. More importantly, I got to better understand what Jesus was doing and why, as he moved towards the fulfillment of his mission on the Cross.
In this passage, Mark uses a technique that’s not uncommon in his Gospel. He sandwiches one story in the middle of two parts of another story. For the sake of time, I chose to focus only on the sandwich’s ‘filling,’ the tricky middle story about the attack from the Jerusalem scribes and Jesus’ response. It seems to me, that in it, Jesus gives us a clear picture of what he is doing. And if we know what Jesus is up to, then we can join him and be more faithful to his kingdom mission.
Backstory
Before we can examine this story, there are two important points to keep before us. First, context for this story (and many other ones in Mark) goes back to Mark’s very brief account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness in chapter one. Unlike both Matthew (4:11) and Luke (4:13), Mark doesn’t conclude the temptation story by stating, ‘the devil left him.’ The devil doesn’t leave Jesus alone but repeatedly confronts him. There are frequent exorcisms of demons in Mark and confrontations with religious rulers. The way Mark tells the temptation story, those who don’t know how the gospel story ends might wonder: Who wins? Along the way, Mark will drop hints that the discerning reader will be able to get. He does that in this ‘sandwich-filling’ story.
Second, to understand and get Mark’s hints, not only in this story but in all of Mark, there are two important lessons we need to keep in view. 1) The battle Jesus is engaged in throughout his ministry, which the temptation story prepares us for, is between God’s Kingdom and Satan’s. Behind conflicts with religious and political rulers is this spiritual battle. It’s the backstory that helps, in part, explain Jesus, his teachings and actions. 2) In Jesus, God’s kingdom, that is God’s sovereign and saving rule, has broken in, “on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s kingdom isn’t limited to a geographical space, and has nothing to do with ‘bombing the bleep’ out of our enemies and making the nation ‘great again.’ This is what ticked off the religious rulers. Jesus wasn’t doing what they wanted Messiah to do and therefore, they concluded, he couldn’t possibly be from God.
The Jerusalem scribes’ accusation
For the first time, readers of Mark are introduced to “Jerusalem scribes.” They were presumably an official delegation sent down from Jerusalem to check Jesus out and stop him. His rapidly growing popularity had reached the religious rulers in Jerusalem. Everything Jesus said and did was alarming. As N. T. Wright states, it didn’t “fit into their categories. Jesus isn’t accredited. He must therefore be sidelined” (Mark for Everyone, 2004, p. 37). However, instead of sitting Jesus down and asking him questions, they did what many of us do when we’re disturbed to the point of anger by another person’s theology or politics—blurt out an accusation. Perhaps we can liken what the scribes did to what President Trump is doing with the Russian influence investigation and its head, Robert Mueller—discredit him in the eyes of the people with outlandish accusations. Demonizing the enemy is a common tactic, and not just among politicians. We see it in the scribes, who claimed, “He has Beelzebul, by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” As Ched Myers puts it, “The logic of the scribes was simple: because they believed themselves to be God’s representatives, Jesus’ ‘secession’ necessarily put him in allegiance with Satan” (Binding the Strong Man, 2015, 165).
The term Beelzebul is an obscure one, used only in the Synoptic Gospels; not even in other ancient literature. Myers maintains it was a euphemism for Satan (2015, p. 165). Jesus doesn’t use it, substituting ‘satan’ instead and thereby being unambiguous about who the real enemy is (remember the ‘backstory’).
Jesus’ response
In response to the outlandish accusation, Jesus “called them to him, and spoke to them in parables.” These aren’t parables as we normally think of them, but a question and a riddle (which is one of the meanings of parable). Parables aren’t, despite popular opinion, easy to grasp and conceal more than they reveal. This means it’s easy to misunderstand and misuse parables, as Abraham Lincoln famously did with the divided kingdom parable. With reference to Lincoln's interpretation, Myers points out that “these are not placative platitudes about civil war weakening the body politic, as if Jesus seeks to assure the scribes that he is really their ally against a common enemy, Satan” (2015, p. 166). No. Instead, Jesus seems to be implying it’s the scribes who’ve sided with Satan, as Jesus’ politically loaded language suggests.
