Deeper Commentary

9:1 And he said to them: Truly I say to you: There are some standing here, who shall in no way taste death, before they see the kingdom of God come with power- The Lord will essentially be the same as the Gospels present Him when we see Him again. This is why Jesus even in His earthly life could be called "the Kingdom of God", so close was the link between the man who walked Palestine and the One who will come again in glory. “They see the Kingdom of God come” (Mk. 9:1) is paralleled by “They see the Son of man coming” (Mt. 16:28). Indeed it would seem that the references in the Synoptic Gospels to the ‘coming’ of the Kingdom are interpreted in the rest of the New Testament as referring to the personal ‘coming’ of the Lord Jesus (e.g. 1 Cor. 16:22; Rev. 22:20). In that very context of referring to Himself as "the Kingdom of God", the Lord speaks of His return as 'the days of the Son of man'- the human Jesus. And yet He also speaks in that context of how after His death, men will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, i.e. how He had been in His mortal life (Lk. 17:20-26). As He was in His mortal days, so He will essentially be in the day of His final glory.

9:2 And after six days- Lk. 9:28 speaks of “about an eight days after”, reckoning inclusively and perhaps wishing to express the idea of ‘About a week later’.  

Jesus took with him Peter, James and John- Peter is mentioned first. An over-reaction against Catholic views of Peter can lead us to under-estimate the undoubted supremacy of Peter in the early ecclesia. He was in the inner three along with James and John, and in incidents involving them he is always mentioned first, as the leader (Mt. 17:1,2; 26:37; Mk. 5:37). He is the first to confess Jesus as Messiah (Mt. 16:13-17), the first apostle to see the risen Christ (Lk. 24:34; 1 Cor. 15:5), the first to preach to the Gentiles. Being given the keys of the Kingdom is language which would have been understood at the time as the Lord making Peter the Chief Rabbi of His new ecclesia. The Acts record without doubt gives primacy to Peter as the leader and chief representative of Christ’s fledgling church. But, humanly speaking, he was the most unlikely choice. The one who in the eyes of the world and brotherhood should have sat a fair while on the back burner, done the honourable thing… in fact, many honourable things, in just keeping a respectful and bashful silence. And there is no lack of evidence that Peter himself would have preferred that. But no, he was commissioned by the Lord to specifically lead the church. The early church was to be built on the rock of Peter. Whether we like to read this as meaning the rock of Peter’s confession that Christ was the Son of God, or as simply meaning Peter’s work as the manifestation of Christ, the rock, the Acts record shows clearly that the early church was built upon the specific work of Peter.

And brought them to a high mountain where they could be alone- Being led up [Gk.] a high mountain by the leader to be present at a theophany is very much the language of Moses taking Joshua and earlier another trio of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu) with him part way up Mount Sinai, and likewise experiencing a shining face (Ex. 34:29-35) and God’s voice from a cloud (Ex. 34:5). Moses returned from the Mount with shining face and the people were afraid- just as happened here (Mk. 9:6). Perhaps Peter vaguely comprehended all this when he wanted to build ‘tabernacles’, because this was the task given to Moses for Israel to complete. Lk. 9:32 speaks of the exodus which the Lord was to make at Jerusalem- a reference to His death. It was the Passover lamb which died at the Exodus- the implication is that now God’s people were free to leave Egypt. Again, those secular fishermen were being shown (through the obvious parallel) that they were none less than Joshua in this new Israel which was being created; and after the Lord’s departure, they were to take His place and lead God’s Israel into the Kingdom. 

The idea seems to be that just as He had taken the twelve into Gentile areas for a period of intense teaching of them, so even within the twelve He focused upon these three and wanted to spend time alone with them. He “took” them means to desire association with, to come close to. This was His intention, and one wonders whether the transfiguration was therefore unexpected for Him. Previously when He had tried to get the twelve away by themselves, there had been unexpected events which hampered that, such as the crowds following them, and even in Gentile areas the Lord seems to have been surprised by the faith and need to perform miracles which He encountered. In this case, it would be unintentional that the transfiguration is recorded as following straight after His words about His coming in His Kingdom; it wasn’t as if the Lord said those words knowing that some would witness the transfiguration. According to Lk. 9:28, the Lord’s intention was to go up the mountain “to pray”, but whilst He prayed, the transfiguration occurred. See on 16:28. 

Luke mentions that the Lord took Peter, James and John, started praying and then there was a theophany; but in their human weakness they missed much of it because they fell asleep. This was exactly the situation in the Garden of Gethsemane, with the same three involved; it was as if He was seeking to train them for it. They were “heavy” with sleep (Lk. 9:32), and the word is only used elsewhere in the Gospels to describe how the same three were “heavy” with sleep in Gethsemane (Mt. 26:43; Mk. 14:40). Even if Jesus Himself wasn’t consciously doing this, we have here an example of how the Divine hand leads us through experiences in order to prepare us for others which are to come later in similar form. 

And he was transfigured before them- The Lord's transfiguration was a cameo of the change that should be apparent deep within us, for Paul says that we should likewise be transformed (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18 s.w.), and he uses a related word in speaking of how Christ is to be “formed” within us (Gal. 4:19). Metamorphoo means a change of morphe; not necessarily of essential nature, because we too are to be transformed in this life, and have a new morphe develop in us (Gal. 4:19). But it could be that the ‘other form’ in which the Lord now appeared was in the form in which He will be in the Kingdom. The idea of a change of morphe of the Lord Jesus recurs only one other time- in the hymn concerning the Lord’s death in Phil. 2:6,7 where we read that although Had the morphe of God, He went through a seven stage progressive humiliation until He took on the morphe of a slave in the final death of the cross. One purpose of the transfiguration was for Moses and Elijah (who had both had Divinely arranged deaths or departures from ministry) to encourage the Lord concerning His upcoming death (Lk. 9:31). And yet He appeared as He will in the Kingdom, with shining Kingdom glory. The suffering and the glory were thereby manifested to and upon Him at the very same time, to show how inextricably linked they are. Perhaps too the point was being made that when He would hang there with the morphe of a dying and rejected slave, in Heaven’s eyes, He was in Kingdom glory. John’s equivalent of this is to record how the Lord spoke of His death as a ‘lifting up’, an idea which in Hebrew has connotations of ‘glory’. The shame of the cross was only from the world’s viewpoint, whereas from a spiritual viewpoint, His death was the very acme of spiritual glory. The blood drenched garment became in God’s eyes a glistering white raiment (Lk. 9:29). This would explain why in one sense the transfiguration was a Kingdom vision, and yet it was also about the Lord’s death. Peter later reflected that he could preach with conviction about the coming of Christ because he was present at the transfiguration (2 Pet. 1:16-18). The Kingdom element of the experience cannot be divorced from the fact it was also an encouragement from Moses and Elijah concerning the cross. Note that John was also powerfully inspired by the transfiguration, opening his Gospel with an allusion to it in saying that “We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father” (Jn. 1:14). James likewise appears to reference the transfiguration when he writes of how the Lord's glory is so surpassing that there should be no jostling for human glory amongst us His people (James 2:1). The descriptions of the Lord Jesus are very similar to the language used about the scene at His resurrection- Angels in shining garments (28:3; Lk. 24:4), frightened and uncomprehending disciples (28:5). And yet the theme of the conversation was the Lord’s death (Lk. 9:31)- but it took place with a preview of the resurrection scene. 

9:3 And his garments became radiant, exceedingly white, whiter than any launderer could whiten them- The same word used about the white clothing of the Angels at the resurrection ("white as snow", Mt. 28:3, just as in Mk. 9:3; Mk. 16:5; Jn. 20:12). In the midst of the conversation about His upcoming death (Lk. 9:31), there was the encouragement of what the resurrection glory would be like. The same word is also used about the Lord's current appearance in Heavenly glory with clothes "as white as snow" (Rev. 1:14- the very phrased used in Mk. 9:3). Indeed, the description of the risen Lord in Rev. 1 has many connections with the language used about His appearance at the transfiguration. Again the idea was to show Him how He would be after His glorification, to motivate Him to go through with the exodus at the cross which He must fulfil at Jerusalem.  “As the light” (Mt.) is hard to understand, but the Codex Bezae reads “as the snow”, in line with Mk. 9:3.

Mark adds that the Lord's clothing was "white as snow, such that no fuller on earth can white them". The Hebrew mind would have obviously thought of the clothing of God Himself, the "ancient of days" of Dan. 7:9, which is described likewise. The comment that no man could ever make them so white is also a hint in that direction. He was clothed with the clothing of God. This doesn't make Him God, for Revelation has many descriptions of the faithful having the same kind of clothing. Against this background, the promise of Is. 1:18 becomes the more awesome- that even although our sins are red as crimson, yet they can become white as snow. This can only be achieved by the wearing of God's own clothing, the gift of His imputed righteousness, which Paul extensively glories in throughout Romans 1-8. Rev. 7:14 speaks of plunging our robes in the blood of the lamb, and them becoming white. It's all so paradoxical- that this whiteness cannot be achieved by man, no fuller on earth could do this, but by plunging [surely an allusion to baptism] into the red blood of Christ. This is the challenge of faith- to believe that the promised whiteness can be achieved through Christ. It was possible even in Isaiah's time, on the basis that God looked ahead to the work of Christ which as it were enabled Him to do this. Therefore the reference to "no fuller on earth" suggests that there is a fuller in Heaven who can do this. And Mal. 3:2 is specific that the Messiah heralded by the Elijah prophet, John the Baptist, would be like "fuller's soap" in cleansing men through the judgment of their sins. David in the depth of his sin appealed to God to 'full' him ("wash me", but s.w. 'fuller'- Ps. 51:2,7); and this was done for him, on account of the future work of Christ which the Father then held in view.  The Lord's glistering garments are therefore available for all of us. And it is with that connection that the scene there becomes no mere spectacle to behold in awe from afar, but a real picture of our own possibility before God.

Luke adds that the disciples “saw his glory” (Lk. 9:32). This is absolutely the language of Moses and the Old Testament heroes seeing Divine glory in theophanies, and like the disciples, hearing God’s voice (Ex. 33:18 Heb. – “shew” is the same word translated ‘to see’’ Isaiah- Jn. 12:41; Ezekiel- Ez. 1:28). Yet again the Lord was seeking to show those secular men that they were called to work on the level of Moses and the prophets in the new Israel which the Lord Jesus was creating out of manual labourers, prostitutes, tax collectors, swindlers and sinners. See on Mt. 17:5 cloud. 

