Mark 3:21

This scene comes straight after Jesus chooses the twelve (Mark 3:13–19), who were to be with him, to preach and to cast out devils. He has gone back into a house, likely in Capernaum, the centre of his work in Galilee. From the first chapter of Mark his teaching and healing had drawn people (Mark 1), and lately they had come from far beyond Galilee (Mark 3:7–8).

The multitude, ochlos, is the ordinary word for a crowd or throng of people. It “cometh together” (synérchomai, to come together or assemble) “again” (pálin), because this has happened before. The crowd would have held the sick and the troubled, the curious and the devout, and, as the next verses show, some who had come to find fault.

“So that they could not so much as eat bread” gives the result. To “eat bread” is the usual way of saying to have a meal, and “so much as” makes the statement as strong as it can be. The verb behind “could”, dýnamai, means to be able, and with the negative mḗ it says that eating was impossible for them. People ask whether this is an exaggeration. The crowd made a meal impossible in practice, filling every moment and every space, for houses were modest, often built around a small courtyard, and quickly packed. Jesus and the twelve went hungry because the people kept coming.

Jesus gives himself to people at a real cost to himself. Later he calls the disciples away to rest for a while (Mark 6:31). He had nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20, Luke 9:58), and he told his disciples that his food was to do the will of the one who sent him (John 4:31–34). There is a quiet irony in the scene as well. The one who would call himself the bread of life (John 6:35) goes without bread because of the people he came to feed. He came to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45), and this hungry day in a crowded house is a small early picture of that giving.

The KJV’s “his friends” translates hoi par’ autou, “those from beside him” or “his own people”. In this setting it means his family. His mother and brothers arrive later in the chapter (Mark 3:31–35), most likely on this same errand. They heard (akoúō) of the crowds and the missed meals, and they went out (exérchomai, to go or come out) “to lay hold on him”. That verb, kratéō, means to seize, so they meant to take him home, by force if need be.

Their reason was this: “He is beside himself.” Exístēmi means literally to put or stand out of one’s wits. It can describe astonishment, and here it means to be out of one’s mind. They saw a man who drew crowds day and night, went without food and set himself against the religious leaders, and they decided that his mind had given way. They may well have feared for his safety too, and for the family’s good name, which counted for a great deal in their world.

Their concern was real, and so was their blindness. John tells us that his brothers did not believe in him at this time (John 7:5). In this same chapter the unclean spirits knew who he was and cried it out (Mark 3:11), while those of his own house thought him mad. Isaiah foretold that he would be despised and rejected (Isaiah 53:3), and John writes that he came to his own and his own received him not (John 1:11). What looked like madness to them was perfect obedience to the Father. Paul says that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who perish, and to us who are saved it is the power and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:18–25). At the end of this chapter Jesus calls those who do the will of God his brother, his sister and his mother.

The scribes, grammateús, from a word for writing, were trained experts and teachers of the Law of Moses. These scribes “came down from Jerusalem”, the city of the temple and the seat of the nation’s religious authority, and the phrase fits its high standing. Their journey shows that the leaders in the capital were now watching Jesus closely, and their verdict would weigh heavily with the crowd. By now he had shown his authority over the Sabbath (Mark 2:23–28, Mark 3:1–6), and his following among ordinary people threatened their standing. They had no way to explain away what he did, so they gave it the worst explanation they could find.

The charge has two parts. “He hath Beelzebub” means that he is possessed, held by this spirit. “By the prince of the devils casteth he out devils” says where his power comes from. Árchōn, “prince”, means a ruler or chief, first in rank. Daimónion, “devils”, is the New Testament’s word for demons, the evil spirits who serve Satan. Ekbállō, “cast out”, means to throw or drive out. Verse 30 gives the charge again in its plainest form: “He hath an unclean spirit.”

The scribes grant that the devils really leave at his word. Mark has already told us how amazed the people were that he commanded unclean spirits and they obeyed him (Mark 1:27). The scribes dispute only the source, and so they call good evil, the very thing Isaiah pronounced a woe upon (Isaiah 5:20). Matthew and Luke tell of the same accusation (Matthew 12:24, Luke 11:15).

Jesus “called them unto him”. The verb proskaléomai means to summon, so he answers the scribes face to face. He speaks “in parables”. A parabolē can be a long story, and it can just as well be a comparison, a proverb or a short pointed saying, which is what we have here: a question followed by short pictures.

The question is “How can Satan cast out Satan?” Its “can” is dýnamai, the same verb as “could” in verse 20, and its “cast out” is ekbállō, the scribes’ own word from verse 22. The question takes their claim at its word for a moment and shows where it leads.