Scribal Judaism was looking forward to the return of Davidic rule, centered around the temple. Jesus refers to both using two familiar terms with subtle political inference--kingdom (meaning Davidic rule) and house (a reference to the temple). Both Old and New Testaments frequently refer to the temple as ‘God’s house,’ and Jesus consistently does so. What upset the religious rulers is Jesus’ teaching that insisted God’s kingdom isn’t to be equated with a renewed Davidic one, as they believed and hoped. It’s something very different. In a later story (Mark 11:15ff), Jesus will ‘exorcise’ the temple and accuse religious rulers of turning God’s house (which was intended to be ‘a house of prayer for all nations’) into a den of robbers (see Isaiah 56:7).
The final parable is, in many ways, central to Mark’s overall purpose. “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered” (v27). People have often misinterpreted this parable, perhaps because no one wants to imagine that Jesus (God) is a common thief! As a result, we presume that Jesus is the strong man and Satan is the thief and this parable is a reference to Jesus’ arrest and death on the cross.
However, it’s not unusual for Jesus to use negative (think bad) images to teach about God in his parables. That’s the case here. The ‘strong man’ is the Satan; the ‘thief’ is Jesus. The picture is of what Jesus came to do—‘bind up’ Satan so Jesus can ‘plunder’ its ‘house’ in order to set the prisoners and captives free from the oppressors. This is what Jesus is doing in his many conflicts with the demonic and religious rulers, binding up ‘the strong man.’ He is preparing the way to ‘plunder’ his house. Religious leaders who opposed Jesus had sided with Satan and also needed to be ‘bound up’ so that Jesus could triumph in his purpose of redemption for all creation. The parable hints (somewhat obviously) at the end of the story--Jesus' ultimate victory. It’s a categorical statement by Jesus to the scribes that he has come to take over. Their days are numbered. Of course they sensed this, hence their antagonism. They weren’t merely afraid of losing control over the people, but of losing everything as Jesus, a nobody in their eyes, takes over.
Mark then concludes the middle story with a rather dire warning about the unforgiveable sin. “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin—for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’”
The warning is somewhat obscure, which is probably why so many of us have, at some point in our lives, wondered whether we might have committed the unforgiveable sin. I’m pretty sure the Jerusalem scribes got it and knew Jesus was accusing them of the very thing they’d accused him of—being in league with the devil.
So what does this mean? And, should we be worried about having committed it?
A former colleague of mine used to say, ‘If you think you have committed it, you probably haven’t!’ He meant that the person who commits this sin does so knowingly and willfully and doesn’t care about the consequences. However, I’m not so sure about this. I mean, the warning is addressed to the scribes, men who were very concerned about keeping God’s Law to the letter, at least their interpretations of it. They’d care deeply about committing an unforgiveable sin, or so it seems to me, and they’d emphatically insist on their innocence. Which was, perhaps, part of their problem.
Mark’s explanation of the unforgiveable sin suggests it has to do with words we use. He adds the explanatory phrase, “for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’” ‘For they had said’ is in the imperfect tense in Greek and means they were saying. In other words, this wasn’t a once-off statement but something they repeated. William Lane argues that it “implies repetition and a fixed attitude of mind” (The Gospel According to Mark, 1974, p. 146). Because it’s a ‘fixed attitude’ (and I’d say of heart, not merely mind) it’s not just about repeated words, but repeated behaviors as well. This is evident in Myers explanation. He writes, “To be captive to the way things are, to resist criticism and change, to brutally suppress efforts at humanization—is to be bypassed by the grace of God” (2015, p. 167). And N. T. Wright suggests, “It’s like holding a conspiracy theory: all the evidence you see will simply confirm your belief. You will be blind to the truth” (2004, p. 38). People will justify lies, calling them, ‘alternate facts.’
