19. The three quarrelings

[Life of Christ] [Previous] [Next]

A suffering god-man is a scandal. Men do not like to hear about their sins and the need for expiating them. Hence, whenever Jesus dragged in His Cross and paraded its necessity before His Apostles, they began fighting either Him or themselves. They were still obsessed with the idea that His Kingdom would be political, not spiritual. If He was going to Calvary, then it was best for them to “cash in” as quickly as possible on rewards, or posts, and privileges which were immediately available. The more explicit His prediction of His Cross, the more their ambitions, envies, and animosities were aroused.

Nothing is more beautiful in Our Lord’s character than the way He prepared His Apostles for that unpalatable lesson of seeming defeat as the condition of victory. How slow they were to understand the story of why He must suffer! It is no wonder Our Lord spoke openly but rarely of His Cross and Resurrection. For it was something few could understand until after it came to pass and the Spirit of Christ came into His followers. Many were the times He spoke of His death in a veiled manner; but three times He was explicit about the purpose of His coming:

1. After Peter’s affirmation of His Divinity and the conferring of the power of keys.

2. After His Transfiguration en route to Capharnaum.

3. On His last journey to Jerusalem.

But what strange reactions on the part of His Apostles! It was as if they would salvage for themselves, from the wreck of His Kingdom, some vestige of power and authority. That the Cross was the condition by which His Kingdom would be ushered in was farthest from their minds.

THE FIRST QUARRELING: CAESAREA PHILIPPI

When Our Blessed Lord came into this most northerly city of the Holy Land, a city that was half Jewish and half pagan, He spoke of the Church He would found. But before doing so, He had to make clear the form of government which would govern it. These forms could be threefold: democratic, aristocratic, and theocratic. The democratic is one in which authority and truth is decided by a vote or an arithmetical majority; the aristocratic is one in which authority is derived from a select few; the theocratic is one in which God Himself supplies and guides the revelation and the truth.

First appealing to the democratic, He asked His Apostles what was the general popular opinion concerning Him. If there had been a poll or a vote taken basing itself on the fallible judgments of men, what would be their answer to this question?

What do men say of the Son of Man?

Who do they think He is?

MATTHEW 16:13

The inability of men to agree among themselves concerning His Divinity was revealed in their answer:

Some say John the Baptist,

They told Him,

Others Elias, others again Jeremy

Or one of the prophets.

MATTHEW 16:14

Human opinion can give only conflicting, contrary, and contradictory answers. The four popular opinions show that Our Blessed Lord enjoyed a high reputation among His fellow men, but that none of them had recognized Him for what He was. Herod Antipas fancied that Our Lord was One animated by the spirit of John the Baptist; others thought He was Elias, because he had been taken up into heaven; and others, Jeremias, because some believed that Jeremias was to come as the precursor of the Messias.

Since no Church could ever be founded on a confusion of this kind, Our Blessed Lord now turned to the aristocratic form of government by asking His chosen ones, His little parliament, His apostolic band, their view.

And what of you?

Who do you say that I am?

MATTHEW 16:15

The appeal here was to all of them who had heard His teachings, had seen His miracles, and had been blessed even with the power of working miracles on others. This higher parliament had no answer—partly because they could not agree among themselves; in five minutes they would be quarreling. Judas certainly doubted His financial sagacity; Philip doubted His relations with His heavenly Father; and all of them were more or less expecting some secular liberator, who would put an end to the screaming eagles of Rome in their land.

Then, without solicitation or consent of the others, Peter stepped forward and gave the right and final answer:

Thou art the Christ,

The Son of the living God.

MATTHEW 16:16

Peter confessed Christ was the true Messias, commissioned by God to reveal His will to men and fulfilling all prophecies and the Law; He was the Son of God, begotten from all Eternity, but also the Son of Man begotten in time—true God and true man.

Our Blessed Lord revealed to Peter that he did not know this of and by himself; that no natural study or discernment could ever reveal this great truth.

Blessed art thou, Simon son of Jona;

It is not flesh and blood,

It is My Father in heaven

That has revealed this to thee.

