Chapter # 3 Paragraph # 5 Study # 2
November 19, 2019
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
(124)
1901 ASV
23 And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan?
24 And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
25 And if a house be divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.
26 And if Satan hath risen up against himself, and is divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.
27 But no one can enter into the house of the strong [
man], and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong [
man]; and then he will spoil his house.
28 Verily I say unto you, All their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and their blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme:
29 but whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin:
30 because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.
- I. Jesus' "Calling".
- A. This is the second of nine times in which Mark used this word in this form. It is a deliberate "middle voice" form of a verb that is used in the active voice (Mark 1:20 and 2:17) and in the passive voice (11:17) in Mark so that his deliberate choice to use the "middle voice" means that the reflexive sense of the "middle voice" is significant.
- 1. The first time was in 3:13, a verse in which we are told that Jesus "is calling to Himself" (Present Tense in historical narrative: emphasis to generate a kind of mental imagery that runs across one's thoughts as if one is in a movie) those whom He Himself wanted, and they "came" (Aorist Tense; typical verbal expression of historical narrative).
- 2. Most of the other nine uses are directly related to Jesus' "calling to Himself" of "His disciples" (6:7; 8:1, 34; 10:42; 12:43) and/or "the people" (7:14; 8:34) whom He wished to inform of some truth.
- 3. The only "outlier" in this usage by Mark is 15:14 where the one doing the calling "to himself" is Pilate and the one called is the centurion who was overseeing the crucifixion. The strong implication is that the centurion was not in Pilate's presence so that he had to call for him to come to him.
- B. In this text, the verb is an attendant participle that tells us that Jesus, "having called to Himself", was saying (Imperfect Tense in historical narrative: emphatic, but not so strong as the Present Tense with the difference being that with the imperfect tense there is a kind of movie going across one's mental landscape, but the "watcher" is not "in" the movie, but is "watching" it).
- 1. That the "was saying" is preceded by this attending participle means something, but what?
- a. The answer is in the "direct object": them.
- b. The only antecedent to this "them" is "the scribes" who "descended from Jerusalem" as if they were bringing with them the definitive "truth" about Jesus from "God's appointed leaders in Jerusalem".
- c. Thus, this text is a kind of "outlier" in that it was neither "His disciples", nor "the people" whom He "called to Himself". It was, instead, His adversaries in the realm of "doctrine" that He "called to Himself".
- 2. This is a record of Jesus in direct confrontation with "scribes" who are propagating a lie so heinous that it, believed, immediately brings eternal condemnation (no forgiveness).
- II. Jesus' "On-Going" Declaration (Imperfect Tense in Historical Narrative).
- A. Was, Mark tells us, "in parable form".
- 1. Mark uses this "in parable form" to explain that Jesus was taking a "form of truth in one realm" and "placing it alongside" another "form of truth in another realm" so that the two forms could be considered side by side with the possibility that the hearers, if genuinely interested, could take the "better understood realm" to begin to understand the "less understood realm". This is the first of 12 references to "parables" in Mark's record.
- 2. The idea of a "parable" is that there exists, in the well known physical/material realm of living, a "parallelism" to a less well known realm (what I call "the relational realm" where "relationship" between persons ((God and His sentient creatures)) is the issue).
- a. The main issue of this paragraph in respect to the "relational realm" is "having forgiveness" (3:28-29).
- b. This is also the main issue of John the Baptizer's opening message regarding "Grace" (1:4). Mark's use of the noun translated "forgiveness" in 1:4 and 3:29 is restricted to these two texts alone in this Gospel. The verb behind this noun is, however, used by Mark in 35 of his texts, but it does not refer to the "forgiveness of sins" in most of those texts (though in the places where it does, it is crucial).
- c. Thus, the "parables" are presentations of "well understood concepts in the physical world" that have analogous realities in the lesser understood concepts of the relational realm.
- d. But, Jesus, in 4:11, declares that His use of parables is deliberate because of the two very different groups that make up humanity. There is the group to which Jesus offers the forgiveness of sins and another group that is kept from that fantastic privilege by the "judgment" of hearing in "parables" (4:12). Interestingly, 12:12 relates the fact that His adversaries were able to recognize themselves in the parable in 12:1-12, but not in a way that profited them.
- B. The first "parable".
- 1. Given in the form of a question: "How is Satan empowered to cast out Satan?" This is Mark's second use of "Satan" (the first being 1:13 where we are told that Jesus was "driven" by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be "tempted" by "Satanas", typically transliterated "Satan" though, technically, "Satan" is a transliteration of "Satan", without the additional "as", a word only found once in the Greek text of the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 12:7).
- 2. The idea of "empowered" is, in the physical realm, "being visualized as capable of accomplishing an objective" -- whether actually "capable" or not.
- 3. The "picture" is of "Satan" wanting to "cast out" himself. How does this ever happen in the material world?
- a. There are three elements of the question: "Satanas", "a kingdom", and "a house". There is a "circle" involved: "Satan" (3:23), "a kingdom" (3:24), and "a house" (3:25), and then a return to "Satan" (3:26). This signals the original issue: "Satan" against "Satan" (himself; "eph'heauton"). Jesus is taking their words in 3:22 to indicate the issue of "by the prince of the demons he is casting out the demons" to mean that there is a definitive link between the "prince" and those under his dominion so that to cast out "a demon" is equivalent to casting out "himself, as the prince". Jesus did not "see" the demons as "stand alone entities", but as an integrated "unit of opposition". This may indicate that there is no such thing as actual "individualism" in the world of demons (though each is a distinct "other") because they are "indivisibly" united by their entrenched attitude of opposition to God.
- b. The word translated "cast out" generically means "to force someone to go 'out of ' their current location (in status or geography)". Demons "cast out" are forced to leave their host bodies and go somewhere else.
- c. How can anyone, Satan or otherwise, force himself to depart from himself? This has no recognized "form" in the material realm. Thus, there can be no "parable" between "Satan casting out himself" in the material realm to "casting out himself" in the relational realm. It is this impossibility that is Jesus' point: where can you find any example of a "unity" in the physical realm that can, itself, dissolve its unity and "survive"? There is a "parable" in the splitting of an atom by an external force that demonstrates the enormous "explosion" of destruction that happens when such "unity" is "dissolved". This is the point of verse 27 where Jesus addresses the spoiling of the house of the strong man by such external force. "Unity" can be destroyed, but only by a powerful external force; the "unit" cannot do this to itself.