9:4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses; and they were talking with Jesus- It was a "vision" (Mt. 17:9). They appeared “in glory” (Lk. 9:31), as the Lord did- this is clearly a vision of the Kingdom. The Lord Jesus was the firstfruits from the dead, who opened the way to immortality. So there is no way that they were already glorified before His death and resurrection. It was a vision (Mt. 17:9), of the Kingdom. Just as Jesus was not then glorified Himself at that time, neither were they. They spoke of how the Lord was going to “fulfill” the exodus in His death at Jerusalem (Lk. 9:31). It was Moses who could supremely explain this to the Lord, having himself slain the Passover lamb and experienced the exodus made possible thereby.

The transfiguration follows straight on from the Lord’s talk about the Kingdom at the end of chapter 8. It was a foretaste of the Kingdom. Yet the Kingdom is fundamentally a relationship with God. Thus the foretaste of the Kingdom presented at the transfiguration was of faithful men in spiritual conversation with the glorified Lord Jesus, with His face shining as the sun as it will in the Kingdom, as the “sun of righteousness” (Mal. 4:2). 

Luke adds that the disciples’ eyes were heavy and they fell asleep at the critical moment. But earlier, “having remained awake”, the same disciples were blessed with a vision of the Lord’s glory (Lk. 9:32 RVmg.). If they had remained awake in the garden, they would have seen the Lord being glorified by Angelic visitation. But they didn't perceive how the circumstances were repeating, and thus didn’t find the strength and inspiration which was potentially prepared for them through the similarity of circumstance.

 

9:5 And Peter said to Jesus: Rabbi, it is good that we are here! Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah- Peter, who appears to be the one behind Mark's gospel, is not emphasizing his own superiority here, but rather commenting upon his own distance from the Lord's spirituality. For he presents his offer to put up a tent as being so inappropriate, now he perceived the glory of God which tabernacled in the flesh of the Lord Jesus.

Throughout the Lord's ministry, Peter had a mental barrier to the idea of his Lord suffering and dying. It could be argued that his desire to build tents and remain in the mountain of transfiguration was rooted in this- Moses and Elijah had just spoken with the Lord Jesus about the path He must take to death, and Peter somehow wants the Lord to stay there in the mountain (Mk. 9:5). And yet Peter's later preaching has so much to say about the Lord's death. And his letters contain quotations and allusions from Isaiah's suffering servant prophecies (1 Pet. 2:21 etc.). Further, if we accept the idea elsewhere discussed that Mark's Gospel is a transcript of Peter's preaching of the Gospel, it becomes significant that Mark's version of the Gospel likewise emphasizes Jesus as the suffering servant. Thus what Peter was once blind to, he made a special point of preaching. The content of his witness reflected his deep awareness of his past blindness- and therefore his appeal to others to 'get it' was the more powerful seeing that he himself had patently 'not got it' for some years. And it shouldn't be hard to translate his example into our daily experience, speaking of our weaknesses and former blindnesses rather than coming over as the self-congratulatory religious guy.

 It may have taken much of the day to climb the mountain, and Peter was maybe thinking of where they were going to sleep for the night. Or was did he also have in mind a celebration of the feast of Tabernacles at that time? Later, Peter came to see his death as a taking down of a tent (2 Pet. 1:13), using the same word for the tabernacle he had wanted to build for his Lord at the transfiguration. Then, he had wanted the tent to be set up so that the time of the Lord’s departure wouldn’t come; so that the Lord would stay with them there, with Moses and Elijah, in what must have seemed like the Kingdom of God. Again, Peter didn’t want the cross, neither for his Lord nor for himself. But by the time he wrote 2 Peter, he had learnt his lesson; he saw that his tent must be taken down. The vision of the glory of the Lord Jesus, the words of His coming death and future Kingdom, these were quite enough. There had been no need of the tent on the mountain, and now he saw there was no need for the tent of his body either. We are all the same. Our death will literally be a death with the Lord, in that our resurrection will be after the pattern of His (Rom. 6:5). Peter learnt this lesson from the transfiguration because he describes his coming death as his exodus (2 Pet. 1:15), just as Moses and Elijah had spoken then of the Lord’s coming death (Lk. 9:31).  

9:6 For he did not know what to say, for they were greatly afraid- It is also possible to understand Peter’s suggestion simply as the kind of inappropriate thing a man would say who wants to make a response to spirituality, but doesn’t know how to. He wanted to do something material and physical- he simply didn’t know what to say. The response was the voice from Heaven telling Peter to hear Jesus, to respond to His word, rather than run around doing inappropriate works just because we feel we have to do something.

 9:7 And there came a cloud overshadowing them- Moses had previously entered the cloud of glory, seen God’s glory and heard God’s voice- on the top of a mountain. Moses’ ascent into the mountain and into the very cloud of Divine glory was understood in Judaism as the very zenith of human spiritual achievement of all time, coming so close to the very personal presence of God, never to be repeated amongst men. And now, three fishermen were having the very same experience. No wonder they feared as they themselves entered into that cloud (Lk. 9:34).  

And there came a voice out of the cloud: This is My beloved Son. Hear him- This was literally the word of God, and yet it was actually a string of three quotations from God’s word in the Old Testament: “You are My Son” (Ps. 2:7), “In whom My soul delights” (Is. 42:1), “Hear Him” (Dt. 18:15). It must have been a profound evidence of the Bible’s Divine inspiration. The very voice of God repeating His own words as found in the Law, Psalms and Prophets- the three divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures. "Hear him" was intended to take the mind back to Dt. 18:15, where it was written that Messiah would be ‘heard’ by the faithful. But Peter fell down paralyzed with fear; he didn’t really hear the son of God then. Yet in Acts 3:22, Peter quotes Dt. 18:15 and asks his hearers to obey the passage by hearing Jesus, through his preaching of Him. He was asking his audience to do what he himself hadn’t done.  

9:8 And suddenly, looking round about- "Looking round" is in Matthew "lifting up their eyes". ‘Lifted up’, epairo, is surely intended to resonate with egeiro [“arise” / ‘get up’] of Mt. 17:7. The picture is given of the Lord bending down and touching them, as if they are children, and urging them to rise up. Instead, they just raise up their eyes, and see only Jesus. We really are invited to play ‘Bible television’ here. The scene is so imaginable. And again, the Gospel writers and speakers were emphasizing the weakness of even the three leading disciples. Peter spoke inappropriately, offering to make booths when instead God wanted him to ‘hear’ His Son; their fear is likened to the fear of unspiritual Israel at the theophany on Sinai; they are scared to get up in obedience to Jesus’ touch, raising their large childlike eyes to Him instead… Indeed the record of the transfiguration really stresses the disciples’ weakness, exhibited in the face of the Kingdom glory of their Lord and the earnest encouragement of Him by more spiritual men to go through with the cross- whilst they slept.

They no longer saw anyone with them, except Jesus- In the Greek as well as in translation, this is really labouring the point. The “save / only”, monos, is redundant- they saw ‘nobody except Jesus’ is a statement which needs no further qualification, indeed grammatically it almost cannot be given further qualification, and reads awkwardly because of the monos, “only”, that is added. But the word “only” is added to emphasize that their focus was solely upon Him. That was the purpose of the event, and it had been achieved. Christ centeredness is the ultimate, final and total issue of our experience of Him, the Law and the prophets. The transfiguration ends with this total focus monos upon Christ; this was the practical effect of the theophany. John’s Gospel doesn’t record the transfiguration, but as so often, it is indeed alluded to. For John’s Gospel is full of references to seeing glory, to hearing the Son. It’s as if John presents Jesus to us a constant theophany, not one that three of the best disciples go up a mountain to see for a short period, but one which is continually before each of us, and which according to Paul’s allusions to it, draws us into its very process. For we too are transfigured as we like the disciples behold the Lord’s transfiguration (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18 s.w.).

9:9 And as they came down from the mountain, he ordered them that they should tell no one about the things they had seen, until the Son of Man should have risen from the dead- The things "seen" are called a "vision" in Mt. 17:9. Whilst this literally means ‘the thing seen’, the transfiguration was indeed a vision. Seeing that Christ is the firstfruits from the dead and that there is no conscious survival of death, it follows that at best Moses and Elijah were resurrected especially for the occasion. But they “appeared in glory” (Lk. 9:31), as if they were in the Kingdom. The Greek translated “appeared” has the strong sense of ‘being seen / observed’. This is how they were seen- another hint at a vision. When the event finished, Lk. 9:36 says that Jesus was “found alone”- but that is a poor translation of heurisko. He was seen, perceived alone- again hinting that the entire experience was a vision rather than occurring in reality. The way that “Suddenly, when they had looked round about” they saw only Jesus, finding Moses and Elijah had disappeared (Mk. 9:8) would also hint at a visionary experience. Note that there is no suggestion that Moses and Elijah went off anywhere, let alone ‘returned’ to Heaven. The vision of them simply abruptly ended. They saw nobody “except Jesus only with themselves” or “they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus” (Mk. 9:8) would suggest that they were as it were looking at themselves from outside of themselves- again, ideas appropriate to a visionary experience rather than an actual personal encounter. And this is how the incident with Moses and Elijah began, for “there appeared unto them Moses and Elijah talking with Him”. It was an appearance unto them, a vision which ended when they saw themselves from outside themselves and realized they were actually alone with Jesus. The language of ‘appearance’ used throughout the records of the transfiguration would also suggest that the incident with Moses and Elijah was an appearance to them, in their eyes and perception, rather than necessarily in reality.

"To no one" maybe connects with the fact that they saw “no man” except Jesus (:8); and so they are asked to tell the vision to “no man” until after the Lord’s resurrection. It could be that the Lord wanted them to retain their focus upon Him by not telling others but instead meditating personally upon what they had seen. The vision had been of the Lord’s resurrection glory- we noted above the similarities in language to the shining garments of the Angels at the resurrection scene. The Lord didn’t want people to think that He had already attained that glory without the cross. Even though in prospect He had that glory, He was insistent that no impression be given that He could attain it without passing through the cross. This was particularly important for Peter to appreciate, who several times entertained a hope that glory was possible for the Lord without the cross.

The Synoptics each record the transfiguration. But did John? He saw it, and here he was commanded to tell it to others after the resurrection. It would be almost impossible for his Gospel record to not mention it. I have suggested that he actually begins his Gospel with the recollection of how he had seen the Lord’s glory at the transfiguration (Jn. 1:14 “we beheld His glory”), and that the whole Gospel presents Jesus in “glory” and being “beheld” or ‘seen’ in that glory.