The scribes’ accusation of satanic alliance, their oppressive rule over the people, their authoritarian control of God’s house, their refusal to believe crystal clear truth were all signs they were in danger of the unforgiveable sin. Ultimately, their sin was a failure to live into their vocation to reflect God to the world. Having said all that, there is some truth in my former colleague’s comment if you fear you’ve committed this sin, you probably haven’t. Those who fear committing blasphemy are those who are serious about faithfully following Jesus and will, therefore, be careful how they speak and live.
Conclusion
Jesus’ teaching in this passage isn’t meant to frighten us, not even the ‘dire warning.’ It’s meant to encourage us as we continue seeking truth and more authenticate ways to follow Jesus. It’s also a reminder that the battle is always spiritual, even when played out in religious or political rulers and in the affairs of governments. This is as true for us today as it was in Jesus’ day. We’re in spiritual warfare against the ruling powers today. The clear message Jesus wants his followers to get is that, in him, God continues to move all history to the end he has planned, in Jesus God’s kingdom, sovereign and saving rule has arrived, ‘on earth as in heaven.’
This is what makes this story so important to Mark’s overall purpose in this Gospel, which is to claim and demonstrate the defeat of the Enemy (Satan) and the triumph of Christ and his kingdom. It’s the assurance that Jesus does, in the end, win. We keep reading Mark, not to learn if Jesus wins in the end, but to discover how he wins. We can be confident that Jesus, the stronger one, has bound up ‘the strong man’ and God’s kingdom and our freedom in Christ is a present reality.
Works Cited
Lane, William. The Gospel According to Mark. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1974.
Myers, Ched. Binding the Strong Man. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015.
Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. 2004.
Jackie L. Smallbones©
June 2018
Not to be copied without permission from Jackie.
Introduction
Jesus said, “… whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Not exactly words to which we want to joyfully respond , “Praise to you, Lord Christ.” But, we did in my church on the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost as I concluded reading this Mark passage.
I volunteered to preach, despite knowing what the Gospel lesson was about, because I foolishly felt confident enough to preach a passage, embedded in which, are these rather disturbing words from Jesus. I mean, I know many Christians (including myself) who have, at some point in their life, wondered, with just a little anxiety, whether they had already been “guilty of an eternal sin.” I didn’t feel quite so brave on the day I preached and set out with a little fear and trembling, even though I was glad I’d had an opportunity to examine this passage more carefully. I came to understand Mark and his purpose just a little better. More importantly, I got to better understand what Jesus was doing and why, as he moved towards the fulfillment of his mission on the Cross.
In this passage, Mark uses a technique that’s not uncommon in his Gospel. He sandwiches one story in the middle of two parts of another story. For the sake of time, I chose to focus only on the sandwich’s ‘filling,’ the tricky middle story about the attack from the Jerusalem scribes and Jesus’ response. It seems to me, that in it, Jesus gives us a clear picture of what he is doing. And if we know what Jesus is up to, then we can join him and be more faithful to his kingdom mission.
Backstory
Before we can examine this story, there are two important points to keep before us. First, context for this story (and many other ones in Mark) goes back to Mark’s very brief account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness in chapter one. Unlike both Matthew (4:11) and Luke (4:13), Mark doesn’t conclude the temptation story by stating, ‘the devil left him.’ The devil doesn’t leave Jesus alone but repeatedly confronts him. There are frequent exorcisms of demons in Mark and confrontations with religious rulers. The way Mark tells the temptation story, those who don’t know how the gospel story ends might wonder: Who wins? Along the way, Mark will drop hints that the discerning reader will be able to get. He does that in this ‘sandwich-filling’ story.
Second, to understand and get Mark’s hints, not only in this story but in all of Mark, there are two important lessons we need to keep in view. 1) The battle Jesus is engaged in throughout his ministry, which the temptation story prepares us for, is between God’s Kingdom and Satan’s. Behind conflicts with religious and political rulers is this spiritual battle. It’s the backstory that helps, in part, explain Jesus, his teachings and actions. 2) In Jesus, God’s kingdom, that is God’s sovereign and saving rule, has broken in, “on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s kingdom isn’t limited to a geographical space, and has nothing to do with ‘bombing the bleep’ out of our enemies and making the nation ‘great again.’ This is what ticked off the religious rulers. Jesus wasn’t doing what they wanted Messiah to do and therefore, they concluded, he couldn’t possibly be from God.
