Holiness reimagined
Hello fellow saints; hi fellow sinners! As we saw last time, most of the members of the people of God at the time of Jesus didn’t consider themselves to be “bad sinners”; the really bad “sinners” were the tax collectors and the prostitutes. Most people probably thought that they were doing pretty well. Also, sickness was often interpreted as a sign that the afflicted person was a worse sinner than healthy people. Along with exorcisms and healings, there is another predominant theme in the first two chapters of Mark’s Gospel – the forgiveness of sins. This had been the essence of John the Baptist’s message – repentance and forgiveness (1.4-5). Whether John’s preaching was the catalyst of what Mark describes as a national movement of repentance, or whether John simply provided the means for the people to give expression to their repentance (by baptism), the beginning of Mark’s narrative portrays...