What a Study of St. Mark's Gospel Can Tell Christians About What it Means to be a Disciple
A disciple is someone who believes in and helps to spread the
teachings of one another. St Mark’s Gospel helps us understand the
nature of discipleship through various stories concerning the
disciples. In Mark’s Gospel, the disciples are called apostles
whenever they are sent out by Jesus on a mission of teaching and
healing. The disciples are told to travel light on their mission,
Jesus said, “Take nothing for your journey except a staff- no bread,
no bag, no money in your belts.” Jesus does not want his disciples to
be burdened down by material possessions. Real Christian discipleship
requires total commitment. It is about sacrificing everything for the
service of God. It is not important about the quantity you give but
the quality, and leave you totally dependant on God for survival. In
the calling of the first four disciples Jesus calls them individually,
this shows how great his power and charisma drew them to him. Jesus
said, “Come follow me”. They immediately responded without doubt and
followed him. They left all their belongings and families to follow
him no matter what. Jesus told the disciples, “I will make you fishers
of men”. Jesus meant they would bring people into the family of God.
They would follow Jesus’ footsteps and spread the good news and
convert people to Christianity. Jesus called a crowd to him along with
his disciples and said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny
himself and take up the cross and follow me.” The cost of
discipleship’s threefold. To deny ‘self’ means Jesus’ followers must
always put other people’s needs before their own. Jesus said, “But
many who are first will be last, and the last first.” They must be
honest, resist temptation. Learn to say no and love others which may
lead to making sacrifices for them. Christian disciples should put
their own needs and wishes last. To ‘take up your cross’ has two
There are four Gospels in the new testament; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each one writing his perspective story about Jesus, his teachings, his works, his sacrifice, and his resurrection. At the same time, they each seem to elaborate on specific elements of Jesus. The gospel of Matthew writes about the bloodline, the ancestors of Jesus. The gospel of Mark, writes about Jesus as a servant to God. The gospel of Luke, writes about Jesus being the son of a human. The gospel of John, writes about Jesus being the son of God. Having an understanding on the focus of each gospel will help the reader know Jesus and his works better. However, this essay will concentrate on “The Gospel According to Mark,” written in Bruce Manning Metzger, translator of, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version with The Apocrypha (p. 1791). The gospel of Mark is documentation of
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the origin of nearly everything the Christian Church teaches about Jesus. The Gospels, in turn, serve as the scale or test of truth and authenticity of everything the church teaches about Jesus. It is said that the Gospels are the link between Jesus of Nazareth and the people of every age throughout history who have claimed to be his followers. Although the Gospels teach us about Jesus’ life they may not provide concrete evidence that what they speak of is true there are several other sources.
had great faith in Jesus and teaches us that we should do the same. In
who "does what God wants them to do". This simply means that if we put
Mark's Gospel, Christians, and Persecution In Mark's Gospel it shows that Jesus was persecuted in many forms; rejection, threats, mockery and being arrested, this ended up as death. Persecution still happens in the less developed world of today in countries like Egypt, China, Pakistan and parts of Indonesia. The main persecutions Jesus suffered in Mark's Gospel were; threats Jesus reacted by feeling angry but as soon as he looked around he changed his anger to sorrow. When he was being treated he carried on normally and ignored them.
A writer’s vision and thought can be extracted from the words that they use in their stories. The evangelists in the Bible are no different. They are writing about events from memory; many of them were stories that were passed on generation to generation. Thus, their personal thoughts begin to make an entry into the way that they write their gospel and the words that they use. The evangelist had the final say as to how he would portray Jesus in his story. This was especially true in Mark’s gospel. Being the first one to recount the ministry of Jesus, he was not influenced by other well known accounts. Thus, the understanding that Mark has is seen through the approach that he took to write his gospel, which include both Jesus’ character traits as well as the meaning behind his ministry. When studying the way that Mark wrote the gospel, it can be seen how he perceives Jesus.
He said to them " I have chosen you to be with me…I will also send you
Jesus Christ lived a very full, if short, life. He did and accomplished more in his thirty years than many men do in twice that. The gospels each tell their versions of his life. Of the four, I found the gospel of Mark to be the most interesting. I enjoy the style of writing in this gospel more than the others. I feel it gives a better summary of the events in Christ’s life. Whereas the other gospels tend to get bogged down with parables or spend too much time on specific events, the gospel of Mark moves along at a good pace and adequately gets the message across.
with you at all times. To become a Christian you must try and be the
One of the main characteristics of the gospel of Mark is it’s length. Mark is much shorter than Matthew and Luke, but what it lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality. The author of Mark does not slow down the gospel story and makes sure that only important and relevant details are included. When Mark is compared with Matthew and Luke, it becomes obvious to see what Mark has eliminated. The author’s omission of Jesus’ birth, lineage, resurrection, and ascension denote careful planning and purpose in the gospel of Mark.
Discipleship is the process of making disciples; students or followers of someone (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016). Although discipleship existed long before Jesus, the disciple-making process as expressed by Jesus is the most impactful example for Christianity. The following is an analysis of discipleship as it was applied to Jesus’ ministry, Jesus’ discipleship model in light of modern leadership theories, and a discussion of what can be gleaned from Jesus’ discipleship model.
The Meaning of Discipleship In this piece of coursework I will be writing about the meaning of
The first way that Mark shows us what discipleship really is, is by the way Jesus demonstrated discipleship. Jesus did this in three ways: the way He cared about people, took care of their physical needs, and He took care of their spiritual needs. In Mark 7:31-37 we see an example of Jesus caring about people. In these verses a deaf and dumb man is brought to Jesus and the man's friends beg Jesus to heal him. Jesus takes him aside privately and says be open and immediately the man can hear and can speak normally. This passage shows that Jesus cared because Jesus specifically took this man aside, placed his hand on him to heal him. An example of Jesus taking care of people’s physical needs is in Mark 6:30-44. In this passage Jesus feeds the 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fish. Jesus broke the bread and the fish, blessed it and passed it around to all 5,000. Everyone ate and there were 12 baskets of left over. This passage shows that Jesus took care of people’s physical needs because the group of people following hadn't eaten all day and Jesus had compassion on them and fulfilled their physical need for food.
Mark 8:34 is the only time on the Gospel when Jesus calls the crowd together with disciples because his message is of very high importance. The price for discipleship is a complete denial of yourself in the name of God . And the mission of Jesus is to bring this message to humankind through his suffering and death on the cross. In Mark's gospel Jesus provides his identity which becomes the turning point in the human history. Before He was teaching, healing the sick, had scraps with authorities and established a group of disciples . Was it his mission? No. Jesus is the Messiah.
Many important themes arose while I was reading the Gospel of Mark. In my week 2 group discussion posts, the themes I listed were faith, power of prayer, forgiveness, repentance, optimism, gratitude and mercy. However there are more that I found in the chapter and I read through it again such as the healing power of God and standing for righteousness.