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Ascension
Later He appeared to the eleven
as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart,
because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. And He
said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He
who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be
condemned. And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will
cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents;
and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay
hands on the sick, and they will recover.” So then, after the Lord had spoken
to them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.
And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and
confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen (Mark 16:14-20).
Jesus
appears to the eleven and rebukes them. This makes sense; they certainly
deserve a scolding. Jesus had chosen specific people to be the first witnesses
of His resurrection: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. He appeared to them and
told them to bring the news of His defeat of death and the grave to His
disciples. But, when Mary Magdalene went and told them, as they mourned and
wept, the disciples did not believe. Jesus also appeared to two of them on the
road to Emmaus;[1]
they went and told the rest of the disciples, but they did not believe them
either. Isn’t it a little ironic that the disciples, who would soon be the
Apostles (the sent ones), did not
believe the ones sent to them?
How
could the disciples expect others to believe them, when they in turn would be
sent out to proclaim the risen Lord, if the disciples themselves persisted in
unbelief? Besides, Jesus had even prophesied his resurrection while he was
still with them.[2]
Then
Jesus speaks what we have come to call The Great Commission to His disciples,
though Mark records it differently from Matthew:
Go
into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and
is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.[3]
What
Mark writes here is often interpreted, particularly by certain factions of
American Protestantism, as commanding that Christians only baptize those who
profess faith beforehand: First, a person declares that they believe; then, and
only then, they are to be baptized. This is not so. Through the sacrament of
Holy Baptism God creates faith, saves, and washes away sin. This promise, Peter
will later proclaim to the crowd:
“Repent,
and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the
remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the
promise is to you, and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many
as the Lord Our God will call.”[4]
Baptism
is connected to repentance, to the remission of sins, and to the giving of the
Holy Spirit; it connects us to Christ’s death and resurrection;[5] in
baptism we are clothed with Christ.[6]
The order of the actions is not as important as the one who is doing the
actions; and the person doing all the actions in conversion is God.
What
I mean is this: It is the means of the Word that creates faith, by the working
of the Holy Spirit.[7]
Baptism, which God calls a washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy
Spirit,[8] is
a way God has instituted of delivering the Word that creates faith, using a physical
thing. In baptism, God bound His word to a physical thing, water; He promised
when water and His Word were bound in the way He gave it, it would be for
creating faith, forgiving sins, and giving the Holy Spirit - just as with His
preached word. The power working in baptism is the power of the Gospel of
Christ, or as Peter says, the resurrection of Jesus Christ;[9]
that is the same Gospel that is the power of God to salvation for everyone who
believes.[10]
The preaching, teaching, and baptizing cannot be separated from one another.
Continuing
His commission of His disciples-turned-Apostles, Jesus describes a list of
signs that would go with them as they preached: exorcism, speaking in tongues,
taking up serpents, drinking poison, and healing the sick. If these are the
signs that will follow those who believe, then I am in trouble, as are most
people who have called themselves Christians for the last 2,000 years. I have
cast out no demons; I speak a foreign language, but only due to hard studying;
it was no miracle. I have not ever taken up serpents or imbibed poison. The
only healing I have ever done by my own hand was to provide medicine to members
of my family when they were sick. Not only have I not performed any of these
signs and wonders, but I also know no one personally who even makes such a
claim. If we are to understand what Jesus says here as applying to all people
at all times, as many in the Pentecostal movement do, there are far fewer
Christians out there than previous assumed.
Mark,
conveniently enough, explains the purpose of these signs:
And
they [the Apostles] went out and
preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through
the accompanying signs. Amen.[11]
Amen
indeed! These signs were promised to the Apostles, not to every individual
Christian as a sign of faith. These signs were the credentials of the Apostles to
verify that what they were saying was true. All of these signs
were
already promised (Mark 3:15) when he [Jesus]
called the Twelve and were put into practice when they went out on their first
preaching journey (Mark 6:13). Examples of all of them are recorded in the book
of Acts...Nowhere did Jesus say that they would continue to the end of time.
What is to continue is the preaching of the gospel.[12]
And
the thing that each Christian is given, that they may cling to, that will
reassure them that they are connected to Christ and His righteousness, and are
a child of God, is their baptism - the preaching of the Gospel through physical
means - not signs and wonders, or personal, inward encounters with God.
Do
not misunderstand: It isn’t that God can’t
cause signs and wonders to happen. God is able to do whatever He wants to do.
If He chooses to give someone the gift of healing, of speaking a language that
they previously did not know, of speaking to someone directly, He can and will.
The issue is that God does not want to do these things. He has made that clear to
us in His Word. Those things are the incredibly rare exception, not the rule. The
author of Hebrews writes,
"God,
who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by
the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed
heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;"[13]
And
what does Jesus, through whom God the Father has spoken to us in these last
days, say? Rather than looking to perform signs and wonders, He tells His
Christians that the people who will perform signs and wonders are the false
prophets:
“And
unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s
sake those days will be shortened. Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is
the Christ!’ of ‘There!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false
prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible
even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand.”[14]
Since
Christ ascended to the right hand of God the Father, we have no more need of
signs, wonders, and direct revelation. He does not wish to deal with us in any
other way than through His external Word.[15]
It is in that Word, proclaimed by the Apostles, attested by God through their
signs and wonders, that He creates faith, forgives sins, teaches good doctrine,
and brings us to everlasting life in Christ Jesus. We should praise God that He
has given us such a wondrously simple, and gracious, way to reach all people,
infant or adult, hearing or deaf, mentally sound or mentally handicapped, with
His saving Word through baptism, which now saves us through the resurrection of
the ascended Jesus Christ.
Bibliography
McCain, Paul T, Robert C Baker, Gene E Veith, and
Edward A Engelbrecht,. Concordia, The Lutheran Confessions: A Reader's
Edition of the Book of Concord. 1st. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing
House, 2005.
Wicke, Harold E. People's
Bible Commentary: Mark. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2004.
[1] Luke
24:13-35
[2] Wicke,
People’s Bible Commentary: Mark,
p.238
[3]
Mark 16:15-16
[4]
Acts 2:38-39
[5] Romans
6:3-5
[6] Galatians
3:27
[7]
Romans 10:17
[8]
Titus 3:5
[9] 1
Peter 3:18-22
[10]
Romans 1:16
[11]
Mark 16:20
[12] Wicke,
People’s Bible Commentary: Mark,
p.239
[13]
Hebrews 1:1-2
[14]
Matthew 24:22-25
[15] SA
III VIII 10-13, McCain, et. al., Concordia,
the Lutheran Confessions,p.307
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