MATTHEW 16:17

Our Blessed Lord called him first by the name that he had before he was summoned to be an Apostle. Then He called him by the new name He gave him, namely, the Rock, indicating that it was on him, the Rock, that He would found His Church. Peter was addressed by His Lord in the second person singular to indicate that it was not Peter’s confession of Divinity, but Peter himself who would hold primacy in the Church.

And I tell thee this in My turn,

That thou art Peter,

And it is upon this rock that I will build My church;

And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,

And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven;

And whatever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven

And whatever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

MATTHEW 16:18–18

After promising that the gates of hell, or error, or evil would never conquer His Church, Our Lord made the first of the most open confessions of His coming death. He had already given many veiled hints concerning it; but the Apostles had been slow to recognize that the Messias would suffer as Isaias had foretold. They missed the full implication of what He said when He cleansed the temple, that He was the Temple of God, and that the Temple would be destroyed. They had missed His teaching about the serpent lifted up as a prophecy of how the Son of Man would be lifted up on the Cross. But now that the man whom He had chosen as the chief of His apostolic body had confessed His Divinity, He openly showed them that the way to glory both for Him and for them led to suffering and death.

From that time onwards,

Jesus began to make it known to His disciples

That he must go up to Jerusalem,

And there, with much ill-usage

From the chief priests and elders and scribes,

Must be put to death,

And rise again on the third day.

MATTHEW 16:21

Our Lord said nothing openly of His death while His Apostles believed Him only to be man; but once He was acknowledged to be God, He spoke openly of His death. This was in order that His death might be viewed in its proper light as a sacrifice for sins.

Once more the mysterious “must” which ruled His life appeared. It was a strong cable that bound Him and was made up of a warp and a woof; obedience to the Father on the one hand, and love of men on the other. Because He would save, He must die. The “must” was not merely a death; for He immediately mentioned His Resurrection on the third day.

An intrinsic connection existed between the affirmation of Christ’s Divinity and His death and Resurrection. At the very moment that Christ received the loftiest of all titles, and the confession was made of His exalted dignity, He prophesied His greatest humiliation. Both the human and the Divine natures of Christ were involved in this prediction, namely, that of the Son of Man Who appeared before them and the Son of the Living God Who had just been confessed.

Peter puffed up with the authority that had been given him, took Our Lord aside and began rebuking Him saying:

Never, Lord,

No such thing shall befall Thee.

MATTHEW 16:22

The Divinity of Christ, he would accept; the suffering Christ, he would not. The rock had become a stumbling stone; Peter would have a half Christ for the moment, the Divine Christ, but not the Redeemer Christ. But a half Christ was no Christ. He would have the Christ Whose glory was announced at Bethlehem, but not the full-orbed Christ, Who would be a sacrifice for sins on the Cross.

Peter thought, if He was the Son of God, why should He suffer? Satan on the Mount of Temptation tempted Him from His Cross by promising popularity through giving Bread, working scientific marvels, or becoming a Dictator. Satan did not confess the Divinity of Christ, since he prefaced each temptation with an “if”—“If Thou art the Son of God.” To the credit of Peter, he did confess Divinity. But along with this difference, there was this likeness: both Peter and Satan tempted Christ from His Cross and therefore from Redemption. Not to redeem was Satan’s mind; to have the crown without the Cross was Satan’s spirit. But, it was also Peter’s. Therefore, Our Lord called him Satan:

Back, Satan; Thou art a stone in My path;

For these thoughts of thine, are man’s, not God’s.

MATTHEW 16:23

In an unguarded moment Peter had let Satan in his heart, thus becoming a stumbling stone on the road to Calvary. Peter thought it was unworthy of Christ to suffer; but to Our Lord such thoughts were human, carnal, and even Satanic. Only by Divine illumination did Peter or anyone else know Him to be the Son of God; but it took another Divine illumination for Peter or anyone else to know Him for the Redeemer. Peter would have kept Him a Teacher of humanitarian ethics—but so would Satan.

Peter never forgot this rebuke. Years later, with the idea of a stumbling block still in his mind, he wrote about those who refused to accept the suffering Christ as he had at Caesarea Philippi:

He is something other to those who refuse belief;

The stone which the builders rejected

Has become the chief stone at the corner,

A stone to trip men’s feet,

A boulder they stumble against.

