It is interesting: at what moment do the apostles actually become apostles? At the moment when Jesus called them to follow Him, each in his own hour? On the day when He sends them out for ministry? After His resurrection and their meeting with Him, risen from the dead? On the day of Pentecost?...
It is interesting: at what moment do the apostles actually become apostles? At the moment when Jesus called them to follow Him, each in his own hour? On the day when He sends them out for ministry? After His resurrection and their meeting with Him, risen from the dead? On the day of Pentecost? It is probably impossible to give a single answer to this question. After all, an apostle is above all a witness, a witness of Christ and of the Kingdom. That means he becomes an apostle at the moment when he begins to bear witness. And what should be counted as the beginning? In essence, the apostles fully understood what the Kingdom was only after Pentecost, when they experienced its breath upon themselves. But they became witnesses much earlier. In a certain sense, their very readiness to follow Jesus immediately after He called them can already be considered a witness.
Of course, the moment when Jesus sends His twelve closest disciples out to preach really does become a turning point on their spiritual path. Before that, they bore witness by their very presence beside the Teacher, by the support they gave Him. Now they had to give independent witness, to walk their own path, certainly connected with the earthly path of their Teacher, but still their own. At the same time, of course, the question arises by itself: how could the apostles bear witness to the Kingdom, which they truly came to know much later, after the Resurrection and Pentecost?
Here, as we can see, one of the fundamental patterns of spiritual life shows itself, as spiritual life exists in our world that is being transformed but has not yet been transformed, and perhaps not only here. The point is that in spiritual life what might conditionally be called training and, just as conditionally, practice exist inseparably. Spiritual life and practice cannot be learned the way we learn one specialty or another in a secondary school or university, so that after finishing the course we then begin work. There is not even the practical internship familiar in such schools. One has to work, so to speak, directly on the job from the very beginning, learning without leaving it. Such learning can sometimes appear too difficult and even risky, but this appears to be the only possibility, at least in our fallen world. And Jesus teaches His disciples exactly this way: on the road to the Kingdom. So that when they arrive there, they will already know and be able to do everything they need. At least at first.
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3:13 He calleth whom he would - With regard to the eternal states of men, God always acts as just and merciful. But with regard to numberless other things, he seems to us to act as a mere sovereign. Luk 6:12
3:14 Mat 10:2; Luk 6:13; Act 1:13.
3:16 He surnamed them sons of thunder - Both with respect to the warmth and impetuosity of their spirit, their fervent manner of preaching, and the power of their word.
3:20 To eat bread - That is, to take any subsistence.
3:21 His relations - His mother and his brethren, Mar 3:31. But it was some time before they could come near him.
3:22 The scribes and Pharisees, Mat 12:22;who had come down from Jerusalem - Purposely on the devil's errand.And not without success. For the common people now began to drink in the poison, from these learned, good, honourable men!He hath Beelzebub - at command, is in league with him: And by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils - How easily may a man of learning elude the strongest proof of a work of God! How readily can he account for every incident without ever taking God into the question. Mat 12:24; Luk 11:15.
3:28 Mat 12:31; Luk 12:10.
3:30 Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit - Is it not astonishing, that men who have ever read these words, should doubt, what is the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost? Can any words declare more plainly, that it is "the ascribing those miracles to the power of the devil which Christ wrought by the power of the Holy Ghost?"
3:31 Then come his brethren and his mother - Having at length made their way through the crowd, so as to come to the door. His brethren are here named first, as being first and most earnest in the design of taking him: for neither did these of his brethren believe on him. They sent to him, calling him - They sent one into the house, who called him aloud, by name. Mat 12:46; Luk 8:19.
3:34 Looking round on them who sat about him - With the utmost sweetness; He said, Behold my mother and my brethren - In this preference of his true disciples even to the Virgin Mary, considered merely as his mother after the flesh, he not only shows his high and tender affection for them, but seems designedly to guard against those excessive and idolatrous honours, which he foresaw would in after ages be paid to her.