Faith, Repentance, Fellowship, and Forgiveness
Posted by Pastor Pat on June 8, 2009
Read Mark 5:25-34
This passage, and those surrounding it, has challenged me to continue thinking of the inter-play between faith, repentance, fellowship, and forgiveness. Personally, I desire to make each of these elements containable and connected. I want them “to fit” into a way of thinking that is understandable, tamable, and perhaps controllable. I want to be in control of what each of these elements look like. Yet it is impossible to fit the proverbial square peg into the round hole without doing damage to both the peg and the hole. Unfortunately, what I want and what is biblical are not always the same. You might wonder how the passages in Mark 4:35-6:6 evoke such thinking? Faith is “huge” in all of the stories noted in Mark’s gospel. Repentance is never stated, only assumed. As a consequence of faith, God works mighty miracles. In the absence of faith, established boundaries are honored and God chooses not to work. Much is assumed throughout. As I have meditated on these things I have tried to honor the biblical text without forcing many of my theological presuppositions into the text (i.e., “exegesis good, eisegesis bad”). Initially, if my ramblings appear disjointed and unconnected, please dismiss it and forgive me. However, there is a chance that it might jar you into greater clarity in these areas and thus I press ahead with my delineations.