9:10 So they kept these words to themselves, questioning what the rising from the dead meant- As noted on :1, Peter is again bringing out his own slowness to understand the Lord's most obvious teaching about His death; and on that basis, appeals to his audience to do better than him, and comprehend and respond far quicker than he had. This comment indicates how secular they were; for the idea of bodily resurrection was well known within Judaism- the Pharisees believed that the dead would rise, although the Sadducees denied it. But the disciples were clearly unfamiliar with the idea, because they simply hadn’t been seriously religious people. The word for ‘questioning’ is used 10 times in the NT and always in a negative sense, mainly of the unbelieving Jews questioning the things of Christ. Thus it is used twice later in Mk. 9 (Mk. 9:14,16) about the Jews questioning about Jesus. Such questioning is so often an excuse for lack of faith, pressing for over-definition of everything as an excuse for disbelief. Instead of focusing on the glory of Jesus, they got distracted (willfully) by semantics, words and meanings.

Their question provides another insight into the shallowness of their understanding. The transfiguration had persuaded them, at least for the moment, that Jesus was Messiah. But they were confused as to why the Elijah prophet hadn’t come first. John the Baptist, whom they had followed and believed, had clearly cast himself in the role of Elijah. But it seems that they hadn’t really grasped the significance of John’s ministry at all.

9:11 And they asked him: Why do the scribes say that Elijah must first come?- The disciples were evidently still under the influence of Judaism and the religious world around them, and this background died hard for them. “Why say the scribes…?”, they reasoned (Mk. 9:11), implying that their view was of at least equal if not greater weight when compared with that of the Lord Jesus [as they also did in Mt. 17:9,10]. He had to specifically warn them against the Scribes in Lk. 20:45,46; He had to specifically tell them not to address the Rabbis as ‘father’ (Mt. 23:8,9), implying they had too much respect for them. The way the disciples speak of the Scribes as if they have such a valid theological position reflects their upbringing and respect for the ruling elite of the synagogue (Mt. 17:10), with whom the Lord was at such total variance. They were concerned that the Pharisees had been offended by the Lord’s words (Mt. 15:12). We again see here how the disciples were out of step with the Lord’s thinking, pursuing their own mental agenda, and not doing that they had just been told- to ‘hear Him’. For the Lord has just told them very seriously (“charged them”) to not say anything about this experience until He was resurrected. But instead they are grappling with another issue- if this Jesus was really Messiah, well why hadn’t Elijah come first, as the Scribes taught? Clearly we see them pursuing a line of thought which precluded their attention to what the Lord was so earnestly seeking to tell them.

9:12 And he said to them: Elijah indeed comes first-  There can be no doubt that 'Elijah' will come in some form:  "I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord... lest I come and smite the earth" (Malachi 4:5,6). The coming of the Lord must therefore be preceded by Elijah's work. His mission will be to direct Israel's attention to God's Word, "lest I come and smite the earth with a curse" (Malachi 4:4,6). This was evidently not totally fulfilled by John the Baptist, seeing that the land was smitten after A.D. 70 due to Israel's failure to repent. "Lest I come..." is clearly referring to God's manifestation in Christ's second coming - it is associated with the arising of "the sun of righteousness" (Malachi 4:2,6). Whilst John fulfilled the role of the Elijah prophet to those who truly repented (Mt. 11:14), he emphatically denied that he was 'Elijah' (John 1:21,23). This can only mean that the Elijah prophet is yet to come.   Our Lord silences all doubt about this: "Elijah truly shall first come, and restore all things". Elijah's work will be to turn the hearts of Israel back to the patriarchs in repentance (Malachi 4:6 cp. 1 Kings 18:37), so that Christ comes to an Israel who have turned away from unGodliness (Is. 59:20). John being a mini-Elijah prophet, it is to be expected that the broad features of his ministry will be repeated in the work of the final Elijah prophet. John was called "the Baptist", so evident was his emphasis on water baptism. Indeed, the name 'John' and the image of water baptism are hard to separate. There is fair reason to think that 'Elijah' will also literally baptize. "That (Christ) should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water" (Jn. 1:31) seems to make baptism a pre-requisite for accepting Christ. Indeed, Jewish theology expects baptism to be associated with the coming of Messiah and the Elijah prophet. Therefore the Jews asked John: "Why do you baptize then, if you are not that Christ, nor Elijah?" (Jn. 1:25).

And restores all things- The restoration of the Kingdom is ultimately Messiah’s work (Acts 1:9-11). The restoring referred to here would therefore mean spiritual restoration. Mark’s account of John’s activities clearly alludes to the Malachi passages about the Elijah prophet, and the descriptions of Elijah’s clothing, appearance and diet are clearly intended to help us identify him with a prophet like Elijah. The LXX in Mal. 4:5 speaks of how the prophet will restore the hearts of the fathers to the children. This confirms that the restoration to be achieved by the Elijah prophet is largely spiritual, psychological and internal. The more physical restoration of the Kingdom on earth is Messiah’s work. But the Lord is placing Elijah’s work in the future- because Israel had failed to respond to it. And yet what are we to make of the repeated descriptions in the Gospels of “all” Israel going out to John and repenting? My suggestion is that they were eager for a Messiah to come and save them from the Romans; John appeared looking like and alluding to Elijah, and so they were eager to accept him as an Elijah prophet, knowing that this heralded Messiah. They ‘repented’ because there was a clear connection made in Judaism between Jewish repentance, and the Elijah prophet and Messiah’s coming. Thus: “Israel will fulfil the great repentance when the Elijah of blessed memory comes” (Pirqe R. Eliezer 43 [25a]); and many other examples are quoted by Walter Wink (John the Baptist in the Gospel Tradition (Cambridge: C.U.P. 2006) p. 3). The Qumran documents even claim that the faithful would go out into the wilderness to the Elijah prophet and separate themselves from the unholy in Israel (1 QS 8:12-16) (More examples are given in Carl Kazmierski, John the Baptist: Prophet and Evangelist (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999) p. 26). Hence the intended sarcasm of the idea that in fact “all” Israel went out to the wilderness to John! Therefore their repentance was as it were self-induced and merely symbolic, because they believed it was part of a sequence of events which would lead to Messiah’s coming and liberation from Rome. This would be a classic example of surface level spirituality and response to God’s word, when in fact the response was motivated by selfish and unspiritual motives. No wonder John appealed to them to really repent. The Lord says that Elijah comes “first”, proton, above all, most importantly, to achieve this restoration- the implication being that the fact John’s ministry had failed to bring “all” Israel to this position, meant that there must therefore be another Elijah ministry which would succeed before Messiah could come in glory. And this would indeed “restore” the hearts of Israel, as Mal. 4:5 LXX requires.

And how is it written of the Son of Man, that he should suffer many things and be set at nothing?- Significantly, the same Greek word is used in Lk. 23:11 to describe how Herod “set at nought” Jesus at His trial; and it was the same Herod who had John the Baptist murdered.

9:13 But I say to you, that Elijah came, and they have also done to him whatever they wanted, even as it is written of him- The Lord accused the Jews of rejecting John the Baptist (Mt. 17:12; Lk. 7:32–35), and on other occasions He commented on the fact that they had accepted his teaching, with the result that spiritually their house was swept and garnished (Mt. 12:44; Jn. 5:35). We can conclude from this that their appearance of accepting John’s message was spoken of by Jesus as if they had accepted it. Likewise Christ called the Jews both children of hell (Mt. 23:15) and children of the Kingdom (Mt. 8:12); the latter was how they perceived themselves. The things “done” to John surely include his death for the Lord goes on to say that He will “likewise suffer of them”, “of this generation” (Lk. 17:25). But it was the despised Herod who had John murdered. And yet Jesus here says that that generation had done that to John- despite the fact that he remained, it seems, immensely popular amongst that generation. Again the Lord is stressing that all the apparent response to John had not been sincere- the Jews who had seemingly responded to him were in fact as bad as apostate Herod and it was effectively they who had killed him. Naturally such language begged the response that no, it was Herod and his courtiers who killed John, not the mass of people. But the Lord is saying that effectively, it was that generation who had locked John up and killed him.

 His question (as it is framed inMatthew) was (as so often with Him) in answer and response to their unexpressed question- that surely Elijah is to have a successful ministry and then the Messiah would begin His Kingdom in glory. The Lord was asking them the question about the prophesied sufferings and rejection of Messiah in order to answer the question He could see in their minds. So often “He answered and said…” something, when no question was verbalized. But He perceived the question in the minds of His audience, such was His sensitivity. Only a week or so ago He had told them how messiah must “suffer many things” (Mt. 16:21) and now he uses the same phrase again- although it seems they had forgotten or not appreciated what He had then told them.

Mk. 9:12 adds to Matthew by adding: “As it is written of him”. There seems no specific prophecy stating that the Elijah prophet would be unsuccessful, unless one really reads between the lines of Malachi’s prophecy about the Elijah prophet. More likely is that the “him” refers to the historical Elijah. All that was written of him had come true of John the Baptist, in that the alliance between Ahab and the manipulative Jezebel which led to Elijah’s persecution was mirrored in that between Herod and the equally manipulative Herodias, which led to John’s demise.

9:14 And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd about them, and scribes arguing with them- This meeting with the crowd occurred the day after the transfiguration (Lk. 9:37)- presumably they slept up the mountain for the night. The transfiguration record is replete with references to the theophany on Sinai. Moses' return from the mount was to a faithless people of God, and the same is found here, in that the disciples had been unable to perform a healing which they had potentially been given the power to do.

Note how the three accounts dovetail so nicely: Jesus and the three with Him moved towards the crowd (Mt.), Jesus having noticed them from a distance (Mk.), and the crowd came towards them (Lk.). And as Jesus came (erchomai) towards the crowd, there came out of the crowd towards Him (pros-erchomai) the man who wanted a healing for his son (Mt.). Mark records that the people ran towards Jesus when they saw Him (Mk. 9:15- presumably His face was shining after the encounter, after the pattern of Moses), which explains why Luke says that the man had to ‘cry out’ from out of the crowd (Lk. 9:38- Gk. ‘to holler’, to get attention amidst the rush of all the others towards Jesus) and that Jesus firstly asked the Scribes what they were questioning His disciples about. We really can powerfully reconstruct the scene by putting the three different viewpoints together. Matthew focuses upon the man who came to Jesus wanting healing for his son. The best analogy is to cameramen. Matthew focuses close up upon one man; Mark is taking a broader view of the crowd as a whole, and therefore picks up the brief question to the Scribes first of all- they made no answer that is recorded, and the Lord’s answer to whatever questions they were asking was given in the healing miracle. That there are no actual contradictions of fact or chronology is to me a profound internal evidence of an inspired record, with a common Divine hand behind all the authors. If these were three uninspired men writing their recollections some time after the event, or uninspired people writing down what had been passed down to them as originating with those men, then for sure there would be contradictions. Because misremembering of detail is just part of our human condition, and the supposed lengthy process of oral tradition would inevitably have meant there was further corruption and unclarity added. The lack of contradiction in the accounts and the way they complement each other so perfectly has to me the hallmark of the Divine. Even witnesses who agree together to lie in court and rehearse their stories many times over- still end up contradicting each other. But that is not the case with the Gospels.

