Глава седьмая. Второй период служения Христова: кризис

Behold, this lieth to fall and to the revolt of many in Israel and in subject of controversy, let it be revealed thoughts of many hearts. § 28. Healing of the paralytic in Jerusalem. The disciples plucking ears of grain on the “second first” Saturday. Healing on Saturday of a withered arm, a demoniac, a crumpled woman, and one suffering from water sickness The Lord Christ showed “powers” ​​among the Jews so that they would repent and be saved. If the Jews truly loved God and His eternal life, then, seeing the miracles of Jesus Christ, they would “repent in sackcloth and ashes” (Matthew 11:20-24; Luke 10:13-15). They had to reason like this: the abundance of miraculous benefits shown to Israel testifies that God has visited His people and that His kingdom has come; therefore, Israel must accept the law of the kingdom of God - that new teaching, the truth of which can be verified by anyone who wants to do the will of God - must repent, cast off all attachments and be spiritually reborn. But the Jews did not repent. The Lord Christ performed many miracles and benefits; rumors about Him spread throughout Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan, throughout Syria; He performed as many miracles as the Jews could only expect from the time of the Messiah, but they did not repent. The Jews rejoiced at the miracles of Jesus Christ, they saw that their wildest expectations were becoming reality, they hoped and wished that this reality would continue forever. Such a mood of theirs hid a lot of evil within itself, and this evil had to be discovered. When the rumor about the miracles of Jesus Christ spread and people flocked to Him from everywhere, He went to Jerusalem: there His ministry solemnly began, and there a new period of His ministry was to begin, the time when “the thoughts of the hearts were revealed” (Luke 2:35) of the Jews. In Jerusalem, Jesus Christ healed a sick man, probably a paralytic, who had been waiting in vain for thirty-eight years for healing from a source called Bethesda. Jesus said to the sick man, “Do you want to be healthy? Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And he immediately became well, and took up his bed and walked. It was on the Sabbath day. According to the explanation of St. Ephraim the Syrian, Jesus Christ said the words “get up, take up your bed” so that on the Sabbath day they would see someone healed 85. It should be noted that this time the Lord Christ did not say to the healed man: “Get up, take up your bed, and go to your house” (ὕπαγε εἰς τὸν οἶχον σου Matthew 9:6; Mark 2:11; πορεύου εἰς τὸν οἶχον σου Luke 5:24), as it was said to the healed Capernaum paralytic, but he said: “Take up your bed and walk” (περιπάτει), and the healed one, with the bed in his hands, “walked” around the city. This was undoubtedly a challenge to the Jews: the one who recovered was a messenger to the Jews about the breaking of the Sabbath by the miracle of Christ. The Jews said to the healed man: “Today is Saturday; You shouldn’t take the bed.” He answered them: “He who healed me said to me: take up your bed and walk.” When it was established that the one who healed him was Jesus, the Jews began to persecute Jesus and sought to kill Him because He did such things on the Sabbath. Did Christ break the Sabbath? In the sense of a negative attitude towards the law, He did not violate the Sabbath, since “the law never intended to interfere with good deeds, even on the days of Sabbath rest”; but in the sense of perfect fulfillment of the law, contrary to Jewish customs, Jewish understanding, the Sabbath was broken. “You see, the law then primarily remains intact when Christ broke it” 86? Be that as it may, He deliberately violated the Jewish Sabbath 87 . By this, the Jews were placed in a critical position in which their hearts had to be revealed. On the one hand, they saw and could not help but see in Jesus a great miracle worker, a man who had the power to satisfy their thirst for the miraculous, to fulfill their messianic expectations, a teacher who came from God; but, on the other hand, He appeared before them as a man who did not keep the Sabbath, did not value their traditions, with which their national hopes were connected. They put their faith in a teacher who came from God on one scale, and their national expectations on the other. If you believe in a person who is from God, if you believe in God, in His kingdom, then you need to reject national earthly goods, deny yourself; If you hold on to earthly goods and self-righteousness, then you must reject what God has sent. And the thoughts of their hearts were revealed: they decided to kill Jesus. Subsequently, they said about Him: “This man is not from God, because he does not keep the Sabbath” (John 9:16). But this was only a later excuse they came up with