Twelve on a Mountain (Mark 3:13–19)

Mark 3

James Tissot, Curses Against the Pharisees (Imprécations contre les pharisiens), 1886–1896. Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper. Brooklyn Museum, New York. Public domain.

A Link to Mark 3 (ESV)

Twelve on a Mountain (3:13–19)

And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him (3:13).

Mark does not name the mountain, but the action is one his first readers would recognize. Israel became a covenant people in this same way: Moses went up a mountain and set up twelve pillars, “according to the twelve tribes of Israel” (Exod 24:4). Jesus goes up a mountain and appoints twelve. Mark names the number twice, in verse 14 and again in verse 16, as though he wants to make sure no one misses it. Twelve tribes once stood at the foot of Sinai. Twelve men now stand around Jesus. Israel is being remade, gathered around Jesus the way it was once gathered around Moses.

The purpose Mark gives for the appointment is carefully ordered. The twelve are appointed “so that they might be with him” first, and only then “he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons” (3:14-15). Presence comes before mission. Whatever they do later (including casting out demons), they will do it because they first spent time in his company, not because they arrived qualified. That lesson is important for all later disciples to remember.

Then Mark gives their names, and two of them change. Simon becomes Peter. James and John become Boanerges, “Sons of Thunder” (3:16-17). Renaming, in Israel’s story, is typically an act of God. For example, Abram becomes Abraham, “the father of a multitude of nations” (Gen 17:5), and Jacob becomes Israel after a night of wrestling that leaves him limping (Gen 32:28, 31). When Jesus renames Simon and the sons of Zebedee, he exercises that same divine prerogative.

Mark has already shown one threat in this chapter. Six verses earlier, the Pharisees went out and conspired with the Herodians to destroy him (3:6), a danger from outside the circle Jesus is now forming. Here, in the act of forming it, he names a danger from within: Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot, “and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him” (3:19). The betrayal is stated before it happens, folded into the roll call as though it already belongs there. The new Israel Jesus is calling together is not, by that fact alone, a guarantee of loyalty. It is twelve men, freshly named and newly gathered, and one of them will hand him over.

I sometimes like to place myself in the different scenes in the Gospels, and I like to think that I would have responded better than pretty much everyone does in all these stories. But the truth is this: I wouldn’t have. I would have failed, just as the different characters do again and again, because greater proximity to Jesus does not guarantee greater faithfulness. Just like having a collar doesn’t either. Nor do many other things we label as religious. Judas was as close to Jesus as you could get, and yet he still betrayed him, and the possibility of that betrayal lies in each of our hearts.

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Doing Good on the Sabbath (3:1–6)

When the Sabbath law is given in Deuteronomy, the Lord states that its purpose is to serve as a memorial of God’s liberating act.

“You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (Deut 5:15).

The Sabbath is meant to remind Israel of the God who unbinds and grants rest. Every seventh day, the people are to reenact, in their bodies and households, the deliverance that defines them.

The prophets emphasized this point even more. When Israel turned their observance into mere ritual obsession, Isaiah reproved them:

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” (Isa 58:6).

The chapter concludes with a vision of Sabbath joy connected to the same freeing activity (58:13–14). For Isaiah, observance and mercy are one and the same act.

Jesus shares the same view, as he clearly demonstrates when, on a Sabbath in a synagogue, he heals a man with a withered hand.

“And he said to them, ‘Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent” (Mark 3:4).

Jesus’s question echoes Isaiah’s and is aimed at those who have spent their lives carefully following rule after rule. The Sabbath was created to remind us of liberation from bonds. To deny this man’s release on this day is to invert what the Sabbath is all about

So, Jesus restores the hand, and as we might expect, the Pharisees go out and conspire with the Herodians about how to destroy him (3:6).

Jesus frequently pushes past the letter of the law, and especially past the letter of our manmade interpretations of the law. The Sabbath was given so that God’s people would remember what kind of God we serve, and become the kind of people who reflect his character back into the world. To stand in his presence and refuse the work of restoration, even on the Sabbath, is to forget our own deliverance and to deny the very reason the day exists.

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Liar, Lunatic, or Lord (3:20–35)

One of Mark’s favorite literary techniques is called intercalation — or, more memorably, “sandwiching.” He begins one story, interrupts it with another, and then returns to finish the first, inviting the reader to interpret the two in light of each other. Mark 3:20–35 is a textbook example. The passage opens with Jesus’s family coming to seize him, convinced he has lost his mind. Mark then pivots to a confrontation with scribes who have traveled all the way from Jerusalem. Then he returns to the family. The sandwich is intentional, and the theme holding it together is rejection.

The two groups reject Jesus in different ways. His family concludes he has gone mad.

“He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:21).

The scribes reach a different but equally damning verdict:

“He is possessed by Beelzebul, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons” (Mark 3:22).

C. S. Lewis famously argued that these are the only live options for someone who says the kinds of things Jesus said. You cannot call someone merely a good moral teacher when they speak and behave like Jesus. According to Lewis, he is either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. Mark’s sandwich presents us with people who have chosen the first two options.

Jesus’s reply to the scribes exposes the incoherence of their charge. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand; Satan would hardly be in the business of casting out his own (Mark 3:23–26). The real explanation is simpler and more alarming: someone has entered the strong man’s house and bound him (Mark 3:27). The exorcisms are not evidence of demonic collusion — they are evidence of conquest, specifically the New Exodus conquest. To look at that conquest and call it the work of Satan is the unforgivable sin. It is not a moment of doubt or confusion. It is a heart so hardened that it can no longer distinguish the work of God from the work of the devil (Mark 3:28–30).

Then Mark returns to the family waiting outside. Jesus does not go to them. Instead, looking at those seated around him, he redefines the category of family entirely:

“Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35).

These words are not a warm sentiment about community. They are Jesus’s answer to rejection. Those who will not receive him are outside. Those who do the will of God (and thereby recognize that the will of God is being done through Jesus) are inside, gathered around him, constituting a new family defined not by blood but by allegiance.