A Day in the Life of Jesus

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In a day when pragmatism rules, most people ask two questions: “What can you do for me?” and “What have you done for me lately?” This focus is on utility, performance, and means to an end. Oftentimes those questions enter into the spiritual realm. We arrogantly thrust them before God as if He were our servant, obligated to meet our needs and respond to our call. “OK, God, what have You done for me lately? What have You done for me ever?”

Amazingly, in the incarnation and the sending of His Son, God answers our questions. God does serve us; He does minister to us; He even sacrifices Himself for us. Perhaps the key verse that summarizes the Gospel of Mark and the ministry of Jesus is found in 10:45: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life—a ransom for many.” The ransom, the payment for sin, will occur on the cross. His service to wounded and helpless sinners would be characteristic of His ministry from beginning to end, as exemplified on this day in the life of Jesus.

Mark presents these events with five uses of his favorite word: “immediately” (or “right away” or “at once”; 1:21, 23, 28, 29, 30). With a sense of mission and urgency, Jesus is here and there, ministering to this one and then another. He truly is the Servant of the Lord, healing the physically sick and setting free spiritual prisoners held captive by the prince of darkness and his demonic hoards! So we ask, “What can Jesus do for me?” The answer is, much more than we ever hoped or imagined!

Jesus Came to Heal the Diseased

Mark 1:29-34

Jesus has just left the synagogue where He taught with authority and delivered a demon-possessed man. Next, He enters Simon Peter’s house with His four closest disciples. This will be a “base of operations” for Jesus in and30 around Capernaum (see 2:1; 3:20; 9:33; 10:10). Peter’s mother-in-law1 is sick with a fever. The nature of the illness is not what is important—the power of the Healer is! “At once” they inform Jesus of her illness, and just as quickly He goes to her, touches her, and heals her!

Again, there are no spells, incantations, or rituals. With compassion and a personal touch, Jesus restores Peter’s ailing mother-in-law to full health. Verse 34 adds that on this particular day “He healed many who were sick with various diseases.” They kept bringing the sick to Him, and He kept healing them with love and compassion.

This scene raises a theological question: Is there healing in the atonement? Isaiah 53:5 says, “We are healed by His wounds.” Matthew 8:17, in the parallel account of these events, even adds a quote from Isaiah 53:4: “Yet He Himself bore our sicknesses, and He carried our pains; but we in turn regarded Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.” The answer, then, is a resounding “Yes!” There is healing in the atonement! For some it is immediate but temporary, since all still die. But for all who trust Jesus as Savior and Lord, it is eternal and permanent. This is plain in Revelation 21:4-5:

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will no longer exist; grief, crying, and pain will exist no longer, because the previous things have passed away. Then the One seated on the throne said, “Look! I am making everything new.” He also said, “Write, because these words are faithful and true.”

Jesus Came to Deliver the Demonized

Mark 1:32-34

Jesus’ fame is spreading like wildfire (v. 28). People are probably aware that He is in Peter’s house and that He has healed his mother-in-law. Now that the Sabbath has ended (at sundown), people show up from everywhere, bringing the sick, until “the whole town was assembled at the door.” With so many around Him, what would Jesus do? “He healed many.”

The sick were not the only ones who came: they also brought those who were oppressed by demons, and He “drove out many demons.” Satan and his minions had once again met the Savior in spiritual combat (cf. vv. 23-27) and it was no contest. Bring many demons face-to-face with God’s Son, and they experience an immediate and decisive thrashing.

31The last phrase of verse 34 is instructive. Men may be confused as to the identity of Jesus, but never so with the demons: “They knew Him” and they feared Him. What a contrast with foolish, fallen, and unbelieving humans! A distinction is made between those “who were sick and those who were demon-possessed” (v. 32) and those “who were sick with various diseases” (v. 34). All disease and sickness is the result of sin, but not all disease and sickness is the result of demonic oppression or activity. Satan and his demons may inflict physical illness, but not all physical afflictions are demonic in origin.

The ancients were not as naïve and ignorant as they are sometimes accused of being.

Still, Mark’s point in giving this scene is, “Watch the servant serve!” He healed many who were sick. He cast out many demons. The kingdom has come in the person of the great and awesome King, and it is moving forward with great speed and success. And not one thing can stop Him!

Excursus: Why Did Jesus Conceal His Messiahship During His Ministry?

