Hi everyone and welcome back to the logical Bible study podcast,
we're going to take a look at the reading from today's mass
and we'll try and provide an exegesis of the literal sense.
What was Mark trying to communicate to his original
audience? So today, we look at Mark
chapter 3 verses 22 to 30 and it's quite a well-known passage
in quite a controversial one. So, here's the passage from Mark
chapter 3. The scribes who come down from
Jerusalem, we're saying be eligible is in him, and it is
through the prince of devils that he casts Devils out.
So he called them to him and spoke to them in Parables.
How can Satan cast out Satan? if a kingdom is divided against
itself that Kingdom cannot last, and every household is divided
against itself, that household can never stand Now, if Satan
has rebelled against himself and is divided, he cannot stand
either. It is the end of him.
Boss. No one can make his way into a
strong mans house and burgle his property, unless he has tied up
the strongman. First.
Only then, can he burgle his house?
I tell you, solemnly all men's sins will be forgiven and all
their blasphemies, but let anyone blaspheme against the
Holy Spirit and he will never have forgiveness.
He is guilty of an eternal sin. This was because they were
saying and unclean spirit is in him.
So, let's start by looking at the context here.
What's happened so far in? Mark, is all these massive
crowds have been coming to see him in Galilee to see Jesus.
He's been doing all sorts of Miracles and healings, and
particularly exorcisms. He's becoming quite well-known
for casting demons out of people.
So now the scribes come down from Jerusalem in verse 22.
So up till now he's just been doing stuff in Galilee and the
Galilean Pharisees don't really like Him.
But now we have some scribes from Jerusalem, which is
actually South in the southern region.
They're coming all the way up to go away.
So they've traveled quite a few days to hear to hear Jesus.
There want to investigate this strange preacher that everyone's
talking about. So Jerusalem is sort of a
capital of Israel, and that's down the southern area, and
Jesus has been working in the northern area, but he's become
so famous, that word has spread to Jerusalem.
So the Jerusalem leaders send These scribes in and these are
kind of like the big guns, they are the Jerusalem.
Scribes were the absolute experts in the law.
They were considered to be more authoritative even than the ones
in Galilee. So they accuse him or they say
firstly though use this word be, I was a bowl.
This is a name be eligible and it's a word that the Jews used
at that time for Satan. It's one of the words for Satan
Satan had a few names and be eligible was one of them and
it's probably derived from the Canaanite god Baal it's just
another way of saying Baal or Satan is be eligible so they say
be eligible is in him. So basically, they're accusing
Jesus of being possessed by the devil.
And this is the thinking, so the scribes have come to see him and
they're like, how is this guy doing this?
How is he casting out? The demons and their reasoning
goes something like this. His casting out so many demons,
and the only person who has that much control over demons is the
Devil Himself. Therefore, Jesus must be
possessed by the devil that seems to be their thinking.
Obviously, they've missed a key Point here being that God has
power over those demons as well. So this the saying, aye, he's
possessed by the devil. So verse 23, he called them to
him. So Jesus actually calls over the
Pharisees and he wants to teach them in particular.
He speaks to them in Parables so he's going to give them a couple
of short analogies, not like the longer Parables.
We're used to, it's still a parable load.
So it's a short analogy. He's going to teach them a
couple of things about exorcism and what it's all about.
He says to them first, how can Satan cast out Satan?
And that's a rhetorical question.
He doesn't expect him to answer because the answer is obvious.
The answer is he can't. Verse 24, Jesus says to the
scribes if a kingdom is divided against itself that Kingdom
cannot last. So if you've got this kingdom
and there's internal fighting going on, the kingdom is not
going to last long. And so, Jesus Point here is if
Satan was being forced to get rid of his own demons, his
fighting against his own demons, then it would not be a very
strong Kingdom. But the scribes knew very well
that Satan's kingdom is strong so that can't be right.
It can't be this. Satan is fighting against his
own demons. That doesn't make sense verse
25. Jesus gives another similar
analogy and if a household is divided against itself that
household can never stand. So, same basic idea if there's
fighting within the family, it will be a week, family.
Now, verse 26, Jesus tells us the point.
He was trying to make. Now, whenever you're looking at
parables, You want to work out? What's, what was Jesus point?
He usually makes a couple of little analogies.
Sometimes he then tells his readers and this is the point
that I'm trying to make and that's what he does here.
Thankfully sometimes he doesn't tell the meaning of the parable
and that's when the disciple sort of scratch their heads, but
when he tells us the meaning of the parable, we should pay
attention because that can help us get some principles for
interpreting the other Parables. And here, he tells us what he
means. Verse 26.