I PETER 2:7

That the Apostles had their eloquent spokesman in Peter, and that they were all equally shocked at their Master’s suffering, is evident from the fact that after personally rebuking Peter, He spoke to all of His disciples and bade even the multitude to heed His remarks. To all who would ever profess to be His followers He enumerated three conditions:

If any man has a mind to come My way,

Let him renounce self,

And take up his cross, and follow Me.

MARK 8:34

The Cross was the reason of His coming; now He made it the earmark of His followers. He did not make Christianity easy; for He implied not only must there be a voluntary renouncement of everything that hindered likeness with Him, but also there must be the suffering, shame, and death of the Cross. They did not have to blaze a trail of sacrifice themselves, but merely to follow His tracks zealously as the Man of Sorrow. No disciple is called to the task that is untried. He had taken the Cross first. Only those who were willing to be crucified with Him could be saved by the merits of His death and only those who bore a Cross could ever really understand Him.

There was no question of whether or not men would have sacrifice in their lives; it was only a question of which they would sacrifice, the higher or the lower life!

He who tries to save his life will lose it;

It is the man who loses his life

For My sake, that will save it.

LUKE 9:24

If the physical, natural, and biological life was saved for pleasure, then the higher life of the spirit would be lost, but if the higher life of the spirit was chosen for salvation, then the lower or physical life had to be submitted to the Cross and self-discipline. There might be some natural virtues without a Cross, but there would never be a growth in virtue without it.

Cross-bearing, He then explained, was based on exchange. Exchange implies something that one can get along without, and something one cannot get along without. A man can get along without a dime, but he cannot get along without the bread which the dime will buy; so he exchanges one for the other. Sacrifice does not mean “giving-up” something, as if there were a loss; rather it is an exchange: an exchange of lower values for higher joys. But nothing in all the world is worth a soul.

How is a man the better for it

If he gains the whole world

At the expense of losing his own soul?

For a man’s soul, what price can be high enough?

MARK 8:39

At the very moment the Apostles were ashamed of Him because He spoke of His defeat and death, He warned against anyone being ashamed of Him or His words, or denying Him in times of persecution. If He had been only a Teacher, it would have been absurd for Him to claim that all men must openly and unashamedly confess Him as their Lord and Savior; it would have sufficed if they merely mouthed one or the other of His teachings. But here He makes it a condition of being saved that men boldly confess that He Who is the Son of God was crucified.

If anyone is ashamed of acknowledging Me and My words

Before this unfaithful and wicked generation,

The Son of Man, when he comes in his Father’s glory

With the holy angels,

Will be ashamed to acknowledge him.

MARK 8:38

THE SECOND QUARRELING: CAPHARNAUM

The second overt announcement of His Passion was after the Transfiguration and the driving out of the demon from the young boy. The Master and His Apostles had turned toward Capharnaum. The many miracles that Our Blessed Lord had worked between Caesarea Philippi and Capharnaum put the Apostles in a high state of excitement.

All were amazed at this great evidence of God’s power.

LUKE 9:44

The Apostles began translating this power into the hope of an earthly royalty and human sovereignty, despite the severe lessons they were given about the Cross. This kind of religious excitement, which would leave humanity unredeemed, Our Lord frowned upon.

And while men were yet wondering

At all that Jesus did,

He said to His disciples,

Remember this well.

The Son of Man is soon to be betrayed

Into the hands of men.

LUKE 9:44

They will put Him to death,

And He will rise again on the third day.

MARK 9:30

Our Lord repeated clearly the prediction of Calvary so that when it did take place, His disciples would not be weak in their faith or abandon Him. The repeated declarations also assured them that He was not going to the Cross by constraint, but as a willing sacrifice. The prospect which Our Lord put before them about His death they regarded with aversion; they not only refused to pay any attention, but even disdained to ask Our Lord any questions about it.

But they could not understand what He said;

It was hidden from them,

So that they could not perceive the meaning of it;

And they were afraid to ask Him

About this saying of His.

LUKE 9:45

The second announcement of His death and glory provoked the second quarrel. As they walked back to Capharnaum, they disputed among themselves, but not within the hearing of Our Blessed Lord.