9:15 And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed; and running to him saluted him- They ran up to Him- and He had Peter, James and John with Him. Perhaps His face was shining with the glory He had been exposed to, as the face of Moses did. It is therefore commendable that the people ran to Him rather than shying away from Him as they did from Moses when His face shone, and as the soldiers did when His face likewise shone at His arrest in Gethsemane. This sentence in Greek is intentionally similar to the account of Acts 3:11, where again “All the people [cp. “all the crowd”] ran [s.w. “running to Him”] together unto them… greatly wondering [s.w. “greatly amazed”]. The response of the crowd to Peter and John in Acts 3:11 could not possibly have been contrived by them. Their experience at the return from the transfiguration was to prepare them for their own later witness, when without the physical presence of Jesus, they were Him to the world. And the same kind of carefully, sensitively planned education of us is ongoing now. Not only do situations occur and then repeat in essence later in our lives, but what we go through in this life will only have understood meaning in the Kingdom, when we shall put into eternal practice what we are learning now. But for now, there is an inevitable difficulty in attaching meaning to event, because we cannot foresee the billion situations in our eternities where we will put into practice what we are now learning.

9:16 And he asked them: What are you arguing about with them?- The Lord knew, but He wanted to highlight the inappropriacy of any arguments when in the presence of the Father's glory reflected in His Son. And we can take that lesson. The Greek for "arguing" occurs ten times in the New Testament, nearly always in the context of argument with the Jews. All such legalistic argument ought to fade away in the context of the Lord's glory and the certain hope of the Kingdom, of which the transfiguration had spoken- with the intimation of present transformation towards that end right now.

9:17 And one of the crowd answered him: Teacher, I brought to you my son, who has a dumb spirit- When the father of the dumb child brought him to the disciples, he tells Jesus that “I brought to you my son”, but the disciples couldn’t cure him; he perceived Jesus as His followers, just as folk do today. The Lord had earlier given them power over “unclean spirits” (Mt. 10:8)- but still they couldn’t heal him. The power given to them was therefore potential power, but it was no guarantee that they would actually do the works. Alternatively, we could conclude that that power was only given to them temporarily. Or, that there is a difference between the twelve, and the more general “disciples” / followers of Jesus. However it would have been strange indeed if the man had not brought his son to the group of the twelve in the hope of healing. And it is the disciples, presumably the twelve, who then come to the Lord and ask why they could not perform the cure (:28).

9:18 And wherever it takes him, it dashes him down and he foams and grinds his teeth and pines away- Descriptions of the rejected as gnashing teeth, cast into fire and water, wallowing helpless... is all the language of the demoniac (Mk. 9:18-22). The child was obsessed with faer of condemnation, just as we noted Legion had been. His problem was therefore psychologically rooted, and the language of demons is simply the language of the day to describe his actions and their apparent cure. This connection shows at least two things: that there will be a madness in the rejected, the tragic aimlessness of the demented. And secondly, that because the demoniac was cured, it is possible for a man whose behaviour leads to his condemnation now to still repent, before it's too late. And yet although the rejected may appear demented, they may well not feel like this. They will gnash their teeth with anger, not least against themselves. Being cast into fire or water (Mt.) were both figures of condemnation. The young man felt he was worthy of condemnation- hence conviction of the Lord's saving mercy would have been enough to cure him of the deep sense of unworthiness which he had.

And I spoke to your disciples that they should cast it out, and they were not able- They had no dunamai (possibility), in Matthew's record; Mk. 9:18 uses a different word- according to Mark, the man said that they “could not” using ischuo (more carrying the sense of physical power). The man therefore bewailed at least twice that the disciples couldn’t help; and he asks the Lord Jesus to help “if You can” (Mk. 9:22- dunamai). They did have the possibility; but they lacked the faith to actualize it (Mt. 10:8; Lk. 10:19,20 “I give unto you power… over all the power of the enemy… the spirits are subject unto you”). We too have been given potentials which require faith to exploit, and our failures to do so leave people with the impression that the Lord Himself is limited- for, like the disciples, we are His representatives in this world, and people coming to us are effectively coming to Him.

9:19 And he answered them saying: O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I tolerate you?- As noted on :17, the "faithless" here were the disciples, not the man; for he had some measure of faith. The disciples were at this point caught up in the faithless spirit of their generation, the world around them; just as we can be. When the Lord returned from the Mount of Transfiguration, He found that the disciples had failed to do a cure because of their lack of faith. He describes them as [part of] a “faithless generation” again indicating how the disciples were all too influenced by Judaism, the “generation” or world around them. The disciples and Judaism / the Jewish world are paralleled in Jn. 7:3,4: “Let your disciples see your work… show yourself to the world”.

An example of the Lord’s perhaps unconscious usage of His Father’s words is to be found in this exasperated comment.  Of course the Lord would have spoken those words and expressed those ideas in Aramaic- but the similarity is striking with His Father’s Hebrew words of Num. 14:27: “How long shall I bear with this evil congregation…?”. As a son comes out with phrases and word usages which ‘Could be his father speaking!’, so the Lord Jesus did the same thing. What I am saying is that the Lord was not merely quoting or alluding to the Father’s Old Testament words, in the way that, say, Paul or Peter did. As the Father’s Son, He was speaking in the same way as His Father, no doubt saturated with the written record of the Father’s words, but all the same, there were those similarities of wording and underlying thinking which are only seen between fathers and sons. And His words of Mt. 17:17 = Num. 14:27 seem to me to be an example of this. It was the disciples who were faithless. In Mattew chapters 12 and 13, the Lord had drawn a clear difference between the disciples, and the unbelieving surrounding generation. It seems that He now despaired of whether that distinction was valid; He sees them, in the heat of that moment of bitter disappointment, as no better than the masses who did not believe. The "faithless" will be condemned (Lk. 12:46 "his portion with the unbelievers", s.w.), and this is the term used about the world generally (1 Cor. 6:6; 7:12); or as the Lord puts it, this "generation". And yet the Lord uses it here about the disciples and again in Jn. 20:27. The very phrase "perverse generation" is used by Paul about the unbelieving world (Phil. 2:15). To use this term about the disciples is therefore significant; the Lord really felt that His faith and hope that they were different from the Jewish world had been misplaced. After His encounter with Elijah and Moses, he doubtless expected more of God's people.

This fits in with a Biblical theme- of people being confronted with acute spiritual temptation immediately after a highly spiritual experience. And this is true to life- so often, merely hours after a highly intense spiritual experience [e.g. at a breaking of bread meeting] we find ourselves assailed by temptation and spiritual depression. It's not that we are encountered by a physical person called 'Satan' immediately after our spiritual 'high'; rather it is a feature of human nature that the closer we come to God, the stronger is the tidal backwash of internal temptation immediately afterwards. Consider some examples:

- Noah walks off the ark, a superb triumph of faith, into a cleansed and pristine world, with the rainbow arch of God's grace above him- and gets dead drunk (Gen. 9:21-24).
- Moses renounced greatness, stood up for God's people and then left Egypt by faith, "not fearing the wrath of the king" (Heb. 11:27); and yet ended up fleeing in fear from Pharaoah (Ex. 2:14,15).
- Moses returned from the awesome meeting with God on Sinai and gave in to a flash of anger, during which he smashed the tables of the covenant- a covenant which had also been made with him personally.
- Israel were ecstatic with joy and confidence in God as they stood on the other side of the Red Sea- but very soon afterwards they were giving in to temptation in the wilderness, accusing God of intending to kill them and being careless for them.
- Judas went from the spiritual height of being present at the first "breaking of bread" meeting with the Lord Jesus, just prior to His death, directly into temptation from "the Devil" and then went out into the darkness of that night (Lk. 22:3). 
- Soon after his spiritual triumph on Carmel, Elijah is to be found suicidal and bitter with God, and considering that the other faithful in Israel are in fact also apostate (1 Kings 19:4-11).
- Samson's life was full of giving in to spiritual temptation immediately after he had been empowered by God to do some great miracle.
- Immediately after having been saved by God's grace from a huge invasion (2 Sam. 11), David sins with Bathsheba and murders Uriah (2 Sam. 12).
- After the wonder of having a terminal illness delayed by 15 years in response to prayer, Hezekiah gives in to the temptation to be proud and selfish in the events of Is. 39.
- Soon after the wonder of the miracles of the loaves and fishes, the disciples hardened their heart to it and accused Jesus of not caring for them (Mk. 4:38; 6:52).
- Paul straight after his wonderful vision of "the third heaven" finds himself struggling with a "thorn in the flesh", a term I have elsewhere suggested may refer to a spiritual weakness or temptation (2 Cor. 12:7).
- After the wonder of baptism and the confirming voice from Heaven, Jesus was immediately assaulted by major temptation in the wilderness.

This is surely the most graphic and intense expression of frustration in the entire recorded history of the Lord Jesus. His frustration was with how His disciples were not living up to their potential, and how faithless they were. And we daily exhibit the same terribly disappointing characteristics. But how long may not necessarily be a cry of exasperation- although it could be that. There can also be the sense of 'Until when?', and the time in view was the Lord's death. John's Gospel records the Lord several times speaking of how His hour or time had not yet come, and how He agonized until it did. That end point was clearly the moment when He cried from the cross "It is finished".

Bring him to me- The man had brought [s.w. "bring"] his son to the disciples, they couldn't heal him, and so the Lord asks for the child to be brought to Him personally. And yet He had taught that in their witness, the disciples were Him to this world. Coming to them was coming to Him. But He despaired that in this case, there was now a difference between them and Him. They were unable to manifest Him as they should because of their lack of faith. And there are times when our status as 'brethren in Christ' likewise fails, and we fail to be Him to this world and He has to intervene and reveal Himself more directly to men.

