5
Radical Discipleship
(Mark 9:42–50)
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than, having your two feet, to be cast into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. If your eye causes you to stumble, throw it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if the salt becomes unsalty, with what will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” (9:42–50)
In this unique portion of Scripture, replete with graphic terminology, dramatic acts, severe warnings, and shocking threats, the Lord Jesus Christ reveals the radical nature of true discipleship. The word “radical” may be understood in two ways. First, it can mean “basic,” “fundamental,” or “foundational,” describing something primary, intrinsic, or essential. Paradoxically, the second and more common meaning of “radical” is something that deviates by its extreme; something “fanatical,” “severe,” or “revolutionary.”
The Lord’s message is essential for the time in which we live, when much of so-called Christianity, even evangelical Christianity, is marked by superficiality. The language here is severe, extreme, and forceful, in keeping with the nature of our Lord’s repeated calls to true discipleship. He charged people to repent (Matt. 4:17; Luke 13:3, 5), to deny themselves (Matt. 16:24)—even to the point of suffering or dying for His sake (Matt. 10:38; Luke 9:23), to be willing to forsake all family ties (Luke 14:26–27), to hate their own lives (Luke 14:26) in the sense of being willing to lose them (John 12:25), and to forsake everything (Matt. 19:27; Luke 5:11, 27–28) and unconditionally follow Him (John 12:26).
This passage displays four aspects of radical discipleship: radical love, radical purity, radical sacrifice, and radical obedience.
RADICAL LOVE
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea. (9:42)
Because He is zealous for the corporate righteousness of His church, Jesus called for love for other believers that prevents leading them into sin. God has always been protective of His people. When He made a covenant with Abraham, He told him, “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse” (Gen. 12:3). “Do not touch My anointed ones,” He cautioned, “and do My prophets no harm” (Ps. 105:15). Speaking to Israel in Zechariah 2:8, God likened assaulting His people to poking Him in the eye: “He who touches you, touches the apple [pupil] of His eye.”
The truth about how believers are to treat one another is based on the principle the Lord expressed in Mark 9:37, “Whoever receives one child like this in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent Me.” As noted in the exposition of that verse in chapter 4 of this volume, since Christ lives in every believer, how one treats a believer is how one treats Christ, and how one treats Christ is how one treats God. In the upper room on the eve of the crucifixion, Jesus said to the disciples, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives whomever I send receives Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me” (John 13:20). Paul reminded the Corinthians that “the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (1 Cor. 6:17) and declared in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” On his way to Damascus to persecute Christians, Paul encountered the risen, glorified Jesus Christ, who demanded of him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4; cf. 22:7–8; 26:14–15). In the judgment, how people treat Christians will be considered how they treated Christ:
Then the King will say to those on His right, “Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.” Then the righteous will answer Him, “Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?” The King will answer and say to them, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.” Then He will also say to those on His left, “Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.” Then they themselves also will answer, “Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?” Then He will answer them, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.” These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matt. 25:34–46)
The truth that how one treats a believer is how one treats Christ prompted the Lord’s warning against causing one of these little ones who believe to stumble. Clearly, this does not refer to physical children, as the phrase who believe shows. Skandalizō (stumble) refers to causing someone to be tripped by temptation and fall, or to be led into sin (cf. its similar use in 2 Cor. 11:29). Verses 43, 45, and 47 of Mark 9, along with Matthew 5:29–30 and 1 Corinthians 8:13, call for drastic action to avoid being led into sinful behaviors that lead unregenerate sinners to eternal punishment in hell.
Jesus’ statement that it would be better for one who leads a believer into sin than if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea—in other words, that it is better to die a horrible death by drowning than to cause another Christian to sin—must have shocked His hearers. But according to 1 Corinthians 13, love takes no pleasure in seeing someone fall into sin; it “does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth” (v. 6). Peter wrote that Christians are to “keep fervent in [their] love for one another” (1 Peter 4:8). That kind of all-encompassing love does not solicit sin; it covers it. Fervent love stimulates others to holiness. It thinks more highly of others than of oneself, elevates them, and encourages them to righteousness (Phil. 2:3–4). Jesus called for radical love, the kind of righteous love that would never be a cause of sinful solicitation to another person.
Such sinful solicitation may happen in one of four ways.
