Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. MarkMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Mark
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Mark -- Commentaries
The second effect of unbelief on Him was that He 'marvelled.' He is
twice recorded to have wondered--once at a Gentile's faith, once at
His townsmen's unbelief. He wondered at the first because it showed so
unusual a susceptibility; at the second, because it showed so
unreasonable a blindness. All sin is a wonder to eyes that see into
the realities of things and read the end; for it is all utterly
unreasonable (though it is, alas! not unaccountable) and suicidal. 'Be
astonished, O ye heavens, at this.' Unbelief in Christ is, by Himself,
declared to be the very climax of sin, and its most flagrant evidence
(John xvi. 9); and of all the instances of unbelief which saddened His
heart, none struck more chill than that of these Nazarenes. They had
known His pure youth; He might have reckoned on some touch of sympathy
and predisposition to welcome Him. His wonder is the measure of His
pain as well as of their sin.
Nor need we wonder that He wondered; for He was true man, and all
human emotions were His. To one who lives ever in the Father's bosom,
what can seem so strange as that men should prefer homeless
exposedness and dreary loneliness? To one whose eyes ever behold
unseen realities, what so marvellous as men's blindness? To one who
knew so assuredly His own mission and rich freightage of blessing, how
strange it must have been that He found so few to accept His gifts!
Jesus knew that bitter wonder which all men who have a truth to
proclaim which the world has not learned, have to experience--the
amazement at finding it so hard to get any others to see what they
see. In His manhood, He shared the fate of all teachers, who have, in
their turn, to marvel at men's unbelief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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