Mark 12:28 Commentary and Bible Study

‘One of the scribes came’ – just one now. In that they picked one, we may assume they picked the most learned of them all, and the best available spokesman, and he came to ask the last trick question. Although we might read Mark’s account and think that this man came with a genuine question because he had appreciated Christ’s answer to the Sadducees, Matthew says otherwise. Christ had silenced the Sadducees – they were unable to recover from the defeat they had publicly suffered. They had been humiliated. Matthew tells us that this lawyer came as a result of a consultation of the Pharisees. They were considering what to do next. They were glad about what had happened to the Sadducees, but they still wanted to destroy Christ. So they sent their best spokesman, their sharpest debater. The lawyer came alone but he was sent by them. He came ‘tempting him’, or testing him. Now the man they choose is a man who has heard the previous interactions and he has respect for Christ but, at the same time, he obviously has enormous confidence, that he can succeed where others have failed and that he can out-debate Christ, as it were. So he begins with a leading question.He asked him, ‘Which is the first commandment?’ Why was this a test? Now you can imagine, there were great debates over these issues. This is what the scribes were expert in, and this lawyer clearly thought to himself, ‘Jesus of Nazareth? Where does he come from? Nazareth? What does he know about debating the finer points of the law? What has he ever considered concerning the priority of one law over another, or the greater or lesser importance of laws? I can bring him down. I can entangle him in deep, complex, technical discussions about the law and the priorities of all the laws of Moses. This Jesus of Nazareth had got to be made to fail. He has got to be bettered. He has got to run into somebody superior in argument and knowledge and expertise in these things. This man will be considering hundreds of laws, gathered from the Pentateuch. Which is the first one, which should have precedence over all the others? And this will lead him in to a complex debate. That is clearly the strategy – to belittle him and to try to bring him down and out-argue, out-debate him. But the reply of Christ is most unexpected.