First, by direct temptation; that is, by overtly enticing someone to sin against the law of God. That may involve specific sins, such as lying, gossiping, cheating, stealing, or committing sexual sins, or in more general terms inducing people to love the world, or drawing them into ungodly enterprises and activities. Potiphar’s wife “looked with desire at Joseph, and she said, ‘Lie with me’” (Gen. 39:7). “If sinners entice you,” Solomon warned, “do not consent” (Prov. 1:10). Proverbs 7:6–23 relates the story of a brazenly immoral woman who seduced a foolish young man:
For at the window of my house I looked out through my lattice, and I saw among the naive, and discerned among the youths a young man lacking sense, passing through the street near her corner; and he takes the way to her house, in the twilight, in the evening, in the middle of the night and in the darkness. And behold, a woman comes to meet him, dressed as a harlot and cunning of heart. She is boisterous and rebellious, her feet do not remain at home; She is now in the streets, now in the squares, and lurks by every corner. So she seizes him and kisses him and with a brazen face she says to him: “I was due to offer peace offerings; today I have paid my vows. Therefore I have come out to meet you, to seek your presence earnestly, and I have found you. I have spread my couch with coverings, with colored linens of Egypt. I have sprinkled my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon. Come, let us drink our fill of love until morning; let us delight ourselves with caresses. For my husband is not at home, he has gone on a long journey; he has taken a bag of money with him, at the full moon he will come home.” With her many persuasions she entices him; with her flattering lips she seduces him. Suddenly he follows her as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as one in fetters to the discipline of a fool, until an arrow pierces through his liver; as a bird hastens to the snare, so he does not know that it will cost him his life.
Second, by indirect temptation. In Ephesians 6:4 Paul cautioned parents, “Do not provoke your children to anger” by such things as inattention, lack of affection, lack of forgiveness, lack of kindness, or overbearing expectations.
Third, by setting an example that will cause others to sin. Paul warned against doing so in Romans 14:13, when he wrote, “Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this—not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother’s way.” In verse 21 he elaborated on that principle: “It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine, or to do anything by which your brother stumbles.” Instead,
We who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves. Each of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to his edification. For even Christ did not please Himself; but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached You fell on Me.” (15:1–3)
Finally, by failing to stimulate others to righteousness, ignoring the exhortation of Hebrews 10:24: “Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.”
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire … If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than, having your two feet, to be cast into hell … If your eye causes you to stumble, throw it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. (9:43, 45, 47–48)
This point is closely connected to the previous one. Christians cannot lead others into righteousness unless they are righteous themselves; if one’s own heart is impure, he will lead others into sin. Therefore Jesus called for radical, severe dealing with sin. The consequences of not doing so are devastating, as the seventeenth-century English Puritan John Owen notes:
Where sin, through the neglect of mortification, gets a considerable victory, it breaks the bones of the soul (Ps. 31:10; 51:8), and makes a man weak, sick, and ready to die (Ps. 38:3–5), so that he cannot look up (Ps.40:12; Isa. 33:24); and when poor creatures will take blow after blow, wound after wound, foil after foil, and never rouse up themselves to a vigorous opposition, can they expect anything but to be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, and that their souls should bleed to death (2 John 8)? (Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor, eds., Overcoming Sin and Temptation [Wheaton: Crossway, 2006], 54)
The Old Testament account of Samuel hacking Agag to pieces (1 Sam. 15:33) is a good analogy for the need for Christians to take drastic steps to defeat the sin that remains in their lives. That is explicitly commanded in the New Testament. “For if you are living according to the flesh,” Paul wrote, “you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13). In Colossians 3:5 he added, “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.” Christians are to “deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age” (Titus 2:12). Peter exhorted his readers to “abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11).
The mention of body parts—hand, foot, and eye—emphasizes that the battle against sin includes all aspects of believers’ lives; what they do, where they go, and what they see. The references to hell as the disastrous alternative indicate that these statements are calls to the initial repentance and faith in Jesus Christ that accompanies salvation (cf. James 4:8). They prompt people to remove anything in their lives that would be a barrier to entering into eternal life in the kingdom of God. But the present tense of the verb translated causes in these verses indicates that the struggle against temptation and sin is continual. There is no salvation apart from a heart that seeks after righteousness (Matt. 5:6). But that initial commitment then becomes the believer’s lifelong pattern (Rom. 13:14; 1 Cor. 9:24–27; 2 Cor. 7:1). Jesus called for radical, severe action against anything that hinders the pursuit of holiness, righteousness, and purity throughout the Christian life.
