MARK 3:20-35

MARK 3:20-35

MARK 3:20-21 - So many came to Jesus for healing and instruction that there seemed scarcely time for any physical relaxation on His part. He was kept so busy that neither He nor the twelve had leisure even to take quietly and restfully their ordinary meals. His friends—by that is meant His immediate relatives—actually feared for His reason and sought to dissuade Him from further service for the time at least, considering Him distraught. But He allowed none to interfere with the work He had come to do. 

  MARK 3:22-30 - As they beheld the miracles He wrought certain scribes, religious leaders who had come up from Jerusalem, looked on with envy and jealousy. Observing His growing power over the minds of the populace they feared for their own prestige and authority. It was an evidence of the utter hardness of their hearts and their complete rejection of His testimony. In declaring the work of the Holy Spirit to be that of the prince of the demons they crossed the deadline. Their hearts were hardened, and the day of repentance for them had passed. 

 Actually there is no sin that is unpardonable if men repent and turn in faith to Christ. But it is possible to sin so that the conscience becomes seared as with a hot iron, and men then lose all desire to repent and are given up to strong delusion that they should believe a lie and so be doomed to eternal perdition.

As a strong man, Satan had held these poor victims in bondage for years until the Stronger One came to bind him with His Word and so spoil his house. To refuse the Holy Spirit’s testimony was to show that one allied himself completely with Satan in this great conflict. 

   Therefore, Jesus added solemnly, “Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: but he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal judgment.” The explanation of this sin is given in the following verse, “Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.”

These words were never intended to torment anxious souls honestly desiring to know Christ, but they stand out as a blazing beacon warning of the danger of persisting in the rejection of the Spirit’s testimony of Christ, until the seared conscience no longer responds to the gospel message. 

   MARK 3:31-35 - In His answer the Lord showed how all merely natural relationships were to be superseded by those of a spiritual character. Thus He emphasized the great truth which He had told Nicodemus: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). It is the new birth, manifested by obedience to the Word, which brings one into everlasting relationship to our Lord Jesus Christ.