The Jerusalem scribes’ accusation
For the first time, readers of Mark are introduced to “Jerusalem scribes.” They were presumably an official delegation sent down from Jerusalem to check Jesus out and stop him. His rapidly growing popularity had reached the religious rulers in Jerusalem. Everything Jesus said and did was alarming. As N. T. Wright states, it didn’t “fit into their categories. Jesus isn’t accredited. He must therefore be sidelined” (Mark for Everyone, 2004, p. 37). However, instead of sitting Jesus down and asking him questions, they did what many of us do when we’re disturbed to the point of anger by another person’s theology or politics—blurt out an accusation. Perhaps we can liken what the scribes did to what President Trump is doing with the Russian influence investigation and its head, Robert Mueller—discredit him in the eyes of the people with outlandish accusations. Demonizing the enemy is a common tactic, and not just among politicians. We see it in the scribes, who claimed, “He has Beelzebul, by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” As Ched Myers puts it, “The logic of the scribes was simple: because they believed themselves to be God’s representatives, Jesus’ ‘secession’ necessarily put him in allegiance with Satan” (Binding the Strong Man, 2015, 165).
The term Beelzebul is an obscure one, used only in the Synoptic Gospels; not even in other ancient literature. Myers maintains it was a euphemism for Satan (2015, p. 165). Jesus doesn’t use it, substituting ‘satan’ instead and thereby being unambiguous about who the real enemy is (remember the ‘backstory’).
Jesus’ response
In response to the outlandish accusation, Jesus “called them to him, and spoke to them in parables.” These aren’t parables as we normally think of them, but a question and a riddle (which is one of the meanings of parable). Parables aren’t, despite popular opinion, easy to grasp and conceal more than they reveal. This means it’s easy to misunderstand and misuse parables, as Abraham Lincoln famously did with the divided kingdom parable. With reference to Lincoln's interpretation, Myers points out that “these are not placative platitudes about civil war weakening the body politic, as if Jesus seeks to assure the scribes that he is really their ally against a common enemy, Satan” (2015, p. 166). No. Instead, Jesus seems to be implying it’s the scribes who’ve sided with Satan, as Jesus’ politically loaded language suggests.
Scribal Judaism was looking forward to the return of Davidic rule, centered around the temple. Jesus refers to both using two familiar terms with subtle political inference--kingdom (meaning Davidic rule) and house (a reference to the temple). Both Old and New Testaments frequently refer to the temple as ‘God’s house,’ and Jesus consistently does so. What upset the religious rulers is Jesus’ teaching that insisted God’s kingdom isn’t to be equated with a renewed Davidic one, as they believed and hoped. It’s something very different. In a later story (Mark 11:15ff), Jesus will ‘exorcise’ the temple and accuse religious rulers of turning God’s house (which was intended to be ‘a house of prayer for all nations’) into a den of robbers (see Isaiah 56:7).
The final parable is, in many ways, central to Mark’s overall purpose. “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered” (v27). People have often misinterpreted this parable, perhaps because no one wants to imagine that Jesus (God) is a common thief! As a result, we presume that Jesus is the strong man and Satan is the thief and this parable is a reference to Jesus’ arrest and death on the cross.
However, it’s not unusual for Jesus to use negative (think bad) images to teach about God in his parables. That’s the case here. The ‘strong man’ is the Satan; the ‘thief’ is Jesus. The picture is of what Jesus came to do—‘bind up’ Satan so Jesus can ‘plunder’ its ‘house’ in order to set the prisoners and captives free from the oppressors. This is what Jesus is doing in his many conflicts with the demonic and religious rulers, binding up ‘the strong man.’ He is preparing the way to ‘plunder’ his house. Religious leaders who opposed Jesus had sided with Satan and also needed to be ‘bound up’ so that Jesus could triumph in his purpose of redemption for all creation. The parable hints (somewhat obviously) at the end of the story--Jesus' ultimate victory. It’s a categorical statement by Jesus to the scribes that he has come to take over. Their days are numbered. Of course they sensed this, hence their antagonism. They weren’t merely afraid of losing control over the people, but of losing everything as Jesus, a nobody in their eyes, takes over.
