Mark 2:14 Is My Alternative to John 3:16
Mark 2:14 is the verse I prefer to use in place of John 3:16, in the situation and context in which this latter verse is often applied.
That is, if I find myself in conversation with a person authentically open, searching and asking about the way of Christian faith and what this way means in the experience of an individual life, the verse I would like to quote as the light on that moment is Mark 2:14.
Here is that verse:
Then, moving on, Jesus saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, “Follow me!” So he got up and followed him. —Mark 2:14
Of course, many, many Christians would choose John 3:16 instead, and may the choice be blessed. John 3:16 is a passage of inspired scripture, and in many ways more stirring than the line I have cited above. But as a starting point for Christian faith, to describe the nature of faith and what it means for faith to dawn in a person’s life, I find John 3:16 an awkward fit.
Plenty feel differently. Evangelists use the verse so widely that it is undoubtedly the best-known verse of the Gospels. Here is that verse:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. —John 3:16
There is no fault to be found with such an eloquent sentence, attributed to Jesus, appearing in what is arguably the most magnificent work of literature ever produced, the Gospel of John. Indeed, that verse succeeds at summarizing in one sentence a profound mystery—the nature and mission of Jesus Christ.
My only point about that verse within this essay is a narrow one: The verse does not offer a description or prescription for the beginning of Christian faith in a person’s life. The message I believe many evangelists seek to convey might be summarized as: If you believe in God who lived as Jesus Christ, you will live on in heaven, and if you do not, then a different fate awaits after this life ends. John 3:16 does not explicitly say this. That interpretation has to be added.
Mark 2:14 says something more directly applicable to one who might be awakening to faith or near to this. Namely: God is moving in people’s lives, and God calls to individuals who hear the call and follow him.
I called John 3:16 an awkward fit for the purpose at hand. Here is more on that:
The verse’s focus is not heaven, nor individual lives. “God so loved the world,” it says. The sentence describes what God gave, the price he was willing to pay, for the sake of forever redeeming the world, so eternal life might play out here. Heaven is not mentioned. Individual belief is mentioned—but the full context of this verse reveals that belief to be something different than we might imagine. The full context, John chapter 3, is Jesus’ speech to Nicodemus the Pharisee. Within this speech, Jesus tells Nicodemus that seeing the way of God is the result of something like a new birth (3:3), and this comes from the Holy Spirit, which moves where the Spirit will (3:8).
Read the entire exchange, John 3:1-21, and the notion of an individual choice to make, a choice to believe, does not emerge from this text. It does not fit with the reason why Jesus said to Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world….”
Rather, belief in Jesus, or the call into a sense of commitment and belonging to the way Jesus leads, comes by the will and grace of God. It has a way of coming unexpectedly, as it came for Levi during a regular day in the tax office in Mark 2:14.
Can One Verse Summarize the Bible? And What Comes Next After Following?
Can one verse, including either of the verses mentioned, really summarize the gospel? No, it cannot. No verse does this.
There is no elevator speech for sufficiently conveying and explaining Jesus Christ, the incarnate God. This is because the gospel is, to a large extent, the Gospels. It need not be a great deal more than this, but it is also not less. The gospel is conveyed by the New Testament: four biographical works out of the ancient world reporting on the acts and words of Jesus Christ—the Gospels—plus letters from early disciples exploring the meaning of the Lord living among us as a man. Jesus is present in these works and can be known through these works, the Gospels most of all. Therefore, the next step after being called into the way of Jesus Christ is to understand that way, in part by exploring (it is a life-long exploration) the inspired record we have been given about the Son.
Text immediately following Mark 2:14 hints at how to do this. How does one take in and understand the gospel? One method is solitary study like a scribe, but this is not the method many would choose. In the very next verse in Mark, we see a different choice:
While Jesus was reclining at the table in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were also guests with Jesus and his disciples, because there were many who were following him. —Mark 2:15
“Recline” with guests and disciples of Jesus. How to do this today? A simple answer presents itself: The Bible study group is an opportunity routinely available through Christian churches of many sorts, as well it should be. Any such discussion group need not get every point of theology and interpretation right to be valuable (because which of them can do this?), but rather it simply needs to be devoted to working through and trying to find what the text means, somehow in the presence of a disciple who has come farther with this searching than others gathered for the reclining. One can reasonably expect the Holy Spirit to be present and active in any honest study of the text the Holy Spirit was active in providing.
From here, subsequent verses in the Gospel of Mark reveal themes important for informing the believer’s thinking, ideas that—still today, every bit as much as when the text was written—are difficult for the larger world to understand.
One of those difficult ideas is this: Faith is not for “good” people. Rather, it is for the rest of us. Mark takes this up next.
When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Those who are well don’t need a doctor, but the sick do need one. I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.” —Mark 2:16-17
Again, faith is not for good people. Faith is a means of healing, renewing, and redeeming lost and broken people. Faith is for sinners.
Also this:
Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. People came and asked Jesus, “Why do John’s disciples and the Pharisees’ disciples fast, but your disciples do not fast?” —Mark 2:18
This verse hints at another point so difficult for many to understand: The practice of faith in Christ is not about following rules. Jesus did not bring more religious rules. We expect this and we are conditioned to look for it, but rules are what the world offers. The way of Jesus is about freedom to live.
Faith Comes for Levi
One verse cannot summarize the whole gospel, and a succession of verses by itself does not map the way of Christian faith. But my point is this: A brief moment within the briefest of the four gospels, Mark 2:14, offers a picture of a person newly finding faith in Jesus—notably after Jesus calls to him first. That this moment and this scene are meant to show this is validated by the context and the larger passage that includes the verses of scripture that follow. The lines immediately after Mark 2:14 show the next step for this new believer and the insights contrary to widespread expectation that now become clear.
Levi was ignorant at first. The one Christ calls, the one the Spirit moves, knows little to nothing of the call in that early moment. Levi was sitting in a bureaucratic job, part of the oppressive system of that time and place, when Jesus came to him and called him to follow. Levi did not know the answers at the time of the call, and we have no reason to believe he even knew the questions to ask.
And if this sounds familiar, if you are entangled in a mundane and conflicted life yet somehow feeling God pull or move your heart within that midst, then Mark 2:14 implies you are not alone. This kind of movement or change is what happens. It has happened before. This is the way God calls.
Photo: “Tax office - County Center” by County of San Mateo