The CROSSroads: Personal Lessons from Mark's Gospel by Rev. Mitch Schultz

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:34:14utc

Lesson Ten: LIVING WITHOUT STRUCTURE (Mark 1:40-45)

"Jesus sent him away with a strong warning." (vs.43)

Living a disciplined well-ordered life is perhaps the key to successful holy living. I have found in my life that when my private world is in disarray I have no sense of closeness with God. Without structure and discipline the rooms of my heart become sloppy and untidy and uninviting to my Lord. It is not that our efforts at routines and habits make us any holier, but that these efforts of self discipline enable us to keep our focus fixed on the one who makes us holy. Discipline does not make us holy but helps us to maintain holiness. It is significant that Peter calls us to holiness in 1 Peter 1 (be holy because I am holy; vs.16) by demanding first that we live self-controlled lives. (prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; vs.13). We are declared holy through the redemption work of Christ, but to live out that holiness requires careful disciplines on our part.

It seems from the passage before us that Jesus was speaking to a man whose life was not very tidy. Jesus heals him and tells him to go to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses prescribed. The man is commanded to direct his worship to God first rather than make his healing a celebrity cause. Being undisciplined he ignores the need for spiritual discipline and ritual, and with little regard to the effect this has on Christ he tells everyone he sees. You almost get the feeling that he was more interested in promoting himself than exalting Christ. While this cost Jesus the opportunity to speak freely, you wonder if it also cost the man his soul. He did not respond to Christ's healing by giving his life fully to God as an act of worship. Unless we lay our all on the altar, and discipline our lives in the way Christ prescribes, we can never experience holy living. Sometimes the price for this neglect is great.

Bob Dylan's conversion to Christianity and his subsequent rejection of it for Judaism has always been a mystery to me. I have before me one of Bob Dylan's classic albums in CD. The lyrics of SAVED are rich with Christian truths and expressions of commitment to the gospel. You cannot listen to these words and not believe that this man understood the gospel and had been touched in some significant way by the Lord Jesus. Yet why did this man who had such a clear understanding of the gospel reject its message, trading in the new wineskin for the old? It was only some years ago that I heard what I believe to be the answer to this question. Bob Dylan never became involved with other Christians and never joined a church family. He was touched by Jesus, but rather than go to the priest and offer sacrifices, he loosely spoke of Christ before the people only to become another Christian celebrity with no roots to the body of Christ.

May God help us to seek holiness first, to place our lives on the altar as living sacrifices even before we pour out what God has done before others.

"So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and build up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and over flowing with thankfulness." (Col. 2:6,7)