Verse 27 tells what is really happening: “No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house.” The strong man, ischyrós, is mighty and forcible. To bind, déō, is to tie up. To spoil, diarpázō, is to plunder, to seize and carry off. A strong man guards his own house, and whoever means to empty it has to overpower him and tie him up first. Only then can the goods be carried out.

In the picture the strong man is Satan, his house is his domain, and his goods are the people he holds captive by sin, sickness and the power of demons. Every person Jesus sets free is plunder carried out of that house, so his casting out of devils is the evidence that the strong man has met someone stronger and has been bound. The kingdom of God had come near, as Jesus proclaimed from the start (Mark 1:15), and he would later say that he saw Satan fall (Luke 10:18). John writes that the Son of God was manifested to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), and the victory goes back to the first promise, that the serpent’s head would be crushed (Genesis 3:15).

“Verily I say unto you” marks what follows as solemn and certain. Amḗn comes from Hebrew, from a root meaning firm or sure, and it is a strong affirmation, “truly”. In the Gospels this opening belongs to Jesus’ own way of speaking, and he sets it before his words on his own authority.

Then comes the promise: “All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme.” “The sons of men” means human beings. “Sins” is hamártēma, an act of sin, from a verb meaning to miss the mark. “Blasphemies” is blasphēmía, evil-speaking or slander, especially against God or holy things, and the verb “blaspheme” is blasphēméō. Under the law of Moses blasphemy was punished by death (Leviticus 24:16), yet Jesus places even blasphemy within the reach of forgiveness. “Shall be forgiven” speaks of God’s act, and Mark has already recorded the question, who can forgive sins but God alone (Mark 2:7). The one who speaks this promise has that authority.

God is ready to forgive. Though our sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow (Isaiah 1:18). He removes our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:10–12), and if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive them (1 John 1:9). Jesus came to call sinners to repentance (Luke 5:32).

This forgiveness rests on Christ himself. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) and the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2:2), and “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). God reconciles us to himself through Christ (2 Corinthians 5:18–19), the one mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5), and he calls us to repent and be baptized for the remission of sins (Acts 2:38). Against that wide promise, the one exception in the next verse stands out all the more.

It is what the scribes were doing in this scene: looking at the Holy Spirit’s work in Jesus, as devils fled at his word, and calling it the work of the devil. Mark makes this plain in verse 30. Jesus gave the warning “Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.” “Said” is légō, the common verb for speaking, and their words were a considered verdict. The Spirit who is holy was called akáthartos, unclean or impure. Pneûma, spirit, covers the Holy Spirit and evil spirits alike, and the scribes put the one in the other’s place.

The sentence on this sin is the heaviest in the passage. Such a person “hath never forgiveness”. Áphesis means release, pardon, the remission of sins, and here it is shut off. He “is in danger of eternal damnation”, which means he is liable to it. “Damnation” is krísis, judgment or condemnation, and “eternal”, aiṓnios, means lasting without end.

This sin stands apart because of what it rejects. God’s power to forgive is boundless, and forgiveness comes through repentance, which is the Spirit’s work in a sinner. The Spirit bears witness to Christ (John 15:26) and convicts the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment (John 16:8–11). A person who sees that witness plainly and calls it Satan’s work has set himself against the only one who could lead him to repentance. It is a settled hardening of the heart, light seen clearly and named darkness. Hebrews gives warnings of the same weight, about those whom it is impossible to renew again to repentance (Hebrews 6:4–6) and about sinning wilfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth (Hebrews 10:26–31). Matthew and Luke record the same warning, and they add that a word spoken against the Son of man shall be forgiven (Matthew 12:31–32, Luke 12:10).

In these verses we meet a Lord who spends himself for the crowds, who is misread by his own family and slandered by the experts of his day, and who answers the slander calmly with the truth. His family thought him mad while he was doing his Father’s work, so a disciple who is misunderstood by those closest to him stands where his Lord stood.

He is stronger than the strong man. Everyone Satan holds can be carried out of his house, because Christ has bound him and is plundering it still. And the same Lord opens the door of forgiveness as wide as words can open it, to “all sins” and to “blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme”. The one sin he names as never forgiven is the refusal of the Spirit who brings sinners to him, so the warning is for the hardened heart and the comfort is for anyone who comes. Whoever confesses Jesus as Lord and believes that God raised him from the dead shall be saved (Romans 10:9–10), for he is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).