for their hatred of Him; this hatred arose in them for Him, as for “a man from God”: this constituted the deep drama of their hearts. They clearly had a choice between the glory of God and the glory of man, the righteousness of God and self-righteousness, eternal life and earthly blessings. In this regard, the conversation that the Lord Jesus had with the Jews on this occasion is highly remarkable for the clarity and definiteness of its content: He told the Jews that by healing the sick, He had broken the Sabbath by nothing other than the work of God, that in this His work lies the judgment of the world, that now it must be clarified whether the Jews want to come to Him in order to have eternal life, or whether they will remain with ritual self-righteousness, the root of which is their love of glory, in the fact that they receive glory from each other, but do not seek the glory that comes from the one God. Particular attention should be paid to the fact that in this conversation the Lord Jesus taught with perfect clarity and directness about Himself, about His person, about His significance for the world. Previously, performing numerous miracles that created good fame for Him among the people, He did not teach about Himself; and now, being a Sabbath breaker and causing hatred towards Himself, He speaks clearly about Himself. He says that He broke the Sabbath by the work He did as the Son of God. The undoubted explanation of this circumstance is that faith in Jesus Christ, saving faith in Him, is a feat of man and is possible only in the sense of his personal effort; it begins only where there is temptation, and grows stronger with victory over addiction, love of glory, and arrogance. It is not merely a belief in an apparently objective fact; but saving faith consists in the inner revolution of the believer; it is the affirmation of the spiritually divine in the inner life of a person, his own effort to make eternal life a reality for himself. Man's faith in the Son of God is necessarily his faith in his sonship with God, and therefore its beginning necessarily presupposes a revision of earthly values, a revaluation of goods. The question of faith is a question of spiritual life and death. Such faith could not begin at a time when the Lord worked miracles that brought Him good glory, and when that faith was generated in abundance to which He did not entrust Himself. True faith could only begin now 88. Therefore, before, when healing the sick man, Jesus Christ strictly sent him away from Himself, forbidding him to proclaim Himself, and now, having healed the paralytic on Saturday, when the Jews had already begun to persecute the healed man (John 5:10), He met him and revealed himself to him (John 5:13-15). He did the same thing later with the healed man born blind, when he learned that the Jews had excommunicated him (John 9:35). However, from the evangelist’s account of the healing of a man who had suffered for thirty-eight years, it is not clear that his reporting to the Jews about Jesus was a feat, as is undoubtedly the case in relation to the man born blind and as is likely in the first case 89 ; What is certain is that for the Jews, to whom the healed man at Bethesda announced Jesus, faith in Jesus, the Sabbath breaker, was a temptation. “And the Jews sought even more to kill Him, because He not only violated the Sabbath, but also called God His Father, making Himself equal with God” (John 5:18). Of course, the point here was not in the words of Jesus alone, nor in the fact that He broke the Sabbath, but in the fact that His sonship with God was evidenced by His miracles, that by miracle He broke the Sabbath. In Jesus, what stood against the Jews was that in which they saw God’s favor towards man - His miraculous power: through Him, divine power acted against their ritual faith and love of glory, against what constituted the essence of their soul. He was the cause of the fact that God was alienated from them, and they hated Him “even more”, hating this “God’s” in Him. From Jerusalem Jesus Christ went to Galilee to do there what he did in Jerusalem; The Jerusalem scribes and Pharisees followed Him to keep a vigilant eye on Him and to spread that hatred of Him that was born in their souls to the entire Galilee. On the “second first” Saturday, the first after the second day of Passover (Luke 6:1), He happened to pass through sown fields, and His disciples plucked ears of corn and ate them, rubbing them with their hands. The Pharisees who were watching them expressed their indignation to the Lord at this violation of the Sabbath. Then, also on Saturday, He came to the synagogue and healed the withered man there, in front of the Pharisees. From the gospels of Mark and Luke other similar cases of violation of the Sabbath are known: the Lord’s healing on Saturday of a demon-possessed man 90 and a