SECTION XII.

THE DEPARTURE FROM GALILEE.

(Mark ix, 30-x. 1.)

On the western coast of the Galilean Sea, the enemies of the Lord seemed everywhere disposed to obstruct the way: He therefore now returned by by-paths through Galilee back to Capernaum. On this journey He sought to remain quite unknown. This circumstance must have surprised His disciples. He told them, however, the reason of His conduct, saying, 'The Son of man shall be delivered (betrayed) into the hands of men, and they shall kill Him; and after that He is killed, He shall rise the third day.' He had, indeed, already, on a former occasion, announced His sufferings. But now He told them further, that by betrayal He should fall into the hands of men (who stood over against the company of His disciples and His people, as the world, as a God-forsaken, or heathen world). This treachery, however, must not overtake Him too soon, or at an unseasonable time. Hence His caution. But the disciples could not understand that saying, and were afraid to ask Him.

Once more came the Lord again to Capernaum. When He had there arrived. with His disciples in His dwelling. He asked them, 'What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? 'But they held their peace; for they were greatly taken aback by this question, because by the way they had disputed among themselves who should be the greatest. And He sat down, and called the Twelve around Him, like a prince, who places himself on his throne, and assembles his great men about him. He then said, 'If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of. all, and servant of all.' And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them: so that thus the exalted group must assume the most childlike, most familiar character. And when He had taken him, even into His arms, He said unto them, 'Whosoever shall receive one of such children in My name, receiveth Me; and whosoever shall receive Me, receiveth not Me — not Me alone, as I now appear, but Him that sent Me.'¹

Thus He places the world of divine reality, of essential substance, over against that world of symbolical relations, in which they were still at home with their wishes and fancies, and in which they even now moved with peculiar excitement of spirit. Whoso thus seeks for or receives a poor child in the love of Christ, and with an eye to his destination in Christ, the same is great in the kingdom of God, as a prince to whom Christ, nay, the Father Himself, enters in. The child in its destination represents Christ; in Christ appears the Father Himself.

The disciples now knew that the true greatness of the disciple should consist in his receiving men in the name of Christ, or generally in his labouring in Christ's name. This communication occasioned John to give expression to the thought, that there must be decision in confessing the Lord as His follower — that one must enter into a decisive outward connection with Him, if one would possess the right to labour in His name. 'Master,' he said, referring to the last word of Christ, 'we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and he followeth not us. And we forbade him, because he followeth not us.' This statement gave occasion to a very earnest discourse. 'Forbid (it) him not,' said Jesus; 'for there is no man who would perform an act of power (exhibit a display of original power) in My name, and then could lightly again speak evil of Me.' In these words a psychological impossibility is expressed, and indeed a psychological law, according to which, one must assume that all who labour with power in the name of Christ are on the way towards Him, and cannot therefore so easily speak against Him. This the Lord now states in the form of an axiom: 'For he that is not against you is for you.'² He then shows them that they must set a high value upon even the slightest expression of friendship for them or for Him: 'For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in My name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward.' Thus Christ demands, for the security of His work, that His people shall regard as very precious and holy even the faintest traces of attachment to Him, the tenderest germs of faith in men's hearts. That this, however, may take place, He sees Himself compelled to forbid in the most stringent terms all harshness, and all hierarchical or fanatical sternness in His people. Therefore, he continues, 'Whosoever shall offend one of the little ones that believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.' But when the ministers of Christ offend a pupil of the Church, a catechumen, it proceeds from this, that they have allowed themselves to be offended through some perverted impulse or other in their own inward life. Against this danger, the Lord now warns the disciples in deeply impressive terms:

'If thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where " their worm clieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (Isa. Ixvi. 24).

'And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life halt, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

'And if thine eye offend thee, cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell-fire; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.'

This exhortation is the divinely authoritative, so to speak, liturgically ordained, word of the Chief Shepherd of the Church, in which He binds His servants by the holiest obligations to keep themselves pure from all fanatical, heretical, and proselytizing practices, which tend to their own destruction, and through them to the destruction of the world. (See above, vol. ii. p. 409).

This self-denial which the Lord has enjoined on His disciples, will certainly also cause them great struggles and sufferings.³ It is impossible, once and for all, that they escape the fire. If they would escape the fire of hell, they must calmly submit to the fire of self-renunciation, of inward purification, which, as a rule, is accompanied by the fires of outward tribulation. This truth the Lord brings home to their hearts in the words: 'For every one shall be salted with fire.' A fire that seems to annihilate him, must rescue or preserve him; so that it appears as the salt which serves for the preservation of life. A fire of death, of apparent annihilation, must be to him a salt of restoration and preservation unto eternal life.

But the flames, into which they must needs be cast, shall be to them as holy sacrificial flames; therefore the Lord further adds, 'And every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.' So are they now, through the salt of the Word, which He 'communicates to them, salted and prepared, in order that in the future they may enter the sacrificial fire, as true offerings unto God, and in it obtain the true preservation unto life eternal. Still they must not regard themselves secured alone by the circumstance that the Word has been communicated to them. 'Salt is good,' He continues; 'but if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith shall itself be seasoned?⁴ Have then salt in yourselves — by appropriating to yourselves the word, and assimilating it into your life; be like to a salt-spring, and let yourselves be purified and your youth restored by this salt — and have peace one with another.'⁵

The salt of the Word cannot separate the disciples: if it be preserved in strength, it will assure their peace.

This whole address of Christ to His own people sounds like a voice of thunder, but it is so vehement only on behalf of the gentleness which He desires to see exercised by His servants in the Church, especially by the powerful, towards the least of His disciples in the world. He speaks with the holy zeal and sorrow of prophetic love, against the false zeal which should appear in His Church.

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1) How Gfrörer makes the Evangelist patch together the narrative, chap. ix. 33 et seq., from Matthew and Luke, see as above, p. 170.

2) Another reading: for us, against us. But here, as in Luke ix. 4, the testimonies for the reading accepted by us preponderate. Regarding the contrast which this maxim forms to the other: He that is not for Me, &c.; see above, ii. 406.

3) See Weisse, i. 558.