Abundant Life: Mark 3:23-27
Jesus doesn’t mess around. One might say He came to take the world by storm. He knows there is no question about His role as teacher, disciple maker, and savior. The Father sent Him to accomplish a particular mission and nothing is going to get in His way.
Jesus starts responding to the religious elite by talking in parables. He mentions that a kingdom divided cannot stand. Then, He mentions that a house divided cannot stand. The reality is that nothing destroys community better than infighting. If the members of a particular organization can’t stand united, the whole organization is doomed to fall. This is why their claim that Jesus’ power comes from Beelzebub doesn’t make any sense. Why would Satan voluntarily allow Jesus to undo work that had already been accomplished?
After speaking these parables, Jesus gets right to the point. You cannot plunder the strongman’s house until the strongman is bound. There is a significant point here that often gets overlooked because interpretations of this passage focus on where Jesus’ power derives. Jesus’ point is a threat. Jesus has come to plunder the strongman’s house. He’s not a thief in the night who is going to steal some trinket. He came to take over and present a new paradigm for life.
As soon as sin entered the world, it held dominion over life. We die because we are under the influence of sin. As one of my shirts boldly proclaims, “Sin is the leading cause of death.” Jesus came to bind up sin, to take away the consequences of sin, and to plunder the house of sin. Jesus came so that sin and death might be done away with so we might have life and have it abundantly.
From this perspective, I almost find the story of Jesus amusing up to this point. The crowds follow Him because they either want an easy fix or want to be there when someone else miraculously gets one. The religious elite are afraid of Him because He threatens the power and control that they enjoy. His disciples may know something special is happening, but they still don’t know what Jesus is really doing. The people around Him don’t realize what Jesus is after. Jesus is here to bind up sin and death and do away with them for good.
Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t have fared any better. It is amazing how simple Jesus’ mission sounds from the perspective of a couple of millennia after the fact. In the moment, however, I’m sure I would have been like the crowds or the religious elite or His disciples. I would’ve enjoyed the show. I would’ve wanted to be there. I wouldn’t have really understood what He was up to, either. After all, while I would have been looking at Jesus for what I wanted to see, Jesus was up to doing away with sin and death. Jesus doesn’t mess around.
