The Son, the Scribes, and the Strong Man

James J. Tissot, "Woe Unto You, Scribes and Pharisees"

 The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said of Jesus, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “By the prince of demons he drives out demons.” 

Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables, “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand; that is the end of him. But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house. 

Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an everlasting sin.” For they had said, “He has an unclean spirit” (Mk 3:22-30).

Jesus has just worked a miracle but the scribes refuse to recognize it "for they had said 'He has an unclean spirit'" (v. 30). They do not want to admit that God is the author of the miracle. In this attribute lies the special gravity of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit -- attributing to the prince of evil, to Satan, the good works performed by God himself ... That is why our Lord says that he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven: not because God cannot forgive all sins, but because that person, in his blindness towards God, rejects Jesus Christ, his teaching and his miracles, and despises the graces of the Holy Spirit as if they were designed to trap him (cf. St. Pius V Catechism, II, 5, 19; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II-II, q. 14, a. 3). CF. note on Mt 12:31-32.
--from The Navarre Bible: St. Mark

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The Catechism of the Catholic Church on "The Proclamation of the Kingdom of God"

543 Everyone is called to enter the kingdom. First announced to the children of Israel, this messianic kingdom is intended to accept men of all nations (Cf. Mt 8:11 10:5-7; 28:19). To enter it, one must first accept Jesus' word: 

The word of the Lord is compared to a seed which is sown in a field; those who hear it with faith and are numbered among the little flock of Christ have truly received the kingdom. Then, by its own power, the seed sprouts and grows until the harvest (Lumen Gentium 5; cf. Mk 4:14, 26-29; Lk 12:32).

546 Jesus' invitation to enter his kingdom comes in the form of parables, a characteristic feature of his teaching (Cf. Mk 4:33-34).

 

On "The Signs of the Kingdom of God"

547 Jesus accompanies his words with many "mighty works and wonders and signs", which manifest that the kingdom is present in him and attest that he was the promised Messiah (Acts 2:22; cf. Lk 7:18-23).

 

548 The signs worked by Jesus attest that the Father has sent him. They invite belief in him (Cf. Jn 5:36; 10:25, 38).  To those who turn to him in faith, he grants what they ask (Cf. Mk 5:25-34; 10:52; etc). So miracles strengthen faith in the One who does his Father's works; they bear witness that he is the Son of God (Cf. Jn 10:31-38). But his miracles can also be occasions for "offense" (Mt 11:6); they are not intended to satisfy people's curiosity or desire for magic. Despite his evident miracles some people reject Jesus; he is even accused of acting by the power of demons (Cf. Jn 11:47-48; Mk 3:22).

 

549 By freeing some individuals from the earthly evils of hunger, injustice, illness and death (Cf. Jn 6:5-15; Lk 19:8; Mt 11:5), Jesus performed messianic signs. Nevertheless he did not come to abolish all evils here below (Cf. Lk 12 13-14; Jn 18:36), but to free men from the gravest slavery, sin, which thwarts them in their vocation as God's sons and causes all forms of human bondage (Cf. Jn 8:34-36).

550 The coming of God's kingdom means the defeat of Satan's: "If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Mt 12:26, 28). Jesus' exorcisms free some individuals from the domination of demons. They anticipate Jesus' great victory over "the ruler of this world" (Jn 12:31; cf. Lk 8:26-39). The kingdom of God will be definitively established through Christ's cross.

Stretch Out Your Hand

Jesus entered the synagogue. There was a man there who had a withered hand. They watched Jesus closely to see if he would cure him on the sabbath so that they might accuse him. He said to the man with the withered hand, “Come up here before us.”

Then he said to the Pharisees, “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” But they remained silent.

Looking around at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart, Jesus said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out and his hand was restored.

The Pharisees went out and immediately took counsel with the Herodians against him to put him to death (Mk. 3:1-6).