crumpled woman in the synagogue and a man suffering from water sickness in the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees. Violation of the Sabbath by healing a demoniac according to ev. Mark went unnoticed. When Jesus was teaching in the synagogue, the demoniac who was there shouted: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? You have come to destroy us. I know You, who You are, the Holy One of God.” Jesus with authority rebuked him and cast out the spirit, and all the people were horrified and marveled at this power. But other of the healings named were deliberate violations of the Sabbath. When the Lord entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, where there was a man with a withered hand, they asked Him: is it possible to heal on the Sabbath? Saying that one can do good on the Sabbath, He healed the sick man. The Lord, seeing her in the synagogue on Saturday, called a crumpled woman who had suffered from this illness for eighteen years, and, laying on his hands, healed her, which caused the indignation of the leader of the synagogue. When, on the Sabbath, in the house of the Pharisee leader, a man suffering from a watery disease appeared before the Lord Jesus, He Himself asked the lawyers and Pharisees: is it permissible to heal on the Sabbath? They were silent, and He, touching, healed the sick man and released him. As is known, there are grounds (John 20:30) for the assumption that there were more such violations of the Sabbath by the miracles of Christ than we know. With each such event, the anger of the Jews progressively increased: they became furious. Their hatred was especially inflamed by the fact that the Lord Christ, breaking the Jewish Sabbath with miracles, victoriously repelled the attacks of the Jews by pointing out that He was doing the works of God for the good of the people, so that “all those who opposed Him were ashamed, but all the people rejoiced over all His glorious deeds” (Luke 13:17). Actually, the hatred of the Jews towards Him was joined by their fear of losing for their power and influence a people who were ready to go over to the side of their enemy. The bitterness of the Jews reached a high level of tension and was resolved by their terrible blasphemy against the Spirit. § 29. Healing of a demoniac, blind and dumb. Blasphemy of the Jews against the Spirit of God and demand for a sign from heaven After one healing on Saturday (Matthew 12:22), they brought to the Lord a demon-possessed blind and dumb man, and He healed him, so that the blind and dumb man began to speak and see 91. And all the people marveled, and said, Is not this the Christ, the son of David? The Pharisees and scribes who came from Jerusalem (Mark 3:22) heard it and said: He casts out demons no other way than (by force) Beelzebub, the prince of demons. And others of them, as well as the Sadducees (Matthew 16:1), at the same time (Matthew 12:38 and esp. Luke 11:15-16), tempting, demanded from Him a sign from heaven. It has already been said above what it meant for the Jews to recognize the miraculous power of Christ by the power of the prince of demons and demand from Him a sign from heaven: both served as a decisive revelation of their unbelief in Christ, their hatred of the spiritual kingdom of God, their inability to receive its spiritual benefits. This was that terrible blasphemy against the Spirit of God, which is not forgiven to man. Perhaps there is some special significance in the fact that this terrible blasphemy was uttered by the Jews not about any healing on the Sabbath, but specifically about the healing of a demoniac. If we even delve into the general properties of the disease of demon possession, possession by unclean spirits, we should already notice that the healing of this disease, above all other healings, revealed the miraculous power of Christ precisely as the holy power of the Spirit of God. We, of course, do not think of offering readers a complete presentation of the essence of this disease, or completely explaining it. In this regard, it should be undoubted, no matter what views we hold, that the human soul is truly possessed by unclean spirits, that our own experience testifies to us of our spiritual slavery and unclean slavery - this should be as undoubted as the fact that the holy power of God acted in Christ. And His saving work was to free people from slavery to unclean spirits and call them into the freedom of the sons of God, to establish the kingdom of the Spirit of God instead of the kingdom of unclean spirits. The power of the kingdom of God, which came in Christ, was evidenced by the healing of all sorts of diseases, but by the healing of the demon-possessed, it was revealed precisely that Christ healed by the power of the Holy Spirit. When the Jews denied the Holy Spirit of Christ, they thereby rejected His spiritual kingdom and freely surrendered to their former slavery. This meaning of Jewish blasphemy will appear even more clearly to us if, in addition to the indicated general properties of demonic possession as possession by unclean spirits, we consider the historical features of Jewish demonic demonization in the time of Jesus Christ. This is the remarkable feature that the unclean spirits, when they saw Christ, fell before him and shouted in horror: “Leave him alone; what to us and to you, Jesus of Nazareth? You have come to destroy us. We know You, who You are, the holy one of God.” This persistence in the confession of Christ is remarkable, and even more remarkable is this connection with the confession of horror! In anticipation of some explanation of this feature, we base it on the peculiarity of the religious state of the Jews in their enmity with Christ. From the very first appearance of Christ in Jerusalem, at the beginning of His open ministry, the attitude of the Jews towards Him contained an internal discord: Jesus of Nazareth was for them a teacher who came from God, but acted against them. Over time, this discord in their souls worsened and reached particular severity during His second visit to Jerusalem. The state of mind of the Jews seems to us full of the deepest tragedy and truly terrible. And in general, their religious mood at the time of Christ was characterized by extreme tension, and in Christ they saw the power of God acting against them, they saw their enemy who came from God! Their hearts were dominated by conscious hatred combined with horror. When they decided to kill Jesus of Nazareth, their soul was burned by the unquenchable flame of the question: “What if this is Christ?” When the people said: “Isn’t this Christ?”, these words of the people were hammer blows on the most taut strings of their hearts. They silenced and could not silence this question. He was an obsession for them. The conscience excited by the Lord gave them no rest day or night; it haunted them with horror, which, starting in the area of ​​consciousness, took possession of their entire soul, even in its unconscious area. Mental disorder (ἀνοία) on this basis was quite possible. But this question was most likely to produce mental disorder not among those for whom it first arose and who led the life of the people - they were too strong and active for this, but among the weakest of the people, prepared for this by mental illness and slavery to unclean spirits. Under these conditions, demonic possession acquired that historical feature in which it appeared before the Lord Christ. Possession in this particularity was a painful indoctrination 92 to the people by the enemies of the Lord, the leaders of the people, a mental reflection of their passions, their doubts and hatred, in the souls of the simple, “weary and scattered, like sheep without a shepherd,” it was poison, a Jewish doubt of the people’s faith in the miracles of Christ. These demoniacs could not be indifferent to Christ, just as a butterfly cannot resist fire: seeing Him, they were terrified, but uncontrollably ran to Him and confessed Him as Christ. It was faith combined with awe and painful hatred. In the person of these unfortunates, the painful products of the spiritual life of His enemies the Jews, their unbelief and hatred of Him, appeared before Christ. In general, Christ met and healed those possessed by demons from the very beginning of His miraculous activity; Perhaps He also met demon-possessed confessors after returning from the first trip to Jerusalem and relocating (from Nazareth) to Capernaum, as can be seen from the general remark of the evangelists Mark and Luke that Christ already at that time did not allow demons to say that they know that He is the Christ (Mark 1:34): however, it can probably be assumed that, after Christ’s return from the second trip to Jerusalem, He met more such demon-possessed people - at least one needs to evaluate the remark of the Evangelist Mark, which he makes after the story of the healing of the withered man: “and the unclean spirits, when they saw Him, fell before Him and shouted: You are the Son of God” (Mark 3:11) 93. Be that as it may, Christ healed demon-possessed confessors, in whose person the painful products of the unbelief of the Jews appeared before Him. In these healings there was an extraordinary lesson for the Jews, which would have caused them to turn to Christ if they had been capable of it: it was the destruction of the consequences of their own sin. Just as these sick people involuntarily bore the sin of the Jews, so did Christ, healing the sick. He took upon Himself the same sin by the power of His love. Through the healing of these sick people, the kingdom of God reached the Jews themselves. If they were converted, then the healing of the demon-possessed would be the healing of the sin of the