MARKAN MEDITATIONS

Meditations in the Gospel of St. Mark

St. Mark 12:28-34

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THIS INCIDENT confirms the words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians where he says that man in his wisdom can't see or know God. This teacher of the law was so different to the others who had come to question Jesus. There seems to be no desire to trip Jesus up, but instead a sincere desire to enquire into the important things of religion. His understanding is affirmed by Jesus to be good when Jesus says that this teacher was not far from the Kingdom of God. But in spite of all the excellence of his understanding he was still not in the Kingdom of God, but just near. This teacher had gone as far as anyone can go in their own human wisdom, and still this was not enough. He still had not entered the kingdom of heaven.

This teacher revered God as the one true and only God. He understood that God requires holiness from his creature and that the heart of holiness is love - firstly whole-hearted love for God, and secondly sincere love for others. He had realised that this loving from the heart was more important than the exercise of religious duties. The Jews had become like so many. The sacrifices and offerings laid down in the law of God had become religious duties by which the people felt they gained God's favour, simply by the doing of them. Having offered a sacrifice they had come to feel that this merited the favour of God.

With all his understanding and religious fervour this teacher failed in an essential way. He had not realised his need for sacrifice. He saw that the Jewish people had turned the sacrifices of their religion into meaningless ritual, but he had not seen the reason why God through Moses had given Israel the sacrifices in the first place.

Although the teacher of the Law knew the Law intimately, he had never allowed the law to penetrate his heart and conscience so that he came to know how much he had fallen short of the glory of God, and in consequence that he was under the condemnation of the Law and thus in great spiritual danger. He had never experienced the proper work of the Law which is to convict of sin, so that sinners may cease to trust in their own righteousness and seek a righteousness outside themselves which truly satisfies the Law.

The sacrifices, though because they had to be repeated again and again were not perfect, yet they spoke of the need for sin to be atoned for, and justice for sin's fault to be exacted in death. This teacher of the law did not see that without the shedding of blood there is no remission. He had not appreciated that if the sinner was to be saved from death, which is the only just penalty for God's broken law, another must die in the place of the sinner. Because of this he saw Jesus as only a teacher of some repute, and failed to see him and know him as his Messiah and Saviour.

God looks into the heart. Outward correctness will not do in the eyes of God. There must be the perfect love of God in the heart. There is only one way that this can be achieved and that is through Christ and his death, and faith in him. It is only through Christ's atonement that we are provided with a perfect righteousness which meets all God's holy demands, and it is only through Christ and his atonement that we become a new creation, caused to rise with Christ to newness of life, where our true essential being within is created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.