So If Satan has rebelled against himself and his divided, he
cannot stand either. It is the end of him.
So, that's Jesus point. Scribes you're wrong.
Satan is not casting out. These demons that doesn't make
sense so he's firstly he's ruled out there.
Hypothesis, he says you're wrong.
Now in verse 27, having ruled out that idea about a kingdom
divided his, now going to tell them what's really going on,
what's really happening in these exorcisms.
No one can make his way into a strong mans house and burgle his
property, unless he is tied up the strong man first.
Now, some people have a problem with this because it's implying
that God is a burglar. If you take it too, literally.
But remember Parables and not supposed to be identical to
Jesus or identical to God. In every aspect.
You can't map every aspect on exactly that will be over
stretching. The parable.
He's just trying to make one Central Point that they will be
familiar with. And then applying that to God,
So the idea here is if someone's planning to rob a house but
they're planning to do it. They know who lives there and
they know the homeowner is a strong man.
Then the burglar is obviously going to make a plan to tie up
the strongman first before he tries to steal his property
otherwise is not going to get very far.
The strongman's just going to kick him out.
So Jesus here is saying that Satan is like the strongman.
Satan is like the strong man guarding his possessions.
What's Satan guarding? He's guarding humans in this
particular period of Salvation history, he has possession over
humans and in particular, the ones that he has that he's
possessed through the demons. They are his property.
So Satan is the strong man and Jesus is saying that by
performing these exorcisms He is weakening the power of Satan.
The power of the strongman over the world.
So Jesus is weakening the strongman Satan by casting out.
These exorcisms is slowly weakening Satan's influence in
the world. So this probably implies because
remember, what Jesus says here is first you weak and the strong
man and then you plunder his Goods.
So probably what Jesus is saying here is that these exorcisms
that he's doing currently a phase, one of plundering Satan's
house. So he's currently binding.
Satan weakening his power over the world and probably Jesus is
implying, that soon, there will be a phase 2, where Jesus steal
Satan's goods, and that would mean that's where he Takes some
of the people from the kingdom of Satan and brings them into
the kingdom of God. So here, I think is one of the
clearest teachings about what Jesus mission is, we don't often
like to talk about Satan and him having power in the world, but
that was the whole context of the kingdom of God.
If you read the gospels carefully, Jesus clearly is
teaching that the world is largely under the power of Satan
and the point of the kingdom of God is to give people a
different Kingdom to be a part of if they want to.
So that's all the stuff about exorcisms there, that he's done.
A couple of little analogies, verse 28, we get to the hard or
controversial part to interpret. Jesus says to them in verse 28,
I tell you solemnly. Now whenever you say that you
want to pay attention, this is where Jesus says, well basically
means, I'm about to tell you something very important.
Other translations would have this as truly truly, or amen.
Amen, or he who has an ear, let him hear verily, verily is the
old English way of saying it. Whenever you see those flag
words, you want to pay attention because Jesus is about to teach
something. And it's probably going to be
something that's binding forever.
It's probably some general theological principle that he
wants people to know about. So it's a signal that Jesus is
about to conclude is make a conclusion, bring everything he
said, To ahead and to make the point that he wants to make, so
he's dealt with the little things that the Pharisees have
said. And now he wants to make his
deeper more profound point. It's a textual indicator to us
as the readers that he's about to say, is about to teach
something in his capacity as Messiah.
He's about to teach something theological and it's going to
wrap up. The things is just said, here's
what he says. All men's sins will be forgiven
and their blasphemies, that's part one of the sentence.
So what's he said so far? He said that if a person turns
to God and enters the kingdom, then all of their past sins will
be forgiven. Yeah.
Jesus is saying there's no limit to God's forgiveness.
All sins will be forgiven, even blasphemies and blasphemy is,
were some of the worst crimes. According to the Jews, the worst
sins because that's when you abuse God directly.
It's a direct offense against God, but Jesus, he says even
blasphemy, is will be forgiven. But then the second half.
Sorry, I won't say the second half yet, let's just talk about
the word holy spirit because it's the first time that Jesus
uses it here in Mark the Holy Spirit, we sometimes think of is
like it's not in the Old Testament at all of the New
Testament idea. It is in the Old Testament but
it's in the later books of the Old Testament and a lot of those
books are not in Protestant Bibles.
So in the book of wisdom and the Book of sirach, there's a couple
of descriptions about the spirit or of God or the holy spirit.
It's even called in one place. So the Jews were familiar with
and they did believe in the holy spirit.
It's just, they didn't connect it with the Trinity.