Jews. But they did not convert and the kingdom of God did not reach them with its spirit, scorching them with its fire. When Christ explained to them the meaning of their blasphemy against the Spirit and pointed out its source in their evil heart, they did not repent, but brought their blasphemy to the highest degree of self-justification, demanding from Christ a sign from heaven. If they had recognized the Holy Spirit in the power of Christ, which healed the illness of demon-possessed confessors - this painful product of their own sin, then the Spirit of Christ would have dwelled in them; but they recognized her as an unclean spirit, and then their own unclean spirit, which Christ cast out from the sick, returned to them with greater power. When the unclean spirit leaves a person, it walks through dry places, looking for rest, and does not find it. Then he says, “I will return to my house from whence I came,” and when he arrived, he found it unoccupied, swept and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and live there; and for that person the last thing is worse than the first. So, according to Christ, it happened with the evil race of the Jews 94 (Matthew 12). § 30. Calling the twelve and sending them to preach The Jews' blasphemy against the Spirit was one of the most decisive moments in the history of the Gospel: it was followed by a new period in the activity of Christ - a period of bitterness of the Jews, their blindness. However, the new period in the activity of Christ did not follow directly after the blasphemy of the Jews, but it was preceded by certain events, in view of its extreme importance. The Evangelist Matthew narrates, as it were, twice about the blasphemy of the Jews: once (Matthew 9:32-34) he narrates these preliminary events behind the blasphemy of the Jews, and another time (XII) he connects this very new period in the activity of Christ with it. The event with which the Lord preceded a new period in His relations with the Jews was the sending of His twelve disciples to preach. The Lord, having called His twelve disciples, 96 gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them out and heal every disease and every infirmity, and sent them, two by two, to preach the kingdom of God and heal the sick. He commanded them, saying: “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter the city of the Samaritans, but go especially to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Giving them moral instructions, which are not of historical significance, but of general application to all preachers of the gospel at all times, He also told them: “If anyone will not receive you, and will not listen to your words, then shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or that city. Truly I say to you, it will be more bearable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that city.” These words have a historical meaning. Predicting to them about persecution from people and hatred for His name, He, also in relation to the historical conditions of their preaching, instructed them: “When they persecute you in one city, flee to another. For truly I say to you, before you have gone around the cities of Israel, the Son of Man comes.” What historical significance does this mission of the twelve apostles have to preach? What day of judgment is the Lord talking about? What does He mean by the coming of the Son of Man? Why were the apostles sent only to Israel and why did they have to hastily bypass the cities of Israel? Having sent His twelve disciples to preach, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself from that time ceased to teach and preach in cities (Matthew 11:1), “calms down” 97 for a while and retires into the desert (Matthew 11:7). This reassurance of the Lord did not last long. Soon He came out of the wilderness and came to Israel to resume His work with a new character, to begin the hardening and blinding of Israel. This was the coming of the Son of Man, about which the Lord spoke to the apostles: having begun with the bitterness of the Jews, it ended with 98 sufferings and the death of the Son of Man. This bitterness of the Jews was a terrible judgment for them, in which it was worse for them than for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah. Since this was a judgment for Israel, the Lord sent the apostles only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Since the trial was to open soon, the apostles had to go around the cities of Israel with extreme haste. By sending His twelve disciples to preach in the cities of Israel, the Lord Jesus acted as a merciful judge. The Jews were threatened with the terrible judgment of the Son of Man; but He came not only to condemn the Jews, but to first of all save from this judgment all who could be saved, and then to condemn only those who were not capable of salvation. And