Mark then concludes the middle story with a rather dire warning about the unforgiveable sin. “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin—for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’”
The warning is somewhat obscure, which is probably why so many of us have, at some point in our lives, wondered whether we might have committed the unforgiveable sin. I’m pretty sure the Jerusalem scribes got it and knew Jesus was accusing them of the very thing they’d accused him of—being in league with the devil.
So what does this mean? And, should we be worried about having committed it?
A former colleague of mine used to say, ‘If you think you have committed it, you probably haven’t!’ He meant that the person who commits this sin does so knowingly and willfully and doesn’t care about the consequences. However, I’m not so sure about this. I mean, the warning is addressed to the scribes, men who were very concerned about keeping God’s Law to the letter, at least their interpretations of it. They’d care deeply about committing an unforgiveable sin, or so it seems to me, and they’d emphatically insist on their innocence. Which was, perhaps, part of their problem.
Mark’s explanation of the unforgiveable sin suggests it has to do with words we use. He adds the explanatory phrase, “for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’” ‘For they had said’ is in the imperfect tense in Greek and means they were saying. In other words, this wasn’t a once-off statement but something they repeated. William Lane argues that it “implies repetition and a fixed attitude of mind” (The Gospel According to Mark, 1974, p. 146). Because it’s a ‘fixed attitude’ (and I’d say of heart, not merely mind) it’s not just about repeated words, but repeated behaviors as well. This is evident in Myers explanation. He writes, “To be captive to the way things are, to resist criticism and change, to brutally suppress efforts at humanization—is to be bypassed by the grace of God” (2015, p. 167). And N. T. Wright suggests, “It’s like holding a conspiracy theory: all the evidence you see will simply confirm your belief. You will be blind to the truth” (2004, p. 38). People will justify lies, calling them, ‘alternate facts.’
The scribes’ accusation of satanic alliance, their oppressive rule over the people, their authoritarian control of God’s house, their refusal to believe crystal clear truth were all signs they were in danger of the unforgiveable sin. Ultimately, their sin was a failure to live into their vocation to reflect God to the world. Having said all that, there is some truth in my former colleague’s comment if you fear you’ve committed this sin, you probably haven’t. Those who fear committing blasphemy are those who are serious about faithfully following Jesus and will, therefore, be careful how they speak and live.
Conclusion
Jesus’ teaching in this passage isn’t meant to frighten us, not even the ‘dire warning.’ It’s meant to encourage us as we continue seeking truth and more authenticate ways to follow Jesus. It’s also a reminder that the battle is always spiritual, even when played out in religious or political rulers and in the affairs of governments. This is as true for us today as it was in Jesus’ day. We’re in spiritual warfare against the ruling powers today. The clear message Jesus wants his followers to get is that, in him, God continues to move all history to the end he has planned, in Jesus God’s kingdom, sovereign and saving rule has arrived, ‘on earth as in heaven.’
This is what makes this story so important to Mark’s overall purpose in this Gospel, which is to claim and demonstrate the defeat of the Enemy (Satan) and the triumph of Christ and his kingdom. It’s the assurance that Jesus does, in the end, win. We keep reading Mark, not to learn if Jesus wins in the end, but to discover how he wins. We can be confident that Jesus, the stronger one, has bound up ‘the strong man’ and God’s kingdom and our freedom in Christ is a present reality.
Works Cited
Lane, William. The Gospel According to Mark. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1974.
Myers, Ched. Binding the Strong Man. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015.
Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. 2004.
Jackie L. Smallbones©
June 2018
Not to be copied without permission from Jackie.
