Christ asked His disciples, "Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?" (Matthew 16:13). He knew, of course, the thoughts and words of all men, but He was about to draw from them a most vital confession. He was not referring to the statements of the Pharisees who had said that He worked through the power of Satan. The question revealed, first of all, the state of the common gossip of the multitudes who had eaten His created bread and who had seen His miracle power. Truly they were blinded. These people had not spiritual discernment, that rarest of all of the gifts of the Spirit.
"He spoke many things unto them in parables. . .". This was the first time He had ever spoken in parables. We may learn many great lessons from the parables themselves, but there are two great lessons to be found in the fact that He used this method. The reason that the Lord Jesus did speak in parables was in order to preserve His truth from those darkened minds, since they would not have believed though one rose from the dead. He would keep his pearls in the shell of parable so that they would not be trampled under foot. At the same time, there were simple folk among the multitude which gathered around Him, and these were capable of receiving the Word as He gave it forth. The Holy Spirit would be able to take the truth to their hearts and bring light out of darkness.
There is no word in the spiritual vocabulary that holds a sweeter place in the experience of the believer than this word "whosoever" here in this verse. Another time our Lord used it in a passage that must be known to millions and millions. It is the only verse in the Bible that many people know, and yet it is sufficient to take a man out of death and into life. For our Lord said to the Jewish leader who came to Him by night, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
"Who is My mother?" It is as though He said: "Forget these earthly relationships. In the moment of My death I will commit you to the care of John, that your old age may know no want, but now there are spiritual lessons to be taught." We must not forget that the only time in the Bible that Mary ever asked anything of the Lord Jesus she was met with a rebuke. Now, for the great spiritual purposes involved in the change of dispensations, the Lord disowned the human relationship. "And He stretched forth His hand toward His disciples and said, Behold My mother and My brethren!"
There is no more pitiful scene in all the Bible than this one where Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her later sons came to the scene where the Lord Jesus was at work and tried to draw Him away from His task, even going so far as to think that He was crazy. There are many words in the languages of earth to express the idea of insanity, and it is interesting to note that such an authority as Roget gives only twenty–five words and phrases to describe sanity, but that he lists more than one hundred to describe insanity. While some of these are very picturesque in their description of the poor unfortunates who have lost their minds, there is none more interesting than this phrase used in the Bible to voice the thought of the friends and family of the Lord Jesus. They said, "He is beside Himself" (Mark 3:21). There was a doubleness of personality in this man that opened Him to the charge of demon possession on the one side and lunacy on the other. Poor humanity! How far we all are from God by reason of our sin, and how we need the illumination of the Holy Spirit that we may understand spiritual matters.