so, on the eve of the judgment, He sends the apostles to awaken all the Jews, to warn every soul. “Save yourself, whoever can, from this corrupt generation”: such was the meaning of the apostolic sermon. At the same time, their preaching made it possible for the judgment of the Son of Man to be a judgment for all Jews: it was a call for all Jews to this judgment... To warn the Jews from the coming wrath was actually the calling of John the Baptist: the twelve disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ sent to preach did the same thing that John the Baptist did in his time (cf. Mark 6:12). § 31. Embassy to Jesus Christ from John the Baptist. The sinful wife who anointed the Lord with myrrh During the apostolic sermon, a circumstance occurred that served as an indication of the imminent onset of judgment and even, perhaps, accelerated its onset: it was an embassy to Jesus Christ from John the Baptist. John the Baptist was taken into custody by Herod the tetrarch as soon as Christ began His activity. His guilt before the governor was that he denounced Herod for his marital cohabitation with Herodias, his brother’s wife. In the prison in which John was imprisoned, his disciples had access to him, through whom he had information about the teachings and deeds of Christ Jesus. Of course, hearing about the miracles of the Lord Jesus, he expected his own quick deliverance, he expected the terrible condemnation of all the enemies of Israel, all his oppressors. But then a rumor reached him that the Lord Jesus had retired into the desert, and instead of Himself He had sent His disciples to preach, who, walking through the cities, preached about the coming day of the coming of the Son of Man and His judgment, just as John himself was the forerunner of the Lord Jesus. For John, the question arose: had the Lord Jesus, his πρώτος, really finished His work? Is He not the one who is to come? can “they” still expect something different? Is this not the end of the conclusion yet? Probably, John was also confused by the fact that the disciples of Jesus were not formidable heralds of the coming judgment: they acted like humble disciples, who were no higher than their teacher, whom they called Beelzebub, they proclaimed such a formidable trial in which the judge himself would suffer from the defendants. Such a trial will not free John from imprisonment. Be that as it may, John was offended by the Lord Jesus, and sent two of his disciples to ask Him: Are you the one who should come, or should we expect someone else? Those sent found the Lord Jesus Christ in the desert, where He had retired after the departure of the apostles to preach. This was the desert in which John operated. During His ministry to people, the Lord Jesus repeatedly sought solitude and could not hide. It was the same this time. And in the desert He was surrounded by crowds of people. When the messengers from John came, He healed many from diseases and illnesses, and from evil spirits, and gave sight to many blind people. Then He said to the messengers: “Go, tell John what you saw and heard. Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.” For John, this answer meant: even in the desert the Lord Jesus does the same thing that he did before; He is the one who was supposed to come. But the full meaning of the Lord Jesus' answer was deeper. He performed miracles; His glory could be seen in them. But miracles prepared death for Himself; His preaching was a humble gospel to the poor. Therefore, His words: “Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me” referred not only to the present temptation of John, but also to the future temptation of many through His sufferings. When John’s disciples departed, the Lord Jesus Christ began to speak to the people about John: “Was John, whom you saw in this desert, a man with changeable thoughts? No, he was a prophet and even more than a prophet. Of those born of women, no one greater than John the Baptist has risen. His weakness is only due to the fact that he was a herald of the kingdom of heaven, but not a member of it. But what can we say about this generation, to whom can we compare it?” So the Lord Jesus passed from John to the Jewish people. In the temptation of John, His spiritual gaze saw a more significant phenomenon than John’s personal weakness. The basis of his temptation is the unbelief of the people. If the Jews had believed John the Baptist, if they had believed the Son of Man, the terrible judgment would not have befallen them, and the Son of Man Himself would not have suffered suffering and death. But the Jews did not believe. Moreover, before the spiritual gaze of Christ, the Jews, from whom He Himself suffered later, were the culprits of the soon-to-follow death of John the Baptist, with whom they did as they wanted (Matthew 17:12-13). “Then” the Lord Jesus began to rebuke