Mk. 9:19 records how He asked for the son to be brought pros Me, literally, 'here with Me'; but this is the same term used in the Lord's lament: "How long shall I be with [pros] you?". The Lord's physical presence was required for this miracle- the son must be "here" (Mt.), "with Me" (Mk.). But the Lord was making the point that He would not always be literally with them, and then such cures would have to be done by the disciples without His physical presence. And it seems He despaired as to whether they were ready for this.

9:20 And they brought him to him, and when he saw him, immediately the spirit tore at him grievously and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth- As noted on :18, the young man was obsessed with fear of condemnation. When he realized he was in the presence of the Lord, his condition therefore worsened considerably; he felt he really had arrived at judgment day, and wanted to destroy himself. Again we note that the underlying problem with him was psychological and spiritual, rather than being literally attacked by a demon.

9:21 And he asked his father: How long has this been happening to him? And he said: From a child- See on Mt. 20:32. This question was perhaps to provoke the man to remember back through those difficult and tragic years, in order to elicit stronger faith and desire from him.

9:22 And often it has cast him both into the fire and into the waters to destroy him; but if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us- Descriptions of the rejected as gnashing teeth, cast into fire and water, wallowing helpless... is all the language of the demoniac (Mk. 9:18-22). This connection shows at least two things: that there will be a madness in the rejected, the tragic aimlessness of the demented. And secondly, that because the demoniac was cured, it is possible for a man whose behaviour leads to his condemnation now to still repent, before it's too late. And yet although the rejected may appear demented, they may well not feel like this. They will gnash their teeth with anger, not least against themselves.

9:23 And Jesus said to him: Rather, if you can! All things are possible to him that believes- The father of the child was asked whether he could believe [i.e., that Jesus could cast out the demon]. The man replied that yes, although his faith was weak, he believed [that Jesus could cast out the demon]. His faith was focused on by Jesus, rather than his wrong beliefs. Faith above all was what the Lord was focusing on in the first instance. We frequently commit the horror of limiting God in our attitude to prayer. All too often we see ourselves in the man who believed and yet still had unbelief: "If thou (Jesus) canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us. Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible" (Mk. 9:22,23 AV). The man thought that Christ's power to help was limited: 'If you can do anything to help, well, please do'. The Lord Jesus turned things right round: 'If you can believe, anything's possible' - in other words, God can  do anything, but His ability to directly respond to some particular need is limited by our faith, not by any intrinsic lack of ability within Himself. The man hadn't thought about this. He saw God as sometimes able to help a bit; Christ turned the man's words round to show that God's power is infinite, limited only by our faith. The same message is taught by putting together the fact that with God nothing is impossible (Lk. 1:37), and the fact that nothing is impossible unto us (Mt. 17:20). God’s possibility is our possibility; and this is what the Lord was teaching the man who thought that it all depended upon the Lord’s possibility alone. There are other instances where the extent and nature of the Lord's healing seems to have been limited by the faith of the recipient (Mt. 8:13 "as...so"; 9:29 "according to" ; 12:22 "inasmuch").

The word "believe" is omitted from many texts and from the NEV. Thus we could paraphrase: “Regarding that " If you can..." which you said- as regards that, well, all things are possible”. This is  the view of F.B. Meyer and Marvin Vincent. The RV reads: “And Jesus said unto him, If thou canst! All things are possible to him that believeth”.

It is clear enough that God at times limits His power. He could save everybody, indeed He wishes to do this, yet He allows human freewill to be genuine and meaningful, to the extent that not all will be saved. Israel in the wilderness “limited the Holy One of Israel". He was left by Israel as a mighty man powerless to save. The Greek word dunatos translated 16 times "mighty" is also 13 times translated "possible". God's might is His possibility. But our freewill can limit that might. All things are possible to God, and therefore all things are possible to the believer- but if the believer has no faith, then, those possibilities of God will not occur (Lk. 1:49; Mk. 9:23; 10:27). And so I have no problem with a God who limits His omniscience.

9:24 Immediately the father of the child cried out, and said: I believe! Help my disbelief!- See on Lk. 1:13. It is a feature of our nature that we can believe and yet disbelieve at the same time. The father of the epileptic boy is the clearest example. He had asked: "help us" (:22), i.e. 'cure the child'. But he understood that this "help" depended partly upon his faith; he believed, as we should, that the faith of third parties can radically affect others (see on 2:5). And yet he realized that his faith was weak, and he asked the Lord to "help" that faith to be stronger than the native "unbelief" which is part of the human condition. Even faith itself can be "helped". We are not left unaided in climbing the mountain of belief. Faith in that sense is partially a gift from the Lord through the gift of His Spirit (Eph. 2:8; 2 Thess. 3:2). The Lord can succour [s.w. "help"] (Heb. 2:18), through the gift of His Spirit.

9:25 And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it: You dumb and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter no more into him- There are a number of parallels between the language used of ‘casting out’ demons, and that used about healings. Jesus “rebuked” demons in Mk. 9:25, and yet He “rebuked” a fever (Lk. 4:39) and the wind (Mt. 8:26). Demons are spoken of as having “departed” (Mt. 17:18), yet we read of leprosy ‘departing’ (Mk. 1:42) and diseases ‘departing’ after cure (Acts 19:12). I’d go so far as to say that every case of a person being spoken of as demon possessed has its equivalent in diseases which we can identify today– e.g. epilepsy, schizophrenia.

The peoples of the first century, and their predecessors, believed that demons and the Satan monster were somehow associated with water- that was why, they figured, the water mysteriously kept moving, and at times blew up into storms. When we read of God 'rebuking' the waters and making them calm or do what He wished (Ps. 18:16; 104:7; 106:9), we're effectively being told that Yahweh of Israel is so infinitely superior to those supposed demons and sea monsters that for God's people, they have no effective existence. The Lord Jesus taught the same lesson when He 'rebuked' the sea and wind during the storm on the lake (Mt. 8:26). The same Greek word is used to described how He 'rebuked' demons (Mt. 17:18 etc.). I have no doubt that the Lord Jesus didn't believe there was a Loch Ness-type monster lurking in Galilee which He had to rebuke in order to save the disciples from the storm; and likewise He spoke of 'rebuking' demons as a similar way of teaching others that whatever ideas they had about demons, He was greater and was in a position to 'rebuke' them. Likewise He assured His men that they had the power to tread on snakes, scorpions, and all their enemies (Lk. 10:17-20). The image of a victorious god trampling his foes and snakes underfoot was well established in the surrounding cultures, and had entered Judaism. The Lord is teaching those fearful men that OK, if that's your perception of things, well, in your terms, you have ultimate victory through working 'in My name'. It must be noted that the man had previously described the boy’s condition as being due to how “A spirit seizes him… and it departs from him with great difficulty” (Lk. 9:39). The condition was intermittent (consistent with viewing the condition as epilepsy rather than actual, literal manipulation by a spirit or demon). Trying various remedies, probably including beating him, the condition ‘departed’. The Lord’s cure is described in the same terms, with the implication that it was total and permanent, rather than partial and temporary, as their ‘healings’ were. The Lord said that the ‘spirit’ would never again enter the boy (Mk. 9:25).  

9:26 And having cried out and torn him much, it came out; and the boy became as one dead. So much so that the many said: He is dead- I suggested on :18 and :20 that the young man was obsessed with fear of condemnation at the last day. He now is as it were dead. He goes very still. He feels as if he has died. An then the Lord as it were resurrects him (:27). The whole essence of baptism was being lived out in him at this moment; he was dying to sin, taking its condemnation; and then arising with the Lord Jesus to new life.

9:27 But Jesus took him by the hand and raised him up, and he arose- See on :26. This is exactly what He had done to the terrified disciples on the mount of transfiguration (Mt. 17:7 s.w.). By doing so, it was made apparent that the disciples (even the three best of them) needed healing themselves rather than being in a position to perform the miracles, as the Lord had hoped they could; and as indeed they could.

9:28 And when he had come into the house, his disciples privately asked him: Why could we not cast it out?- They were surprised at their inability, which suggests they had performed such cures before and had faith that they could do miracles. The Lord's explanation in the next verse (in Matthew's record) that they had no faith ("unbelief", a-pisteo, no faith) would therefore have been hard for them to initially accept. His idea was that we either believe or do not believe, and often what seems to us as faith, even if it is admittedly small faith, is ultimately not faith. John's Gospel even more clearly presents faith as something one either has or doesn't have. And yet in reality there are gradations of faith, and the Bible recognizes this. The Lord's next comment [in Matthew] that "If you [really, as you think] have faith as a grain of mustard seed..." was therefore speaking to their assumption that although their faith was small, they did actually believe. Again we see how the Lord sees to the inner, unexpressed thoughts and positions of His audiences, and addresses them. This presentation of faith as an absolute, a black or white position (and John's Gospel stresses this even more), is a huge challenge to examine our faith.

9:29 And he said to them: This kind- This kind of demon? In this case, the Lord is again using their wrong ideas (in this case, about some demons being stronger than others) without really believing them, talking to them in terms which they understood.

Can come out by nothing except by prayer and fasting- They tried to do miracles without even praying about it. Only intense prayer could send forth this kind of answer from God; He does not act on emotional grounds, just because He feels sorry for somebody. It needs to be noted that initially the man's child was not cured because the disciples didn't have the faith to do it. This teaches that God's activity for others is partly dependent on the prayers of a third party and the extent of their faith- both that of the man, and of the disciples.

 The Lord wasn’t naive, although He was so positive. He told the disciples quite frankly here that they were full of “unbelief”, and couldn’t do miracles which He expected them to because they didn’t pray and fast (Mt. 17:19-21). And yet when quizzed by the Pharisees as to why His disciples didn’t fast, He said it was because they were so happy to be with Him, the bridegroom (Mt. 9:15). Here surely He was seeing the best in them. They come over as confused, mixed up men who wanted the Kingdom there and then and were frustrated at the Lord’s inaction in establishing it. But He saw that they recognized Him as the bridegroom, as Messiah, and He exalted in this, and saw their lack of fasting as partly due to the deep-down joy which He knew they had. Perhaps they tried to do this miracle without even praying about it. Or maybe they prayed only on a surface level, and it was not counted as real prayer. Only intense prayer could send forth this kind of answer from God; He does not act on emotional grounds, just because He feels sorry for somebody. It needs to be noted that initially the man's child was not cured because the disciples didn't have the faith to do it. This teaches that God's activity for others is partly dependent on the prayers of a third party. These words are applied to us all in 1 Cor. 7:5, the only other place in the NT where they occur together; we are to give ourselves to prayer and fasting in domestic married life with the passion and intensity required to perform a miracle.

9:30 And they went from there and passed through Galilee; and he did not want anyone to know it- See on Mt. 27:26; Lk. 9:44. He earnestly wanted time alone with the disciples in order to explain His death to them. This is why when He saw a crowd gathering, He quickly cured the child in order to stop further distraction (:25). We sense throughout the Gospels the Lord's dislike of crowds and His desire to privately teach those who wished to be close to Him; and how the essential burden of His message was of the need to share in His death, rather than getting cures and seeing miracles.

The note that He reminded them about His passion whilst they were still in Galilee is another hint at the Lord’s structured approach to training the twelve. Before they went back to Jerusalem, He wanted them to be aware well ahead of time that He was going to His death. Mark adds that He didn’t want people to know of His presence because He was teaching the disciples about His death. Once again we encounter the theme of the Lord intensely focusing upon His disciples rather than upon the masses of Israel. It could be argued that He could have healed far more people had He not had this policy; but His long term intention was to create a solid body of followers who would bring His message to the world after His death. And we must likewise achieve a balance between good deeds for the world, and the need for strengthening the body of believers.

9:31 For he taught his disciples, and said to them: The Son of Man is delivered up into the hands of men- Matthew uses the present tense- He is betrayed / delivered [s.w.]. The Lord likely said both- He shall be betrayed, [in fact] He is being betrayed / delivered. His sufferings were ongoing, His crucifixion sufferings were a seamless continuance of His whole way of life and being during His ministry. This is the sense recorded in John, of “the time comes but now is” (Jn. 4:23; 16:32). He knew that the essence of the delivering over to the Jews /  Romans was happening right then, although the final delivering / handing over was when in Gethsemane He said that “the hour is come… the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners” (Mk. 14:41). The word for ‘betrayed’ means literally to be handed over or delivered, and so the Lord’s statement wouldn’t have necessarily implied to them that there was to be a betrayal from amongst their own number.

And they shall kill him, and when he is killed, after three days he shall rise again- Clearly the rising again was at a specific moment, “the third day”. This is proof enough that the Bible intends us to see the Lord’s rising again as bodily resurrection and not some spiritual reincarnation over a period of time.

9:32 But they did not understand the saying and were afraid to ask him- Luke notes that the saying about the cross was “hidden” from them (Lk. 9:45), in confirmation of their own refusal to understand it because it demanded that they too suffer with their Lord. And yet in prayer to the Father, He rejoices that these things are not hidden from them (Lk. 10:21,23). This gives insight into the Lord’s present mediation for us in prayer- speaking of us as far better than we are. The message of Christ crucified was “hid” from them (Lk. 9:45; 18:34)- and Paul surely alludes to this when he says that this message is hid by the veil of Judaism from those who are lost (2 Cor. 4:3). Luke adds that straight afterwards, “there arose a dispute among them, which of them was the greatest” (Lk. 9:46). Time and again we see this in the Gospels- when the Lord speaks of His upcoming death, the disciples change the subject. This explains our own problem with mind wandering at the breaking of bread or in the study or even reading of the crucifixion accounts. This difficulty on focusing upon Him there is likely because His death requires our death and suffering, and subconsciously we realize that- and would rather not.

9:33 And they went to Capernaum, and when he was in the house he asked them: What were you reasoning about on the way here?- The Lord knew already; He had very keen natural perception as well as God's Spirit without measure. Lk. 5:22 records another incident where the Lord asked men what they were reasoning about exactly because He "perceived their thoughts". He realized the value of verbalizing things. He wanted them to confess; to admit that in the light of Him explaining His death, they had been arguing about who should be the greatest, and who was the greatest. Perhaps the Lord's obvious interest in Peter led them to discuss whether Peter was in fact the greatest, commenting upon his evident impetuosity and other human weaknesses.

9:34 But they kept quiet. For they had disputed one with another on the way about who was the greatest- Whenever the Lord taught them about His death, they always seem to have started arguing amongst themselves; the tremendous significance of what He was saying was evidently lost on them (Mk. 9:31-34; 10:34-38). The power of the cross is likewise lost on the hearts of many because of their obsession with petty argument.

9:35 And he sat down and called the twelve; and he said to them: If anyone would be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all- This 'sitting down' may have been some time later than the discussion in :33,34, because at this point Matthew says (Mt. 18:1) that it was they who came to the Lord with the quetion about who should be the greatest. The Lord had asked what they had been talking about, knowing this had been the topic. They were silent. And He remained silent. That mutual silence was deafening. They thereby knew that He knew, and that they were wrong. And it was that lack of response from Him which prompted them to finally bring the question out into the open. He was indeed the master psychologist.

 He was the "servant of all" because He desired to be the greatest in the Kingdom. It was this ambition which motivated His endurance of the daily cross of His life: "Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:  even as the Son of man came... to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mt. 20:27,28). He was drawing on the ideas of Hos. 13:1, where Ephraim exalted himself when he humbled himself to speak to God with the trembling of a true humility. The Lord Jesus was not esteemed by men in His death (Is. 53:3); the same word occurs in Dan. 4:17, concerning how Yahweh will exalt the basest, the least esteemed, to be King over the kingdoms of this world. That made-basest man was a reference to the Lord Jesus. He humbled Himself on the cross, that He might be exalted. Peter had his eye on this fact when he asks us to humble ourselves, after the pattern of the Lord, that we might be exalted in due time (1 Pet. 5:6). The Lord desired greatness in the Kingdom, and so can we; for the brighter stars only reflect more glory of the Sun (1 Cor. 15:41). This very thought alone should lift us up on the eagle wings of Spirit above whatever monotony or grief we now endure.

 The Lord Himself on the cross was the ultimate "servant of all", and therefore was the first of all. This may explain the Lord's comment that the last shall be first and the first last (Mt. 19:30)- He may have intended us to read in an elipsis to the effect that he who wants to be first shall be last, and he who wants to be last shall be first. There was to be a glorying in being the last, the servant of all- exemplified in the Lord's washing of the disciples' feet.

9:36 And he took a little child and set him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them- In Against Celsus 3.55, Origen defends Christianity against the allegation that it requires men to leave the world of men and go mix with women and children in “the washerwoman’s shop”- presumably a house church Celsus knew. Lucian of Samosata even mocked Christianity as being largely comprised of children and “old hags called widows”. Marcus Cornelius Fronto likewise mocked the way “children” [and by that term he would’ve referred to teenagers too] participated in the breaking of bread [Octavius 8-9]. The teaching of the Lord Jesus was attractive to children / young people. They like women were treated as of little worth; the Greco-Roman world considered that children had to be taught, and couldn’t teach a man anything. But the Lord Jesus repeatedly set children up as examples of discipleship (Mk. 9:36,37; Lk. 9:47,48; as Heb. 12:5-9). So we can understand the appeal of early Christianity to young people, teenagers, especially girls. O.M. Bakke has written a fascinating study entitled When Children Became People. The thesis is that the teaching of Christianity gave disenfranchised people an identity and meaning as persons- women and slaves are obvious examples- but this also applied to children / young people. They too were disregarded as people in Mediterranean society; and yet in Christ they were given their value as people. In the house church setting, we can imagine how this happened. Celsus mocks how teenage boys go to Christian house churches to be taught by women- reflecting how attractive Christianity was for young people.

The disciples soon afterwards are framed as doing exactly the opposite to what the Lord had done, when they forbad the little children [s.w.] to come to Jesus (Mt. 19:13)- whereas the Lord actually invited them to Him. Again we note how the Gospel writers present the disciples as so often out of step with their Lord.

The Greek for "set" means to stand, not to sit- this is how it is usually translated. Mk. 9:35,36 says that the Lord sat but He stood the child in their midst. But histemi, often translated "set" in Mt. 18:2, has the strong connotation of standing up or setting someone up in a position. "The midst" suggests the disciples were in a closed circle, and the Lord stood the child within the circle. If you call an onlooking child into the midst of a group of unknown adults, they will typically not want to come. We see the powerful attraction of the Lord to children in that this child came, although likely with much nervousness, wanting to come to Jesus, but not into that closed circle of men- just as so many today. Almost certainly the child came to the Lord and He held the child close to Himself; for He goes on to urge the disciples to "receive" such little ones, implying they were reluctant to have the child amongst them. That closeness to the Lord was what was being set up as an example. The scene is portrayed graphically if we put the Gospel records together- the Lord sat with the men in a circle around Him, He calls the child to Him, stands him up "by Him" (para Him means close by Him, Lk. 9:47) and then 'takes' him, cuddling the child to Himself "in His arms" (Mk. 9:36)- whilst He is sitting down. The natural response of the child who had been stood would be to want to sit down, holding on to Jesus, and not to stand above those men with their attention focused upon him. This natural desire to come down, to humble self, is what is being memorialized by the Lord as the pattern for all who wish to enter His Kingdom. Perhaps we can imagine the scene even further- the child would've wanted to come to Jesus personally, but the circle of disciples with their apparent superiority and judgmentalism would've been offputting. But still the child came, and the Lord in Luke's record urges the disciples to allow the child to join the circle and "receive" him. This scenario is seen so often in the body of Christ in our days. In the early church, there soon developed a problem about 'receiving' others, not least children, women and Gentiles- and the Gospel records through this incident show how seriously wrong the disciples were not do do so. Luke's record goes on to record the incident with John's disciples where the Lord's disciples didn't want to "receive" them- implying they did not immediately grasp the teaching themselves.

"In the midst of them" is a phrase used several times about the Lord Jesus Himself standing in the midst of His followers (Lk. 24:36; Jn. 1:26; 8:9; 20:19,26). The supreme "child" was the Lord Jesus. This connection between Him and that child was it seems perceived by Peter later, when he uses the same word to describe the Lord Jesus as God's "holy child" (Acts 4:27,30). If as suggested the Lord held the child to Himself, the identification would have been visually powerful and the image would've remained with the disciples. The Lord Himself clinches the connection by saying that whoever becomes as that child will be the greatest in the Kingdom- and He clearly was and is the greatest in the Kingdom. Lk. 9:48 makes the connection beyond doubt in recording that the Lord then said that "Whosoever shall receive this child... receives Me". His subsequent comment there that "For he that is least among you all, the same is great" is surely a reference to Himself, rather than urging them to be the least so that they might be the greatest. The Lord's answer as to who was greatest in the Kingdom was therefore to indirectly point out that He is the greatest, and we should simply seek to be like Him, using the little child as a template to that end. The antidote to division, therefore, is to be focused upon Christ and to seek to simply enter the Kingdom- the things of the Kingdom and of the Name (Acts 8:12).