And the question arose among them,

Which of them was the greatest.

LUKE 9:46

How superficial must have been the impression that Our Lord made upon them about His death, as they still inquired among themselves about priority in what they imagined to be a political and economic setup called the Kingdom of God! From the lips of the Divine Master, they had heard something of His sufferings, but now they wrangled about rank. Possibly the high position given to Peter at Caesarea Philippi intensified the dispute; perhaps also the fact that Peter, James, and John were chosen as witnesses to the Transfiguration aroused some resentment. In any case, they quarreled as they always did whenever He unveiled the Cross.

Knowing that the crisis was at hand when He would establish the Kingdom, they were stirred by ambition. But Our Blessed Lord knew what was in their hearts; and when they came into the house at Capharnaum where they usually enjoyed hospitality, probably Peter’s:

He asked them,

What was the dispute you were holding on the way?

They said nothing,

For they had been disputing among themselves

Which should be the greatest of them.

MARK 9:32

Tongues that were loud on the roadway where they disputed were now silent when the Master read their thoughts and when their own consciences accused them. The little attention they paid to His words about the Cross might be the reason for their not grasping why One full of the power they had seen in His miracles and in the resurrection of the dead should ever be so seemingly powerless. Why should He submit Himself to a death from which at any moment He could extricate Himself? It was a mystery that could not be understood until it was accomplished; and even after its accomplishment, it still remained a scandal to unbelievers among the Jews and the Greeks. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

Here are the Jews asking for signs and wonders,

Here are the Greeks intent on their philosophy;

But what we preach is Christ crucified;

To the Jews a discouragement,

To the Gentiles mere folly;

But to us who have been called Jew and Gentile alike,

Christ the power of God, Christ the wisdom of God.

I CORINTHIANS 1:23, 24

Evidently, the natural or carnal man was geared to receive Him as One Who came to give a moral code such as could be posted on church lawns; but to take Him for One coming into the world as a “ransom” for mankind required a higher wisdom. As St. Paul suggested:

Mere man with his natural gifts

Cannot take in the thoughts of God’s Spirit;

They seem mere folly to him,

And he cannot grasp them,

Because they demand a scrutiny which is spiritual.

I CORINTHIANS 2:14

This time, in order to correct their false ideas of superiority, with great solemnity He called a child to Himself:

And took it in His arms.

MARK 9:35

Since the Apostles had disputed as to who was highest in the Kingdom, Our Lord now gave the answer to their ambitious minds:

Believe Me, unless you go back,

And become like little children,

You shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.

He is greatest in the kingdom of heaven,

Who will abase himself like this little child.

MATTHEW 18:3–3

The greatest of all His disciples would be those who would be like little children; for a child stands as a representative of God and His Divine Son upon the earth. There was a nobility in His Kingdom, but it was opposite to the rank of the world. In His Kingdom one rose by sinking; one increased by decreasing. He said that He came not to be ministered to, but to minister. In His own Person, He was exemplifying humiliation as ascending to the depths of defeat of the Cross. Since they understood not the Cross, He bade them to learn of a child whom He embraced to His heart. The greatest are the least, and the least are the greatest. Honor and prestige are not to him who sits at the head of the table, but to him who girds himself with a towel and washes the feet of those who are his servants. He who is God became man; He who is Lord of heaven and earth humbled Himself to the Cross; this was the incomparable act of humility which they were to learn. If for the moment they could not learn it from Him, they were to learn it from a child.

THE THIRD QUARRELING: ON THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM

The third clear prophecy of Our Lord concerning the Cross which resulted in a dispute among the Apostles took place a little more than a week before He was crucified. He was on His way with His Apostles to Jerusalem for the last time. There was haste in His stride; resolution and fixed purpose were so stamped on His face that the Apostles could not miss them.

And now they were on the way going up to Jerusalem;

And still Jesus led them on,

While they were bewildered and followed Him with faint hearts.