Why does Jesus not permit the demons to speak (v. 34)? Why does Jesus tell the leper to say nothing to anyone (v. 44)? This oddity, called the “Messianic Secret,” is an important and interesting issue discussed by both believing and unbelieving scholars. James Edwards helps us see why the question was raised in the first place:

On three occasions demons are enjoined to silence (1:25; 1:34; 3:11). Jesus commands silence after four miracles (cleansing of a leper, 1:44; raising of a dead girl, 5:43; healing of a deaf-mute, 7:36; healing of a blind man, 8:26). Twice the disciples are commanded to silence (8:30; 9:9). Twice Jesus withdraws from crowds to escape detection (7:24; 9:30). Beyond these explicit admonitions to secrecy, Mark implies secrecy in other aspects of Jesus’ public ministry. But ironically, the command to silence often results in the opposite: “the more he [commanded to silence], the more they kept talking about it” (7:36; 1:45; 5:20; 7:24). (Edwards, Mark, 63)

At least seven observations can be made about this phenomenon.

1. Jesus wanted to avoid the impression of being a mere miracle worker or a magician. Those who conjure up tricks seek attention for themselves. Jesus is different. He came to defeat the power and effects of sin in the whole world.

322. Jesus wanted to avoid unhelpful publicity to have more moments of private teaching with His disciples. Obviously, Jesus’ reputation gathered a crowd. This crowd demanded attention, and every moment Jesus spent in public was a moment He could not spend intimately discipling His closest followers.

3. Jesus wanted to avoid the people’s misconceptions about the Messiah. His Messiahship was characterized by service and suffering, not sensational displays of miraculous activity that would excite political-Messiah fever. Even with Jesus’ attempts to reign in misconceptions, the people still thought He came to overthrow Roman rule.

4. Jesus wanted to express His humility as the Suffering Servant of the Lord.

5. Jesus wanted to inform us that only through the medium of faith, ultimately in a crucified and humiliated Savior, is His messiahship personally apprehended (cf. 1 Cor 1-2). One cannot grasp the fullness of His worth without realizing that He must die. We don’t simply like Jesus because He can do miraculous works. We trust Him because His death was on our behalf, and His resurrection is for our victory.

6. Jesus wanted to avoid recognition from an undesirable source such as the demons and the hypocritical religious leaders.

7. He wanted His identity concealed to point to the hostility of the religious and political leaders of the day. There was a stark contrast between Jesus’ humble love and the Pharisees’ look-at-me religiosity. This disparity is seen most clearly in Jesus’ own choice to walk resolutely into the destined hour of His passion.

Some have suggested that Mark invented this portrait of Christ in order to explain why Jesus was not recognized as the Son of God prior to the Easter event, but this suggestion is untenable and should be rejected as liberal conjecture grounded in an antisupernatural bias. The reason nobody recognized Him as the Messiah is that they were looking for a political, military Messiah who would liberate them from Rome. And the Gospel writers were Hebrews rooted in Jewish monotheism. The idea that they would have fabricated Jesus as Messiah in terms of His divine sonship is simply not believable. Instead, we can confidently affirm that the Messianic Secret arose from Jesus Himself. He self-consciously identified with the Suffering Servant of the Lord in Isaiah’s prophecy, and He knew the need to guard His messianic identity from premature and false understandings.

He was not the kind of Messiah the first-century world hoped for, but He was the kind of Messiah the first-century world—indeed the whole world—truly needed. Our greatest ailment is not sickness but sin, not demons but33 death. We did not need a Messiah who would only bring liberation from political oppression and healing from disease. No, we needed a Messiah who would give His life as a ransom for sinners like you and me. Praise God, He sent us the kind of Messiah we needed!

Conclusion

God cares about our problems in this fallen, sin-infested world. God knows that we hurt and that sin is a constant reminder of our finite, mortal humanity. God has remedied our hopeless condition by sending Jesus. As did the diseased and the demonized, we should run to Him and Him alone. And like Peter’s mother-in-law, we should be quick to serve Him and serve others out of grateful appreciation for such a wonderful Savior and such a marvelous salvation. It was a normal day in the life of Jesus. It was anything but normal for those who encountered and experienced His saving power!

Reflect and Discuss

1. When Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law, He did not use any spells, incantations, or rituals. What does this say about His power and authority?
2. What examples of miraculous healing have you seen or experienced?
3. In what way is physical healing temporary? In what way is it eternal and permanent?
4. Why is it important that the Bible distinguishes between those who were sick and those who were demon possessed?
5. How was Jesus different from sensational “miracle workers” and magicians? How should that affect the way we promote Christianity?
6. What is “therapeutic” Christianity? Can emphasis on physical deliverance distract Christians from the message of the gospel these days?
7. How can a pastor’s fame distract from the message of the gospel? How can a well-known pastor use his fame effectively for the kingdom?
8. Compare the attitude of the crowds when they were being healed or fed with the response to the crucifixion and to the command that we “take up [our] cross” (8:34).
9. What kind of Messiah were the Jews looking for in Jesus’ day? What might have happened if they had become convinced that Jesus was such a Messiah?
10. Do you know of any churches or denominations today that proclaim Jesus to be a political deliverer or a physical healer? How does that fail to tell the whole story?