The common people heard him gladly

The Lord’s enemies had come out in full force, attempting to ensnare Him. However, every fresh effort they made to discredit the omniscient Christ served only to highlight His infinite wisdom more clearly. The Sadducees, who denied resurrection, v. 18, based their question on the levirate marriage, which required a man to marry a widowed sister-in-law and raise seed to his dead brother, Deut. 25. 5, 6. If one woman had seven brothers this way ‘in the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be then?’, Mark 12. 23. The Lord Jesus had previously taught the indissolubility of marriage in this life, Mark 10. 8, 9. He now affirmed that marriage is only for this life; death terminates it. ‘For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage’, v. 25. Furthermore, when God at the burning bush said, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’, v. 26, He was claiming to be the God of people who were very much alive, not dead. These patriarchs still live in God’s presence, awaiting the resurrection of their bodies and the fulfilment of God’s promises to them, Heb. 11. 13.

The question asked by the scribe had been long disputed by students of the law of Moses, ‘Which is the first commandment of all’, Mark 12. 28. Christ’s elevation of two commands above all others, which in essence summarized the entire law, required a perfect knowledge of the whole law. The first commandment called for a man to be completely devoted to God, from the affections of his heart to the thoughts of his mind and the physical energy of his body, v. 30. The second command demanded selfless love for others, v. 31. When the scribe concurred - such a life ‘is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifice’, v. 33 - he showed true insight into the spirit of the law of God. Of course, the only man who ever fully magnified the law and made it honourable, Isa 42. 21, was the Lord Jesus Christ, our flawless example, 1 Cor. 11. 1.

Critics were silenced, Mark 12. 34, but ‘the common people heard him gladly’, v. 37. The widow’s two mites show us that what men despise can be highly valued by Christ, vv. 41-44.