So the Lord took a child and set him in the midst of those rough fishermen and tax collectors. He said that they must become like that child; and further, they must receive that child as a representative of Himself, and thereby, of God Himself. In probable allusion to this, Paul teaches that in malice we should be children, but in understanding: men (1 Cor. 14:20). The child in the midst of men, wide eyed, simple and sincere amidst men full of cynicism and human wisdom and self-righteousness and the gruffness of the flesh... This was a symbol of every true believer, of the Lord Himself, and of Almighty God, as they were and as they are in the midst of a world and even a brotherhood that, like the disciples, so often stares on uncomprehending. The aptness was not in the child’s humility [if indeed a child can be humble], but in the purity of the innocence and sincerity and unassuming directness.

 

9:37 Whoever shall receive one of such little children in my name, receives me. And whoever receives me, receives not me but Him that sent me- To not offend others we must “receive” them (Mt. 18:5). It is written of Jesus that when crowds of materialistic, fascinated people followed Him, “He received them, and spake unto them of the Kingdom” (Lk. 9:11). He didn’t just turn round and read them a lecture about the Kingdom. “He received them”. Presumably Luke means to reflect how he perceived something in the Lord’s body language that was receiving of that crowd of peasants- whom we would likely have written off as just dumb groupies with no more than surface level interest. And we too must receive one another, even as the Lord has received us (Rom. 15:7)- and this includes receiving him who is even weak in the faith (Rom. 14:1). We should be looking for every reason to receive and fellowship our brethren, rather than reasons not to.

The disciples would've had to open their closed circle to allow the child to enter. As the child settled down in the arms of the Lord Jesus, he was effectively added to the circle of disciples. Children were counted as non-persons in first century society, along with women, serious sinners, the mentally ill and lepers. The Lord is powerfully teaching that our attitude to such persons is our attitude to Him and therefore to God (Mk., Lk.). The challenge comes down to many of us too, who come from closed table communities. The Lord foresaw that to form a tight circle around Him was the natural response of those who followed Him, but He is saying that unless we open that circle, we are in danger of actually not having received Him at all. Our not receiving of such persons is going to make them stumble ("offend them"), and this warrants eternal condemnation. The Lord had bidden the disciples 'humble themselves', and now they are given an opportunity to do so- by 'receiving' amongst themselves, as one of them, into their circle, a little child. Opening our circle and accepting amongst us those who do not share (at least, at this time) our level of faith, understanding or even culture- this is indeed a humbling experience. All that is in us cries out to keep them excluded, and to keep our circle tightly closed against them. But the argument for a closed circle, or a closed table, is ultimately one which originates in pride and a refusal to humble self. 

The little child was to be identified with the Lord Jesus personally. See on Mt. 18:2. To not receive the little ones is to not receive Jesus personally. The issue is of eternal importance, as the next verse emphasizes. We cannot simply go along with such rejections and refusal to receive others just because it is the policy of a church or fellowship to which we have belonged or grown up in. Social death and rejection by our brethren is nothing compared to the painful rejection at the last day which the Lord speaks of. 

9:38 John said to him: Teacher, we saw one casting out demons in your name and we forbade him, because he does not follow with us- Mark inserts at this point the question about a man casting out demons although 'not following us' (Mk. 9:38-42). The Lord rebukes them for this and goes on to warn them about not offending little ones. In Matthew, that warning follows straight on from the teaching about the need to receive little ones- as if refusing to receive them is what makes them stumble. The case raised by the disciples, as it were in protest at His teaching about receiving little ones, was presumably one of John's disciples. Although they had a different spiritual culture, history and even doctrinal understanding, the Lord had earlier likened both His and John's disciples to children in the marketplace working in parallel, presenting the same message in different ways. They were admittedly immature in some ways and in parts of their doctrinal understanding, but the Lord is teaching that this is what made John's disciples "little ones", and they must still be accepted. The Lord warns twice in that section in Mk. 9:38-42: "Forbid him not". This is the same as saying 'Receive him, do not forbid him from entering your circle'. It is the same word which the Lord will go on to use in Mt. 19:14 about not forbidding another group of "little children". The Jewish world was to be condemned exactly because they hindered or forbad [s.w.] men to enter the Kingdom (Lk. 11:52- see on 18:7 Woe to the world). Peter surely alludes to the Lord's teaching when reasoning: "Who can forbid water" that Gentiles be baptized (Acts 10:47). Refusing baptism to those not considered good, ready or mature enough is surely a way of forbidding and not receiving little ones.

9:39 But Jesus said: Do not forbid him. For there is no one who shall do a mighty work in my name and then be able straight afterwards to immediately speak evil of me- The preceding section has sternly warned against forbidding the little ones, and now we have a worked example. The little ones in view were John's disciples (:38); although seeing "John did no miracle" we wonder whether the miracle claimed was legitimate. But the Lord is not only gentle, He seeks to accept even such misunderstanding and misguided ones. For He alludes without doubt to Num. 11:28,29: "Joshua… answered and said, My lord Moses, forbid them. And Moses said unto him, Are you enviious for my sake? Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them". He considered this misguided miracle worker in John's group as all the same one of God's new Israel. As noted on :38, the disciples tended to "forbid" those whom the Lord wished to accept. And that same tension is seen time and again with the way closed, denominational mindsets seek to exclude and "forbid" others who differ and are immature. But the allusion to Numbers 11 seems to be saying that all in whom the Spirit is working should be accepted; and the litmus test is whether they shall "speak evil of me". If they do not, then they are not against Him but for, despite their misunderstanding. An alternative reading however is "Shall not lightly speak evil of me" (as AV). In this case, the Lord is comforting His sceptical disciples that if such a person does is in fact against Him, then this is no light matter and will be dealt with by the Lord's judgment; but not by theirs. This incident is surely alluded to by Paul when he warns against some who claimed to possess the Spirit who 'call Jesus accursed' (1 Cor. 12:3). There were such, and it was their attitude to the Lord Jesus personally which proclaimed them against Him. What people think of Christ is the critical issue when it comes to deciding whether a person is for or against Him; and that is obvious really, but the natural tendency to "forbid" those who interpret differently to ourselves is strong. 

9:40 For he that is not against us, is for us- See on :39. If a person is not against the Lord personally (:39), then he is not against "us", the body of Christ. And so even if that person will not mix with us, from God's wider point of view he is "for us", "on our part". Here on earth, sectors of the Lord's body are against each other. But from the Lord's perspective, those who are not against Him are on His part. But speaking evil of the Lord personally (:39) is parallel here with not being against us. And here we have a worrying implication. Attitudes to those in Christ are attitudes to Him. To be "against" any of them is to be against Him.

And so the Lord's attitude to John’s disciples is very telling. He saw those who “follow not us” as being “on our part”, not losing their reward, as being the little ones who believed in Him; and He saw wisdom as being justified by all her children, be they His personal disciples or those of John (Mk. 9:38-41; Lk. 7:35). John’s men had a wrong attitude to fellowship- they should have ‘followed with’ the disciples of Jesus; and it would seem their doctrinal understanding of the Holy Spirit was lacking, although not wrong (Acts 19:1-5). Indeed, they are called there “disciples”, a term synonymous with all believers in Luke’s writing. And the Lord too spoke in such an inclusive way towards them. No wonder His disciples had and have such difficulty grasping His inclusiveness and breadth of desire to fellowship and save.

9:41 For whoever shall give you a cup of water to drink, because you are Christ's- truly I say to you, he shall in no way lose his reward- Giving a cup of cold water to the little ones doesn’t necessarily refer to sticking banknotes in a collection for charity. The Hebrew writer took it as referring to our love for Christ's little ones, within the ecclesia (Mt. 10:42 = Heb. 6:10). And the context says the same. The Lord was inviting the disciples to see themselves as none less than the likes of Elisha, who were supported in their work by various well-wishers. 

According to Mt. 10:41, these “little ones” refer to the disciples. But why “these little ones” and not “you”? I suggest that verse 41 could effectively be a soliloquy, perhaps spoken out loud in the presence of the disciples, but all the same, it is Jesus speaking to Himself. Or maybe the Lord is saying that the mistaken disciple of John would be accepted as one of the Lord's followers, and therefore any who supported him in his slightly misplaced ideals as a missionary for John would therefore still be rewarded. I say this because offering a cup of cold water was how travellers were assisted by local people along the road.

9:42 And whoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe in me to stumble- The "little ones" of the context could refer to John's disciples, with their limited belief and understanding in the Lord, who perhaps refused to follow after Jesus because they disagreed with the worldly ways of His disciples. And so the Lord urges the twelve not to cause stumbling to those ones little in faith and understanding. See on Mt. 18:6.

It would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea- The very language of Babylon's judgments at the last day. The believer who makes another to stumble by not receiving them is therefore no better than Babylon, the archenemy of God and His true people. And Rev. 18:21 speaks of how Babylon shall be cast into the sea as a millstone- such 'believers' will at the last day face Babylon's judgments, they will be "condemned with the world" (1 Cor. 11:32), sent back into it from the judgment seat of Christ to share the world's fate. Even though externally they had been so separate from the world, so separate that the refused to receive the "little ones". But this attitude is in fact a worldly attitude; by having it, we are showing that we are of the world.

9:43 And if your hand causes you to stumble- The context has spoken of not offending the little ones, and of the terrible condemnation awaiting those who cause others to stumble. There are two legitimate meanings of the words here. The idea could be ‘If these things cause you to stumble others’; or, ‘If these things cause you yourself to stumble’. But the ambiguity is surely intentional. If we make others to stumble then we have made ourselves stumble, for if we make others stumble out of the way to the Kingdom, then we shall not be there ourselves. The point is clear- we are to go to absolutely any length, paying any personal cost, in order not to cause stumbling to a little one.

Cut it off- I suggest the Lord is parodying the orthodox Jewish idea of cutting off members of the community in order to preserve the rest of the body of believers- an idea equally common today amongst some in the new Israel. The Lord is saying that in order to avoid personal condemnation, we are to cut off our own limbs if necessary- in order to avoid causing a little one to stumble. The cost of not causing the little ones to stumble is therefore very personal; because communities, both secular and religious, tend to cause little ones to stumble by their policies, it follows that individuals will pay a high price for stepping out of line by insisting that we will not cause them to stumble. The preceding verse has explained how “the world”, the Jewish religious system of the Lord’s time, the ekklesia of the day, lead others to stumble, and that individuals must take personal responsibility for this. In the same way as the whole system was destroyed in AD70, so personal condemnation at the last day awaits the individuals who make others stumble. 

It is good for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having your two hands and to go into Gehenna- into the unquenched fire- The lame, blind and maimed were those not acceptable for service in God’s tabernacle (Lev. 21:18; Dt. 15:21; 2 Sam. 5:8). The Lord surely has this in mind. He seems to be saying that to avoid offending little ones, it is better to be unacceptable for priestly service now, and yet therefore enter God's Kingdom. The implication, therefore, is that by not being seen as fit for priestly service, we avoid offending little ones. The only interpretation which makes sense of this to me is that the Lord foresaw that by fellowshipping the little ones, we may well be excluded from public priestly service in the house of God in this life, because those running the show generally exclude those who think in terms of an open table. But that is a cheap price to pay for entering the Kingdom. And we will be miserable excluded from His Kingdom if we make others stumble by acting in such a way as merely keeps us in with the religious powers that be, that keeps us fit in their sight for service. And this again is absolutely true to observation in the body of Christ. Those who are inclusive of little ones tend to be sidelined from public service by those who are decision makers within the ecclesia. But that is a cheap price for entrance to the Kingdom. 

It's better to limp into the Kingdom than be rejected for self-righteousness. Surely there is an invitation here to see the limping Jacob, walking away from the encounter with the Angel, as our role model. The personality we will be in the Kingdom will reflect the struggles we have personally endured in this life. Relationships in the Kingdom of God will reflect these. Thus those who had consciously chosen to be eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom are comforted that in the Kingdom they will be given a name and place in God's temple better than of children in this life (Is. 56:5). All the faithful will be given a name and place in the temple; so what especial consolation was this to those eunuchs? Surely the point is that the name (personality) they will then have will gloriously reflect the self-sacrifice and personal Biblical understanding which they went through in this life. This alone proves that the reward will be individual. The Lord's picture of men entering the Kingdom without limbs is surely making the same point (Mk. 9:47); the result of our self-sacrifice in this life will be reflected by the personality we have in the Kingdom. And there is evidence that the Man we follow will still bear in His body, throughout eternity, the marks of the crucifixion (Zech. 13:6; Rev. 5:6).  

9:44 Where their worm does not die and the fire is not put out- Gehenna was the ravine south of Jerusalem where ‘little ones’ had been sacrificed to Moloch (Jer. 7:31; 10:5,6; 39:35). So there is an appropriacy in this particular picture of condemnation. Those who stop others entering God’s Kingdom and lead them to condemnation will share the same condemnation; what they did to others will be done to them.

9:45 And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is good for you to enter into life lame, rather than having your two feet and to be cast into Gehenna- Mk. 9:43-47 spells out the details of the condemnation in laboured detail- if our eye offends, or causes us to offend others, then cut it off, for it is better to be without an eye in this life than to be condemned in Gehenna, where the worm and fire are 'eternal'. And this is repeated concerning the hand and foot. We read of eye, hand and foot together in only one other context- of "eye for eye... hand for hand, foot for foot" being the punishment for damaging a 'little one' within the womb of a woman (Ex. 21:24; Dt. 19:21). Nowhere else in Scripture do these three words occur together. By not receiving a little one, despising them and thus causing them to stumble, we are doing the equivalent of the Old Covenant sin of beating up a pregnant woman and causing handicap to the 'little one' within her. It could be that the Lord is saying that we can be responsible for damaging those who have not yet come to spiritual birth, to the point that if they are born, then they will be born with serious defects which are our fault. And such defects will have been the result of not receiving them, even in their immature state. Thus the table practice of the Lord was to accept people at His table at whatever stage of their spiritual growth or journey, even those not as yet born again, not yet converted, not yet repentant... in order to try to bring them to that point. 

 The Lord Jesus spoke several times of taking up the cross and following Him. This is the life you have committed yourself to by baptism; you have at least tried to take up the cross. The full horror and shock of what He was saying doubtless registered more powerfully with the first century believers than with us. They would have seen men in the agony of approaching death carrying their crosses and then being nailed to them. And the Lord Jesus asked men to do this to themselves. Our takings up of the cross will result in damage- the plucked out eye, the cut off foot. And notice that the Lord says that we will enter lame into the eternal life, or enter the Kingdom with just one eye (Mk. 9:45-47). Surely this means that the effects of our self-sacrifice in this life will in fact be eternally evident in the life which is to come. The idea of taking up the cross suggests a conscious, decided willingness to take on board the life of self-crucifixion. Taking up the cross is therefore not just a passive acceptance of the trials of life.

9:46 Where their worm does not die and the fire is not put out- The Jews believed that ‘hell’ had three sections: Gehenna, a place of eternal fire and worms for those Jews who broke the covenant and blasphemed God; ‘the shades’, an intermediate place similar to the Catholic idea of purgatory; and a place of rest where the faithful Jew awaited the resurrection at the last day). This distinction has no basis in the Bible. However, it’s significant that the Lord Jesus uses ‘Gehenna’ and the figure of eternal fire to describe the punishment of people for what the Jews of His day would’ve considered incidental sins, matters which were far from blasphemy and breaking the covenant – glancing at a woman with a lustful eye (Mk. 9:47), hypocrisy (Lk. 12:1,5; Mt. 23:27–33), not giving a cup of water to a “little one”, forbidding a disciple of John the Baptist to follow Jesus (Mk. 9:39–43); not preaching the Gospel fearlessly and boldly (Mt. 10:25–28). These matters were and are shrugged off as of no eternal consequence. But just like the prophets of Israel did, the Lord Jesus seizes upon such issues and purposefully associates them with the most dire possible punishment which His Jewish hearers could conceive – Gehenna. Time and again, the Bible alludes to incorrect ideas and reasons with people from the temporary assumption those ideas might be true. The language of demons, as we will show later, is a classic example. And it’s quite possible the Lord is doing the same here with the concept of Gehenna – the punishment for the Jew who breaks the covenant and blasphemes. The Lord was primarily teaching about behaviour, not giving a lecture about the state of the dead. And so He takes the maximum category of eternal punishment known to His audience, and says that this awaits those who sin in matters which on His agenda are so major, even if in the eyes of the Jewish world and humanity generally they were insignificant.

9:47 And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out. It is good for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes and to be cast into Gehenna- The personality we will be in the Kingdom will reflect the struggles we have personally endured in this life. Relationships in the Kingdom of God will reflect these. Thus those who had consciously chosen to be eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom are comforted that in the Kingdom they will be given a name and place in God's temple better than of children in this life (Is. 56:5). All the faithful will be given a name and place in the temple; so what especial consolation was this to those eunuchs? Surely the point is that the name (personality) they will then have will gloriously reflect the self-sacrifice and personal Biblical understanding which they went through in this life. This alone proves that the reward will be individual. The Lord's picture of men entering the Kingdom without limbs is surely making the same point (Mk. 9:47); the result of our self-sacrifice in this life will be reflected by the personality we have in the Kingdom. And there is evidence that the Man we follow will still bear in His body, throughout eternity, the marks of the crucifixion (Zech. 13:6; Rev. 5:6).  

There's a radical in each of us, even if the years have mellowed it. The way to express it is surely through radical devotion to the Father's cause. On one hand, Jesus spoke to men as they were able to hear it, not as He was able to expound it. Yet on the other, He gave His radicalism free reign. The Sabbath miracles seem to have purposefully provoked the Jews. When He encouraged His men to rub the corn heads and eat them like peanuts as they walked through a field one Sabbath, He knew full well this was going to provoke confrontation. And he said what was anathema to the Jews: "The Law was made for man and not man for the Law". Where there is human need, the law can bend. This was a startling concept for a Jew. Jesus described the essence of His Kingdom as mustard seed, which was basically a weed. It was like a woman putting leaven [both symbols of impurity] into flour. Surely the Lord was trying to show that His message was not so Heavenly that it was unrelated to earthly life. It was real and relevant to the ordinary dirty business of life. The woman who have everything she had was noted by the Lord as His ideal devotee. He taught that it was preferable to rid oneself of an eye or a limb and to sacrifice sex if that is for us the price of entry into the Kingdom (Mk. 9:45-47). The parable of the man who built bigger barns taught that in some senses we should in His service like there's no tomorrow. He expected His followers to respond immediately, to pay the price today rather than tomorrow, with no delay or procrastination. There is an emphasis in His teaching on immediacy of response, single-mindedness and unrestrained giving. This is radical stuff for 21st century people in the grip of manic materialism.  

9:48 Where their worm does not die and the fire is not put out- This threat is repeated several times here. The Lord is emphasizing that condemnation is for real; there is not only an eternal future we may miss, but the experience of condemnation, whilst not eternal, is a significant factor to bear in mind and be influenced by.

9:49 For everyone shall be salted with fire- Having spoken of the destruction of the unworthy in Gehenna fire, the Lord went straight on to comment: "For every one shall be salted with (Gk. 'for the') fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted" (Mk. 9:48,49 AV). Unless we become a living sacrifice, wholly consumed by God's fire, laying ourselves down upon the altar, then we will be consumed by the figurative fire of Gehenna at the day of judgment. Again, there's no real choice: it's fire, or fire. See on Mt. 3:11; Lk. 15:24.

9:50 Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its saltiness, with what will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another- See on Rom. 12:18. The need for peace amongst ourselves as a community is brought out in the parable of the salt that lost its saltiness. Straight away, we’re faced with a paradox- for true salt can’t lose its saltiness, seeing that sodium chloride is a stable compound, free of impurities. Salt was a symbol in the Lord’s teaching for having peace with one another. If we don’t have this, we’re not salt. If we’re not any influence upon others, we’re not salt. It’s as simple as that.

The Lord realized that it was easy to have an apparent love and peace with our brethren, when actually we have nothing of the sort. In the context of His men arguing with John's disciples, the Lord told a small parable, in which He made having salt in ourselves equal to having peace with our brethren (Mk. 9:38-40; 49,50). He warned  that salt which has lost its saltness looks just the same as good salt; but salt that has lost its saltiness is nothing, it's just a lump of substance. Surely He's saying: 'You may think you have peace and love for your brethren, when actually you don't; and if you don't have it, you're nothing, just a lump'. Not without relevance He mentioned that every sacrifice had to have good salt added to it. His point was that all our devotion and sacrifice is meaningless if it lacks the real salt of true love for our brethren. Which is exactly the teaching of 1 Cor. 13. Love is a matter of deep attitude as shown in the small things of life, not the occasional heroism of (e.g.) giving our body to be burned. The command to have salt and therefore peace with each other (Mk. 9:50) is specifically fulfilled, Paul saw, by watching our words (= Col. 4:6).