MARK 10:32

The Master was walking well in advance of His Apostles up the steep mountain path. While they lagged behind, shrinking in uncomprehending terror as He hastened to His Cross, there was one thought uppermost in His mind: His voluntary submission to sacrifice. According to the Father’s plan, the Cross was necessary for Him as a means of imparting life to others. The Apostles, on the other hand, until the very last moment, were looking for some manifestation of His power which would release their nation from political bondage and lift them personally to some glory and dominion. They were amazed at His readiness to enter Jerusalem, which meant suffering. They were dreaming of thrones, and He was thinking of a Cross. Knowing their thoughts, He took the Apostles aside:

Now, we are going up to Jerusalem;

And there the Son of Man will be given up

Into the hands of the chief priests and scribes,

Who will condemn Him to death;

And these will give Him up into the hands of the Gentiles,

Who will mock Him, and spit upon Him,

And scourge Him, and kill Him;

But on the third day He will rise again.

MARK 10:32–32

Once again He wrapped up the gall of His Passion in the honey of the Resurrection. Calvary was not something before Him that He could not avoid, and therefore had to accept as a martyr’s role. There was the human shrinking from the suffering which evil would visit upon Him; but that shrinking never became a purpose. As the ship might be tossed on the waves, while maintaining its equilibrium, so too His physical nature might toss from side to side, while underlying it was the Father’s purpose, fixed and unalterable. But the Apostles could not understand a death that was vicarious, because offered for others, and at the same time a propitiation for sin.

They could make nothing of all of this;

His meaning was hidden from them,

So they could not understand what He said.

LUKE 18:34

How could He, Who had power over death, the winds, and the seas, and Whose mind could silence the tongues of the Pharisees, leave them comfortless and throw them back again into the world because He could not resist His enemies? That was their worry.

As on the other two occasions, now that He had spoken again of His death, a new quarrel broke out among the Apostles. James and John, who already had made themselves prominent by resenting the rudeness of the Samaritan villagers and asking Our Lord to destroy them, now made a request. The two brothers, who once had asked that fire descend upon their enemies, now asked that a great advantage be given to them. In irreverent presumptuousness, they asked Our Blessed Lord, immediately after He had spoken of His death, to become the tool of their own vanity.

Grant that one of us

May take his place on Thy right

And the other on Thy left,

When Thou art glorified.

MARK 10:37

There was some recognition of Christ’s authority, for they implied that He was a King Who could grant requests; but the conception of His Kingdom was worldly. Family influence and personal preferment gave high places in a secular kingdom; James and John, assuming that the kingdom of God was worldly, thought that their promotion could be on that basis. But Our Blessed Lord answered them:

You do not know what it is you ask.

Have you the strength to drink of the cup I am to drink of,

To be baptized with the baptism I am to be baptized with?

MARK 10:38

The bestowal of honors in His Kingdom was not a matter of favoritism, but of incorporation to the Cross. If He had to die in order to rise to glory, they would have to die to discover glory. If He had to drink the bitter cup to overcome evil, they must drink of the cup. The “cup” was here used as a symbol of the defeat which would be poured out to Him by faithless men. In the baptism of blood, He would be totally immersed in it; but the imagery also implied Purification or Resurrection.

In answer to the question about drinking the chalice James and John answered, “We can.” Though they did not understand precisely what they were accepting, Our Lord prophesied the fulfillment of their faith. James was the first to share in Christ’s baptism of blood, being murdered by Herod. John, indeed, did suffer; he lived a long life of persecution and banishment. After being put into a cauldron of boiling oil, he was miraculously preserved and died at an old age in Patmos. James became the patron of all the Red martyrs, who shed their blood because they drink of His cup. John became the symbol of what might be called the White martyrs, who endure physical sufferings and yet die a natural death.

Now begins the quarrel.

The ten others grew indignant with James and John

When they heard of it.

MARK 10:41

They were indignant because they all shared the same desire. Our Lord called the ten others to Him. James and John had been given their lesson; now it was time for the other ten to receive theirs. The first lesson He gave them was a repetition of what He had suggested in Capharnaum when He placed a little child in the midst of them, namely, the lesson of humility. What they were now to be taught was not what would make them preeminent in His Kingdom, but rather the meaning of that preeminence. He suggested a contrast between the despotism of worldly potentates and the dominion of love in His Own Kingdom. In the earthly kingdoms those who rule, such as kings, and nobles, and princes, and presidents, are ministered unto; in His Kingdom, the mark of nobility would be the privilege of ministry or serving.