The action He had in mind both here and in the similar metaphoric language in Matthew 5:29–30 was not, of course, physical mutilation. Misguided ascetics over the centuries have foolishly assumed that the way to defeat sin was through emasculating or otherwise mutilating themselves. But a person with one hand, foot, or eye is no less capable of sinning, because no matter what body parts are lost, sin remains in the heart:
And He was saying, “That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.” (Mark 7:20–23; cf. v. 15)
James added, “Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death” (James 1:14–15; cf. Prov. 4:23).
Gehenna (hell) appears twelve times in the New Testament, all but one of those uses by Christ (vv. 43, 45, 47; Matt. 5:22, 29, 30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Luke 12:5; cf. James 3:6). As the reference to unquenchable fire indicates, gehenna always refers to the eternal hell, the lake of fire, never to the place of the dead in general, which is identified by a different word, hades. The name gehenna derives from the Old Testament valley of Hinnom, located just south of Jerusalem (Josh. 15:8; 18:16; 2 Kings 23:10; 2 Chron. 28:3; 33:6; Neh. 11:30; Jer. 7:31–32; 19:2, 6; 32:35). There the apostate Jewish people sacrificed infants to Molech, the abominable false god of the Ammonites (1 Kings 11:7), by burning them to death (2 Kings 17:17; 21:6; Jer. 32:35)—an appalling practice that God strictly prohibited (Lev. 18:21; 20:2–5) and strongly condemned (Jer. 7:31–32; 32:35). Both the wicked kings Ahaz (2 Chron. 28:3) and Manasseh (before he repented, 2 Chron. 33:6) sacrificed their children in the valley of Hinnom. Because of those sacrifices, the place became known as Topheth, which derives from a Hebrew word meaning drum. Evidently drums were beaten loudly to drown out the screams of the babies being burned alive. As part of his reforms, the godly king Josiah destroyed that place of sacrifice. The valley of Hinnom was turned into Jerusalem’s garbage dump, where a fire burned continually in the midst of the rubbish. It thus became a graphic illustration of eternal hell, a place where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched (cf. Isa. 66:24).
These words compose the strongest call to discipleship our Lord ever gave. He challenges everyone to either deal radically with sin, or be cast into the eternal garbage pit of hell, “the outer darkness” (Matt. 8:12), “the furnace of fire” (Matt. 13:42), where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 22:13).
RADICAL SACRIFICE
For everyone will be salted with fire. (9:49)
The meaning of this cryptic and difficult saying can best be understood by examining Scripture passages in which salt and fire are mentioned together. Ezra 6:9 and Ezekiel 43:23–24 connect both salt and fire with the Old Testament sacrifices. Salt, a preservative, was added to the sacrifices when they were burned as a symbol of God’s enduring covenant. Specifically, the grain offering seems to be in view here. In Leviticus 2:13, God commanded the people of Israel, “Every grain offering of yours, moreover, you shall season with salt, so that the salt of the covenant of your God shall not be lacking from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.”
The grain offering, one of the five Old Testament offerings along with the burnt, peace, sin, and guilt offerings, was an offering of consecration, symbolizing total devotion to the Lord. Just as salt symbolized God’s enduring faithfulness, so everyone, that is all believers, should make a long-term, enduring, permanent sacrifice of their lives to God; “to present [their] bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is [their] spiritual service of worship” (Rom. 12:1).
RADICAL OBEDIENCE
Salt is good; but if the salt becomes unsalty, with what will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” (9:50)
In the days before refrigeration, salt was good because it was the most widely used preservative for food. Chemically, salt (sodium chloride) is very stable and does not easily degrade. But sometimes salt gathered from the vicinity of the Dead Sea was contaminated with gypsum. If not properly processed, it could lose its effectiveness as a preservative and become unsalty and tasteless (Luke 14:34). Since it could not be made salty again, such salt was “useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; [and was] thrown out” (Luke 14:35).
Thus, Jesus’ command, Have salt in yourselves, is a call to radical obedience; to a holy life preserved by righteousness. He then gave the disciple a direct practical application, commanding them to “be at peace with one another”—a fitting challenge to those proud, self-serving, hypercompetitive men who were constantly bickering over which of them was the greatest (cf. 9:34; Matt. 18:1–4; 20:20–24; Luke 22:24).
When believers engage in radically loving, pure, sacrificial, obedient discipleship, they will be radical witnesses. Christians are the only true “salt of the earth” (Matt. 5:13). There are no other spiritual influences for modeling the truth other than the lives of true disciples of Jesus Christ, who are known by the radical nature of their discipleship.