They didn't believe in the Trinity and Jesus is not
referring to her in a trinitarian way here either.
So, what was their idea of the holy spirit?
It's basically the power of God on Earth, that's what they saw.
The holy spirit is The power of God on Earth and that's fine.
We as Christians, we believe that too.
With that in mind. And so the Jews know what, the
holy spirit is all the basics of it.
Jesus now says, whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit or
another translation, whoever speaks a word against the Holy
Spirit. Why does he say that here?
Well, the scribes were in fact, just doing this.
They were blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.
If you think about it they were blaspheming against God's work
on Earth. There are watching Jesus cast
out demons with the power of God and they were attributing it to
Satan. Their blasphemy against the work
of God on Earth are blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
Now they didn't know that though.
So if we're going to analyze this in terms of, you know,
mortal sin and things like that, they didn't have full knowledge,
they actually didn't realize that God was working through
Jesus. So if we want to pass it out
that way, they weren't fully culpable of it.
So Jesus actually just giving them a warning.
He's not saying they're going to hell.
He's just saying all you need to be careful here.
Okay, so whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, Jesus
says, he will never have forgiveness, or he is guilty of
an eternal sin and eternal sin. This is something that people
really find really hard to accept.
And sometimes called the unforgivable sin, How can there
be a thing such as an unforgivable sin?
So, let's think about it. Jesus is not saying that if you
personally offend God or you personally offend the Holy
Spirit by saying bad things about him, you'll be damned.
That's not the point. He's making, he's saying
something more General. He's using this idea of
blasphemy, which they've just done, but he's now making a more
General point about General way that we can blaspheme against
God. And it's this.
What Jesus is saying is this if a person dies having seen the
work of God in their life, but they deny that, it's the work of
God, although refused to accept his promptings, then they cut
themselves off from God. Now that's basically the
Catholic teaching on salvation. So it's not, it's not that
there's one. How can we put?
It's not that there's one specific thing.
You do one specific sin that you commit in your life and you're
done. That's it.
You can never be forgiven. That's not what Jesus is saying.
He's saying there's only one thing that would stop you from
you from entering. The mercy of God from entering
the kingdom of heaven and that is refusing to accept the work
of God. If you refuse to accept the work
of God, then there is no forgiveness to you.
There's no forgiveness available and you can't make it into the
kingdom of heaven. So it's a teaching.
On salvation. So notice the language here
talks about all men and eternal life, it doesn't say Pharisees,
you need to know this. It says all all manner of sins
will be forgiven of men. So we're talking about men in
general and he mentions the eternal life.
So this is something that's binding permanently.
Jesus is teaching General Christian, theology hear about
salvation, And the church, the Catholic church has confirmed
that the principal Jesus lazy out here is still binding today,
this is a permanent principal so let me reiterate what that is.
Again, the unforgivable sin is not that if you do one specific
sin that you can never be forgiven in your stuffed up for
the rest of your life, regardless of the good you do,
that's not what Jesus saying. He's saying that there's one
thing that will always be a barrier to you having
forgiveness and eternal life. And that one thing is rejecting,
the work of God on Earth. so if we have it with that, we keep
that perspective in mind, which is the perspective of the
Catholic church that fits nicely with everything else, we know
about salvation and everything we know about Catholic teaching
in general Verse 30, the last verse here.
Mark tells the readers. This is because they were saying
and unclean spirit is in him. So we need to keep that in mind.
Jesus has given us this teaching in response to the claim of the
scribes that Jesus is possessed by the devil.
So Jesus here. Remember, when Jesus, sort of
response to critics what he generally does is he sort of
disabuse them of their false Notions first, but then he goes
on to make a more serious point. So he's disabuse them of this
false idea that he's possessed by the devil.
But now he's going to make a more serious theological point,
which is and it's this, imagine he's saying this to the fairest
to the scribes You need to be careful if you don't change your
mind about this. If you continue to reject the
work of God that you've just seen, your will be damned.
That's what he's saying. It's a warning.
Okay, it's a warning. Jesus is not saying, since you
have said this, you are damned, he's not saying that he's saying
that you need to be careful. You need to re-evaluate this if
you continue to see these things and reject them as the work of
God and you say that were the work of Satan, then you're
blocked from the kingdom of God, because he will not accept the
work of God. This General principle applies
to all Humanity today. This is what we as Catholics
would say, who goes to heaven. It's the people who accept the
work of God in their life and they cooperate with it who goes
to hell. It's those who reject the work
of God on Earth and in their life.
