A Day in the Life of Jesus

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:

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!

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!