Mark 12 - Faceoff

Mark 12

This chapter continues the faceoff between Jesus and the temple authorities. Jesus has already upset the regular order of things when he cleared the temple of the people selling and exchanging money. The Pharisees came to question him and he got the better of them. Let’s be perfectly frank here. They want him dead. Jesus takes it a step further. He tells a parable that equates them with rebellious tenants in a vineyard who refuse to pay their rent. The owner sends representative to them time and again, but they beat them and kill them. Finally, he sends his son.

Here is the Son of God, Jesus, facing the rebellious tenants, and they are already contemplating murdering him. But they fear the crowd, so they try to trick him instead. What follows is the attempt of a religious group to entrap Jesus in something he says.

The first attempt: taxes. The imperial tax was a tax paid to the Romans. The crowds who had shouted “save us” as Jesus entered the city may have had in mind save us from Roman domination. If they can get Jesus to say that the tax should be paid, then the crowds would likely sour on him. But if he says not to pay the tax, they could have the Romans arrest him. It looks like the perfect set up.

Jesus’s response is incredible. He asks for a Roman coin.

“Whose image is this? And who’s inscription?”

“Caesar’s” they replied.

Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

And they were amazed at him.

Ravi Zacharias once wrote, “The disingenuousness of the questioner is noticed in the fact that he did not come back with a second question. He should have said, “What belongs to God?” And Jesus would have said, “Whose image is on you?””

In Genesis (verse) the scripture says humans were created in God’s image. Our very selves belong to God.

The first attempt to discredit Jesus fails.

Next the Sadducees come to test him. Their question is about marriage, but it is really about resurrection. They don’t believe in the resurrection, and they think they have the perfect paradox to stump Jesus. A woman marries seven men, one after the other, as each one dies. Whose wife will she be at the resurrection?

Jesus corrects them easily. There will be no marriage at all in the resurrection, therefore no paradox. He further explains that when God said that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he is saying that those patriarchs are alive with him. [this needs work].

The next question appears to the be first that is not give as a trap. A teacher of the law asks Jesus, what is the greatest commandment? Jesus quotes the Shema, a section of well-known scripture the Torah. It boils down to love God. And he adds that the second most important is to love your neighbor as yourself.

Mark here says that “no one dared ask him any more questions.” Jesus wisdom was unassailable.

Now Jesus turns is around. It is his turn to question them. He asks them this question: “Why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared:

                “The Lord said to my Lord:

                “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.”’

David himself calls him ‘Lord.’ How then can he be his son?””

He is given no response. The people are delighted. But no one can answer him. In retrospect it is easy to see that Jesus, being a descendent of David, is his son by human descent, but he is also god. He is fully man, and fully God. Only in this way is the paradox solved.

Jesus then proceeds to warn the people about the teachers of the law. He essentially calls them hypocrites. This very likely infuriated the teachers of the law.

The chapter finishes with Jesus sitting down people watching. He is watching the people put their offerings into the temple treasury. Jesus points out to his disciples the gift of a poor widow. She gives only two very small copper coins. It would be easy to dismiss such an offering. But Jesus says that is worth more than any of the other offerings. It is because the offering was costly. The woman gave all she had to live on. For her, that was everything. God doesn’t judge us based on what we don’t have, but what we do have.

We need to see with God’s eyes. We need spiritual vision, and not earthly vision.