Life. Now, that will be me
paraphrasing complex, Catholic theology, but I think it's a
fair summary. Now, let's have a look at the
catechism passages here. There's a few really interesting
ones paragraph 548. There's a description about how
Jesus is accused of being possessed by Satan paragraph.
574 to same thing. It says, Jesus is suspected of
demonic possession. Paragraph 539, I'll read out
this one. It's about Jesus Temptations.
The evangelists indicate. The cell River.
Can meaning of this mysterious event?
Jesus is the new Adam, who, Faithful just where the first
Adam had given in to Temptation. Jesus, fulfills, Israel's
vocation perfectly in contrast to those, who would once
provoked, God during 40 years in the desert Christ reveals
himself as God's servant, totally obedient to the Divine
will in this Jesus is the devil's conqueror.
He binds the strong man to take back his plunder.
Jesus victory over the tempter in the desert, anticipates
victory at the passion, the Supreme Act of obedience to his
filial filial. Love for the father.
So, you'll hear that Echo is about binding.
The strongman paragraph. 1864 is the one we want to spend the
most time on. This is in the section about
different kinds of sin, mortal and venial sin.
And this paragraph is about the unforgivable sin.
Therefore, I tell you every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven
men, but the blasphemy against the spirit will not be forgiven.
There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who
deliberately refuses to accept his Mercy by repenting rejects
the Forgiveness of his sins and the Salvation offered by the
Holy Spirit such Hardness of Heart can lead to final
impenitence and eternal loss. So really clear Catholic
teaching their about anyone who deliberately refuses to accept
his Mercy by repenting rejects the Forgiveness of his sins and
the Salvation offered by the Holy Spirit.
Now I want to read out a bit of an extended chord here because
this paragraph that we just write out 1864.
The catechism is largely informed by an encyclical
written by Pope John Paul. The second called a problem that
probably not going to pronounce this right Domina mitzvah.
Vivek antem. That's the Latin.
And it's the English title of that.
Encyclical is on the holy spirit in the life of the church and
the world. Now, I want to read you a
paragraph 46 because this is where the teaching of the
Catholic Church on what the unforgivable sin is, is
explained here in this encyclical.
So, if what I've said so far hasn't made sense.
Hopefully this will help clarify it and certainly, you know, I
don't have any authority to Proclaim Catholic teaching, but
the pope does. And so I think it's well worth
listening to him. Describe how we should
understand the unforgivable sin. So this is paragraph 46 from
Pope John Paul. The second in the cyclical.
Why is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit unforgivable?
How should this blasphemy? Be understood st.
Thomas Aquinas replies. That it is a question of a sin
that is unforgivable by its very nature, insofar as it excludes
the elements, through which the forgiveness of sin takes place.
According to such an exegesis blasphemy, does not properly
consists in offending against the Holy Spirit.
In words, it consists rather in the refusal, to accept the
Salvation, which God offers to man through the Holy Spirit,
working through the power of the cross.
If man rejects the convincing concerning sin, which comes from
the Holy Spirit and which has the power to save, he also
rejects the coming of the counselor that coming which was
accomplished in the Paschal mystery in Union, with a
Redemptive power of Christ's blood the blood, which purifies
the conscience from dead works. We know that the result of such
a purification is the Forgiveness of sins.
Therefore, whoever rejects the spirit and the blood remains in
dead. Works.
In sin and the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit consists
precisely in the radical refusal, to accept this
forgiveness of which he is the intimate giver and which
presupposes the genuine conversion which he brings about
in the conscience. If Jesus says that blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit, cannot be forgiven, either in this life
or in the next, it is, because this non forgiveness is linked
as to its cause to non repentance.
In other words to the radical refuse, To be converted.
Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then is the sin
committed by the person who claims to have a right to
persist in evil in any sin at all and who thus rejects
Redemption, one closes oneself up in sin thus making impossible
ones conversion and consequently the remission of sins which one
considers not essential or not important for one's life.
This is a state of spiritual ruin because blasphemy against
the Holy Spirit does not allow one to escape.
From one self-imposed imprisonment, an open oneself to
the Divine sources of the purification of consciences and
of the remission of sins. so, that's the end of the Court
there, from Pope John Paul the second So I'll put all these
paragraphs or catechism courts and the Pope John Paul, the
second Court in the show notes, and this is one of those
passages that needs to be read a few times and perhaps analyzed a
few times. So, if you think you got the
basics of what I've said but you want to listen to it again,
that's probably not a bad thing to do.
Thanks for listening. Hope you learned something new
about demon possession and the unforgivable sin.
And if you think others will benefit from hearing this
podcast as well, others who might wonder about the
unforgivable sin, then please consider sharing this podcast
with them. Thanks for listening.