the cities in which His powers were most manifested, because they did not repent. He reproached Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, which ascended to heaven. He said that if the powers shown in these Israeli cities had been manifested in Tire, Sidon and Sodom, then those cities would have repented; He threatened these Israeli cities with a terrible future judgment. But in the darkness of this judgment over the Jewish people, this rejection of Jewish pride, the blinding of the wise and prudent, a joyful ray of enlightenment of infants, the salvation of the toiling and burdened, shone. In the Gospel of Luke, between the stories about the embassy from John and the teaching in parables, an event is conveyed that illuminates the attitude towards Christ, on the one hand, of the Jews, who considered themselves reasonable and righteous, and, on the other hand, of humble sinners. One of the Pharisees asked the Lord Jesus to eat food with him; and He entered the Pharisee's house and lay down. And so, a woman from that city, a sinner, came with an alabaster vessel of ointment, stood behind at His feet, began to wet His feet with tears, and wipe them with her hair, and kissed His feet, and anointed them with ointment. Seeing this, the Pharisee thought: if He were a prophet, He would not have allowed the sinner to touch Him. But the Lord Jesus responded by explaining to him that both he, the Pharisee, and the sinner were debtors to God. Of two debtors, the one who is forgiven more loves more. The woman showed great and humble love for Christ, while the Pharisee, who considered it an honor not for himself to receive the Lord, but for Jesus to come to him, did not give Him either water on his feet or a kiss. Therefore, the Lord continued: “Her many sins are forgiven because she loved much; and he who is forgiven little loves little.” St. Ephraim the Syrian, Commentary on the Four Gospels, chapter 13. St. John Chrysostom, on ev. John, demon. 49. St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Hebrew. John: “Christ heals a man on the Sabbath and immediately commands him to break the law, forcing him to walk on the Sabbath and, moreover, burdened with a bed” (in h. 1). Of course, this moment cannot be taken in an unconditional sense: as has been seen, there was partly room for temptation before. We only want to highlight the degree. Wed. St. Kirill of Alexandria (in h. loc.). This miracle in the Gospel of Mark is placed first among the miracles performed by Christ. But as you know, all four evangelists begin the work of Jesus Christ in different ways: Matthew - with the Sermon on the Mount, Mark - with the healing of a demoniac on Saturday, Luke - with the rejection of Christ by the Nazarenes, and John - with a miracle in Cana of Galilee. With the exception of the last evangelist, the rest are not guided by historical considerations, but each of them places at the head of the gospel history the work of Christ that most corresponds to the character of this or that gospel. It is very difficult to indicate a historical connection for these initial events. However, the Sermon on the Mount of the Gospel of Matthew contains the sayings of Christ spoken by Him at different times - most, however, during the first period of Christ’s activity. The rejection of Christ by the Nazarenes can be placed in the connection between the gospels of Matthew and Mark. But when did the healing of the demoniac take place on Saturday, which begins the work of Christ according to the Gospel of Mark? Matthew does not mention this event; Luke, having put the event in Nazareth first, then obviously follows Mark, but in Mark it comes first: thus it is impossible to indicate after which this event followed. It follows that there is no obstacle to attributing it to a later time, as we have done. Are we doing violence to history for the sake of theory? But we do not deny that Christ healed those possessed by demons in the first period of His activity. Therefore, if we attribute the miracle of the healing of a demoniac in the synagogue to an earlier time, nothing will change in our theory. Likewise, the fact that this healing took place on Saturday would not change anything in our plan of gospel history if we attributed this miracle to an earlier time, since the violation of the Sabbath in this case went unnoticed and therefore was not a historical event. In general, regarding the fact that in our study we attribute groups of stories about the breaking of the Sabbath, presented in different chronological connections in individual gospels, to one point and reduce them to one causal connection of events - regarding this, we must note that when establishing the causal sequence of Gospel history, one cannot do otherwise; one cannot avoid this freedom of the researcher in relation to the chronological connection of Gospel events