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Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
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Mark 6:4
Comments
Christ sums up the situation. He accounts for the unbelief of his native Nazareth, even though he goes on to marvel at it. Every prophet deserves honour, for he speaks from God with the authority that God gives him, and the people should recognize that authority, otherwise they cannot benefit from his message. They must attach faith to what he says. But one obstacle to this is overfamiliarity. That produces a very bad effect in fallen man when it comes to accepting that someone has been given a prophetic ministry by God, because the familiar person is too ready to trust his own opinion. What he thinks he knows becomes the enemy of what he does not yet know, and his mind closes itself to any message from God. Here is a prophet. All the people know that a prophet deserves great honour and is to be treated as someone of great dignity. The people will not allow themselves to become overfamiliar with him. But his family and those who live in his street and know him well cannot bring themselves to treat him in this special way; it would require them look at him like this. ‘He is just our brother; he is just our neighbour. We have known him all our lives. Don’t tell us we don’t really know him.’ This gives an excuse for his prejudices to come into play. It is easy to say, I know all about this person; I know him too well to have missed the fact that he has been given a ministry by God to which I ought to pay close attention. It is partly pride at work. If I can account for this person, I don’t have to show any special respect for them. I have learnt to think of them as occupying a certain place in my world, and I am not going to change that and suddenly start treating them as far more special than I realised.As a result their faith was stunted. Although all others were ready to evaluate Christ on the basis of his miracles and his teaching (or that of the disciples), the people of Nazareth were not going to believe in him, and therefore they were not going to see any great miracles done among them, for Christ insisted on faith in order to do his healings and exorcisms.
Application
Questions
But why didn’t the Spirit simply overrule their unbelief and cause them to see who Christ truly was? Or why didn’t Christ do this? Doesn’t he have to do this in the case of every human being before they can believe? What was different about this particular unbelief? As Hendriksen says, ‘Instead of asserting his power to suppress the people’s rebellious stand. he respected their own responsibility for their attitudes and actions.’ They are left in their unbelief to teach us a lesson about the nature of unbelief.
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