Mark: An 8-Day Devotional Reading PlanSample

Jesus Rejected

Mark 6 offers a vivid picture of what the rejection of Jesus looks like. The picture both warns us about ourselves and teaches us about Jesus, who at the end of Mark experiences the ultimate rejection.

These are Jesus’s hometown neighbors and acquaintances, ordinary people
like those we meet every day—like us. They can’t fit Jesus into their ordinary lives;
for years he was just a carpenter, part of a local family, and now he’s performing
miracles and teaching with authority in the synagogue. Who does this man think he is, they ask? They’re astonished—not in a positive but in a negative way: they take offense at him (Mark 6:3).

Jesus causes offense. How could he not? He is God incarnate breaking into human history, disturbing all our ordinary complacency. The people of Nazareth are glimpsing who he is—and rejecting him.

This story shows rejection of Jesus, and it shows Jesus’s response. First, he sees it and names it. When Jesus speaks about a prophet not being without honor except in his hometown (v. 4), he is setting himself in a long line of prophets rejected by their own people (see 2 Chron. 36:16; Jer. 35:15). He is also accusing these people of letting their familiarity with him harden their hearts, so that they are unwilling to believe. Their response is clearly named “unbelief” (Mark 6:6)—that is, they are refusing to believe in God’s final prophet.

Jesus not only sees and names their rejection, but he also answers it accordingly. Such rejection brings consequences: verse 5 does not mean that Jesus was constrained by their unbelief, but that he will do no mighty work where he is rejected. Those who reject him reject his blessing—eternally. Jesus also “marveled because of their unbelief” (v. 6). Their rejection certainly did not take him by surprise. Part of what Jesus is doing here is surely training his disciples, getting ready to send them out in the very next scene and preparing them for similar rejection. What a haunting picture: the Son of God himself marveling at the refusal of human beings to accept his coming to save them!

Unbelief is not rejection of a religion or a set of propositions; it is rejection of Jesus, the Son of God, who receives that rejection personally. Jesus’s final response is to leave Nazareth and go on teaching (v. 6). Mark shows clearly that Jesus came to accomplish his mission: “not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (10:45). The Son of God knew he was the servant “despised and rejected by men” that Isaiah had long ago prophesied (Isa. 53:3). Ultimately, Jesus our Savior responded to human rejection with divine love: he went to the cross.—Kathleen Nielson