in individual gospels. Moreover, the same thing should be noted in relation to those cases when the same event is conveyed by the evangelists in different chronological connections, for example. cleansing of the church John refers to the first Easter of Christ's ministry, and the weather forecasters - to the last. By learned historians of the life of Jesus Christ, such groups of stories that are identical in meaning and events that are identical in letter are often mistaken for double ones and are transmitted in one connection according to one gospel and in another according to another. But the gospels are not protocol records... If, from four portraits of one face, of which in one the face is facing to the right, in the other to the left, etc., it was necessary to draw one image in which the essential character of the face would be expressed, then, of course, it is necessary to study the face from all the portraits, but it is impossible to give it turns in the new image together to the right, and to the left, and up, and down. The same applies to the Gospel story. The most important thing is to study the meaning of the event in all the gospels and then, when presenting history, put it in such a connection that would best correspond to the meaning of the event in accordance with the plan of presentation in general and in accordance with at least one gospel in particular. It is possible (if only possible) to maintain the connection of each event in all the Gospels, without hesitation in doubling and tripling the events, only for such a scientist who does not see any meaning in the Gospel history, any development, no plan, but is content with one protocol transmission of the event. We must be guided by this rule whenever we cannot indicate a double meaning (according to the meaning of the Gospels) for a double event or group of events. If it were objected to us that with such freedom in relation to the chronological connection of the Gospel history, diversity in indicating the meaning of its events is inevitable, while monotony in its presentation is possible only with a mechanical compilation of the Gospels, then we would answer that diversity of meanings is better than monotony of meaninglessness. In any case, placing the event of Saturday as the “second first” after the healing of the paralytic in Jerusalem, we can refer to the authority of Bishop. Theophan in the Gospel story about God the Son etc., Moscow 1885, countries. 44‒45, cf. K. Geikie Life and Teachings of Christ, Russian translation, Moscow 1894, issue. III, countries. 119. It is likely that this healing also took place on Saturday (Matthew 12:22 “then”). In Weiss (Das Leben Jesu, 1882, 1, S. 459) it is good (contrary to the theory of accommodation - in a less crude form in Schleiermacher. Weisse, Schenke1, in a more crude form in Renan, Strauss, Keim) points out the connection between possession by evil spirits and sin, but fails to note that those who are possessed themselves, as is fair to say G. W. Stevens (The theology of the N. T., 1901, p. 88) were the victims of misfortune rather than as monsters of wickedness. (Stevens himself also adheres to the theory of accommodation.) This general remark is in connection with the story of the blasphemy of the Jews in the Gospel of Mark, and therefore we are not at all confused by the fact that according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke this blasphemy is connected in particular with the healing of a demon-possessed mute. In order to avoid unnecessary detail, we refrain from revealing the opinion that the muteness of the demoniac could be a manifestation of the same mental state that was expressed in the demoniac’s confession of Christ, that in this case the tongue was taken away from the same horror that the confession of Christ caused in other demoniacs. Meanwhile, short-sighted negative criticism sees in these words of Christ a truly pitiful indication that the demoniacs healed by Christ again fell into illness, not comprehending the deep meaning of the Lord’s speech as applied to the Jews. However, in offering our explanation, we must say about ourselves in the words of Cicero: explico non quasi Pythius Apollo, certa ut sint et fixa, quae dico, sed ut homunculus unus e multis, probabilia conjectura sequens. We ask the reader to understand this about the preceding and subsequent Wed. N. N. Wendt'a, Die Lehre Iesu, 1, Gott 1886, S. 100. This, as we can probably say, was at the same time the election of precisely the twelve closest disciples from a wider circle of Christ’s disciples. According to Theophylact of Bulgaria in the Blagovestnik (trans. 1885), countries. 185 on Matt. 11:1. See A. Nekrasova Reading the Greek text of St. Gospels, 1888, p. 34 next. “It ended” - for the gospel story, but it did not end in its eschatological meaning. You might be interested in: