GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 12:27
Agh!
It has been said that nothing is quite as bitter as that moment in an argument when you realize that your position is wrong—agh! At that point, one has several options. One can double down on an erroneous position, admit the error, or go sullenly silent. But it is often at those moments that learning takes place. Winston Churchill said, “I like to learn; I just don’t like being taught.”
After Jesus parried the Sadducees’ question about the seven-times-married-childless woman, he turned to their core concept. “Now concerning the dead, that they are raised: have you not read in the Book of Moses at the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ He is not God of the dead but the living. You are greatly deceived.” (Mark 12:26-27)
Gulp! Of course, the Sadducees had read the Scriptures, but they were “greatly deceived.” Mark’s word for “deceived” is πλανάω (planaō—wander, lead astray, deceive), the root of the English word “planet,” a wandering body. The Sadducees had wandered away from their own foundational belief. This word is often rendered “gone astray,” conveying the impression of a gradual process that ends in error— something against which to be watchful.
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