You know that, among the Gentiles,

Those who claim to bear rule lord it over them,

And those who are great among them

Make the most of the power they have.

With you it must be otherwise;

Whoever has a mind to be first among you

Must be your slave.

MARK 10:42–42

In His Kingdom those who are the lowliest and the most humble will be the greatest and the most exalted. Though He regarded His Apostles as kings, they were, nevertheless, to establish their rights by being the least of men.

But the Savior would not merely give them a moral injunction without pointing to His Own Life, as an example of the humility He wished them to have. The whole truth was that He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. In effect, He was saying that He was a King and He would have a Kingdom; but this Kingdom would be obtained in a way other than the one by which secular princes secured theirs. He introduced the direct relationship between His laying-down His life and the spiritual sovereignty which that death would purchase.

So it is that the Son of Man

Did not come to have service done to Him;

He came to serve others, and to give

His life as a ransom for the lives of many.

MARK 10:45

Here, as elsewhere, He spoke of Himself as “coming” into the world in order to indicate that a human birth was not the beginning of His personal existence. He began His service long before men saw Him serve in compassion and mercy. His service began when He stripped Himself of heavenly glory and girded Himself with flesh woven in the looms of Mary.

The purpose of His coming into this world was to supply ransom and redemption. If He were merely the son of a carpenter, it would have been folly for Him to say that He came to minister. A servile position would have been routine and accepted; but for the King to become a servant, for God to become a man, was not presumption but humility. There was a ransom to be paid and that was death; for the “wages of sin is death.” Ransom would be meaningless if human nature was not in debt. Suppose a man were sitting alongside a pier on a bright summer day fishing contentedly; suddenly another man jumps off the pier in front of him into the river; as he goes down under the water for the third time to drown, he shouts to the man on the pier:

Greater love than this no man hath

That he lays down his life for his friend.

The whole proceeding would have been quite unintelligible because the man on the pier was in no danger and, therefore, not in need of rescue. If, however, he had fallen into the water and was drowning, then the individual who offered his life to save him would have significance in his death. If human nature had not fallen into sin, the death of Christ would be meaningless; if there had been no slavery, there would be no talk of ransom.

Many individuals disclaim responsibilities for the faults and failings of a collectivity. For example, when there is corruption in government, individuals often deny that they are involved. The more sinless people are, the greater they disclaim all relationship to those that are sinners. They almost assume that their responsibility varies in direct ratio with their sinfulness. Their argument is that since they are not responsible for the mistakes of society, they are not involved.

Actually, the contrary is true in those who are most sinless. The greater the sinlessness, the greater the sense of the responsibility and awareness of corporate guilt. The truly good man feels the world is the way it is because in some way he has not been better. The keener the moral sensitiveness, the greater is the compassion for those languishing under a burden. This can become so deep that the other person’s agony is directly felt as one’s own. The only person in the world who had eyes to see would want to be a staff to the blind; the only person in the world who was healthy would want to minister to the sick.

What is true of physical suffering is also true of moral evil. Hence the sinless Christ would take on the ills of the world. As the more healthy are better able to minister to the sick, so too the more innocent can better atone for the guilt of others. A lover would, if possible, take on the sufferings of the beloved. Divinity takes on the moral ills of the world as if they were His own. Being man, He would share in them; being God He could redeem for them.

Calvary, He was telling His quarrelling Apostles, would be no interruption of His life activities, no tragic and premature spoiling of His plan, no evil end which hostile forces would impose upon Him. The giving of His life would take Him out of the pattern of martyrs for righteousness, and of patriarchs for glorious causes. The purpose of His life, He said, was to pay a ransom for the liberation of the slaves of sin; this was a Divine “must” that was laid upon Him when He came into the world. His death would be offered in payment for evil. If men were only in error, He might have been a Teacher fenced in by all the comforts of life; and after having taught the theory of pain, He would die on a soft bed. But then He would have left no other message than a code to obey. But if men were in sin, He would be a Redeemer and His message would be “Follow Me,” to share in the fruit of that Redemption.

[Life of Christ] [Previous] [Next]