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The Expositor's Bible The Gospel According to St. Mark
By The
Very Rev. G. A. Chadwick, D.D.
Dean of Armagh
Hodder & Stoughton
New York
George H. Doran Company
1900
CONTENTS
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter VII.
Chapter VIII.
Chapter IX.
Chapter X.
Chapter XI.
Chapter XII.
Chapter XIII.
Chapter XIV.
Chapter XV.
Chapter XVI.
Footnotes
CHAPTER I.
The Beginning Of The Gospel.
"The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Even
as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold, I send My
messenger before Thy face, who shall prepare Thy way; The voice of
one crying in the wilderness, Make ye ready the way of the Lord,
Make His paths straight; John came, who baptized in the wilderness
and preached the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins. And
there went out unto him all the country of Judæa, and all they of
Jerusalem; and they were baptized of him in the river Jordan,
confessing their sins. And John was clothed with camel's hair, and
had a leathern girdle about his loins, and did eat locusts and
wild honey." MARK, i. 1 6 (R.V.).
The opening of St. Mark's Gospel is energetic and full of character. St.
Matthew traces for Jews the pedigree of their Messiah; St. Luke's
worldwide sympathies linger with the maiden who bore Jesus, and the
village of His boyhood; and St. John's theology proclaims the Divine
origin of the Eternal Lord. But St. Mark trusts the public acts of the
Mighty Worker to do for the reader what they did for those who first
"beheld His glory." How He came to earth can safely be left untold: what
He was will appear by what He wrought. It is enough to record, with
matchless vividness, the toils, the energy, the love and wrath, the defeat
and triumph of the brief career which changed the world. It will prove
itself to be the career of "the Son of God."
In so deciding, he followed the example of the Apostolic teaching. The
first vacant place among the Twelve was filled by an eye witness,
competent to tell what Jesus did "from the baptism of John to the day when
He was received up," the very space covered by this Gospel. That "Gospel
of peace," which Cornelius heard from St. Peter (and hearing, received the
Holy Ghost) was the same story of Jesus "after the baptism which John
preached." And this is throughout the substance of the primitive teaching.
The Apostles act as men who believe that everything necessary to salvation
is (implicit or explicit) in the history of those few crowded years.
Therefore this is "the gospel."
Men there are who judge otherwise, and whose gospel is not the story of
salvation wrought, but the plan of salvation applied, how the Atonement
avails for us, how men are converted, and what privileges they then
receive. But in truth men are not converted by preaching conversion, any
more than citizens are made loyal by demanding loyalty. Show men their
prince, and convince them that he is gracious and truly royal, and they
will die for him. Show them the Prince of Life, and He, being lifted up,
will draw all men unto Him; and thus the truest gospel is that which
declares Christ and Him crucified. As all science springs from the
phenomena of the external world, so do theology and religion spring from
the life of Him who was too adorable to be mortal, and too loving to be
disobeyed.
Therefore St. Paul declares that the gospel which he preached to the
Corinthians and by which they were saved, was, that Christ died for our
sins and was buried and rose again, and was seen of sufficient witnesses
(1 Cor. xv. 1 8).
And therefore St. Mark is contented with a very brief record of those
wondrous years; a few facts, chosen with a keen sense of the intense
energy and burning force which they reveal, are what he is inspired to
call the gospel... Continue reading book >>