This scene is the fifth in a continuous series of confrontations with the Pharisees beginning even from the outset of Jesus' public ministry in the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus is criticized for what He does and does not do, with the Pharisees holding themselves as the standard to be imitated (Mk 2:18). Jesus is not only criticized for His good works performed on the Sabbath (Mk 2:23-28, 3:1-2), but is also judged as a blasphemer, deserving of death for these deeds and for His outright claim of having the power to forgive sins (Mk 2:1-12).

According to the Mosaic Law, the two transgressions of which the Pharisees accused Jesus-- blasphemy and breaking the Sabbath-- were punishable by stoning to death. But as the Gospel texts seem to indicate, it was in fact the Pharisees' own sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit that led them to reject Jesus and to call for His death. They failed to see that Jesus' work was not a violation of the Sabbath, but was actually its highest fulfillment, performed by the One who is Himself the Fulfillment of the Law; and that the healing He ultimately offers is nothing less than the fulfillment of our deepest longing: to enter into God's rest.

The sin of the Pharisees was their refusal to accept God's mercy as offered to them in the person, in the gift of Jesus. Unlike the disabled man who came to the Synagogue to worship the Lord on the Sabbath, to ask the Lord for what he needed, as he knew that he could only be restored to health by the mercy of God, and who accepted Jesus' merciful offer of healing expressed in the words, "Stretch out your hand," it would seem that the Pharisees present in the same Synagogue had not come to worship the Lord. They had come to judge and to condemn, as though they themselves were God's judges of the people. They did not understand and could only reject Jesus because the God they worshiped was in their minds a God completely without mercy, as though He were like themselves, all too ready to condemn and punish anything they deemed to be a transgression of the Law they themselves professed to follow without fail.  This was the cause of Jesus' anger against them, and of His grief at their hardness of heart.

The term "withered" is commonly used in the Scriptures to describe crops that had failed or were blighted.  In a later episode in Mark's Gospel account, a fig tree that Jesus curses becomes "withered to the root" (Mk 4:6, 11:20-21). We see this term applied to the human body in the prophet Zechariah's curse upon a "worthless shepherd" over Israel, that his "right arm be wholly withered" and "his right eye utterly blinded" (Zech 11:17); that his ability to act as a shepherd be taken away from him. Here in Mark's Gospel, in healing the man's disabled hand, Jesus gives the man his life back, restoring to him the ability to earn a livelihood. In performing this work of mercy on the Sabbath, Jesus in effect has made it possible for this same man from then on to observe the Sabbath with great joy and gratitude, as he now has work from which he can rest. It is God who gives us our work and our ability to perform it.  In healing on the Sabbath, Jesus echoes God's greatest act of creation-- namely, the Sabbath-- which He points out was made for man (Mk 2:27), as a time when we come before God so that He might heal us and restore us to Himself.

We also note that Jesus does not say to the man with the withered hand, "Come up here before me," but rather, "before us." Jesus considers Himself a part of these people assembled in the Synagogue, even though they want to kill Him, as He is the same Lord who is forever mindful of His covenant, even when we are unfaithful; as He continues to accompany each of us on our faltering journeys, ever faithful to His promise to be with us "always, even unto the end of the age"  (Mt. 28:20).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church 
on the Sins of Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit and Against Hope

1864 "Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven"(Mt 12:31; cf. Mk 3:29; Lk 12:10). 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 (Cf. John Paul II, DeV 46). Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss.

2090 When God reveals Himself and calls him, man cannot fully respond to the divine love by his own powers. He must hope that God will give him the capacity to love Him in return and to act in conformity with the commandments of charity. Hope is the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beatific vision of God; it is also the fear of offending God's love and of incurring punishment.

2091 The first commandment is also concerned with sins against hope, namely, despair and presumption:
By despair, man ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is contrary to God's goodness, to his justice - for the Lord is faithful to his promises - and to his mercy.

2092 There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God's almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit).