Grace and Obedience

I will be spending the summer in the gospel of Mark for school, and something struck me as I was reading a couple days ago. It is a recurring scene in Mark, but the best portrayal is Mark 7:36. Jesus heals a man who is deaf and mute. "Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it" (NRSV).

When Jesus heals people in Mark, he regularly asks that they not tell others how they came to be healed (obviously, public healings do not apply here). But every time he does this, the person he healed goes out and proclaims Jesus' power in public.

What do I take from this? Jesus heals people when they, or someone close to them, believes. In fact, Mark tells that when Jesus returns to his home town of Nazareth, "he could do no deed of power there.... And he was amazed at their unbelief" (6:5-6, NRSV).

So believers are healed. But then, in their joy at being healed, they immediately ignore Jesus' request to not talk about the healing.

What to make of this? I see that Jesus' healing for these people, and by corollary his grace for us, is not related to our ability to obey God. It is based upon our belief in God. We believe, and God offers the grace of salvation. He continues to forgive us our sins, even after we believe.

Note that I am not promoting "cheap grace" in this post, i. e. I am not suggesting believers should sin because they will be forgiven.

But when we do sin, isn't it nice to know that God will forgive us? Believers don't have to be perfect. God accepts our belief anyway!