Mark 8:38 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Mark 8:38

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The word ‘ashamed’ translates the Greek which comes from disfigurement. The idea behind the word is this: if a person is deeply disfigured, then that person would naturally want to hide his features or her features in some way. They would be an embarrassment to that person. That's the idea behind the word. ‘I don't want my work colleagues to know I'm a Christian. I'm embarrassed by my association with Christ. I don't want my family to know too much about it. I want to be a secret disciple. I am ashamed of Christ.’ It's like having a disfigurement, and that disfigurement is Christ. ‘I shall be silent and I won't represent him, and I won't stand for him.’ ‘Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me’ – it couldn't be better translated. ‘Ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation.’ ‘When he cometh.’ He is coming, and suddenly one morning, one afternoon, one twilight, there'll be a most astonishing light. Just now and then, a special kind of storm comes, and before it comes there is the strangest sky that you have seen for weeks You say, ‘It looked like that one day last year.’ It doesn't often happen: a quiet, menacing, sulking sky with a threat in it, and you say, something unusual is coming. It's not an adequate illustration, but something many times more mysterious and unusual than that will take place before the coming of the Son of Man, and believers will know what it means. Then also there will be a sound. The Scripture describes it in different ways: a mighty sound, a piercing sound, a trumpet sound – though that may be a metaphor. But there will be a commanding, resounding effect that we have never heard before, and a light, and Christ will come in his glory. How can we describe that? The glory of his Father! We cannot begin to know except that it will be overwhelming and glorious and magnificent. ‘When he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels’, and time will be ended. On that day he will be ashamed of all who were ashamed of him.

Application

Even though we are surrounded by a society and a generation which revels in sin and adultery and LGBT values; even though it's going to be rough for us, to be ashamed of him and his words is so grave, is so insulting, is so treacherously ungrateful, that Christ says, ‘Of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed.’ Such a person must surely be a nominal Christian, not a true Christian. So if that's my position, and I insist, ‘It doesn't represent me’, then I better get out of it quickly. I had better pray for deliverance from it, and represent him as I should. I better let it be known that I am his, and speak for him, and pray for the lost and seek to reach them with the gospel. If Christ would be ashamed of me because I'm ashamed of him, I must be nowhere. So I’ll reverse my way of life, and I'll ask him to help me, and I will show this proof of conversion also.

Do you have in you the mark of salvation? Not necessarily a condition of salvation, but a certain mark that you're a willing cross bearer, that you're not trying to save the old life; that you readily take up the new life, and that you represent him? These are wonderful signs and seals of assurance.

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Mark 8:38 Commentary and Bible Study