Who is Jesus?

Session 1: Mark 1:1–13

Jesus is a well-known figure, even to non-believers. But people have widely varying opinions about him. How would you describe him? What makes Jesus unique?

Read Mark 1:1–13.

Watch Francis Chan, “The Gospel of Mark” Video Series Session 1: Mark 1:1–13 (6 minutes)

Discuss Mark opens by setting the stage for Jesus. The word he uses is “gospel.” Most of us have heard the term a thousand times. But Mark here means he’s about to tell the story of a victor. And in these first few verses, we get the origin story for this man who will save the world.

Francis Chan started off the video by wading into the waters of the Jordan River and remembering the baptism of Jesus. John the Baptist had been baptizing people who were repenting of their sin, telling them about the one who was to come. John understood exactly who Jesus was. He went so far as to tell the people he was not worthy to untie his sandals (1:7). Why do you think John felt unworthy to untie Jesus’s sandals? What does that say about John?

Francis asked us if we truly grasped the immensity of the Incarnation. He tried to imagine what it must have felt like for John the Baptist to stand in front of his Creator. Think about your own Christian life. In what ways has Jesus become too familiar? Do you find yourself taking him for granted? How?

Francis also emphasized the uniqueness of the gospel, the good news from God on a completely different level from what we often describe as good. In what way did he describe the good news?

After being baptized, Jesus departed from John. The text says that “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” So he went, and there he experienced forty days of hunger and temptation. Mark doesn’t give a lot of details. What do you think Mark wanted to communicate with this short summary of Jesus’s experience in the wilderness?

Scholars think that Mark’s gospel was written mainly for an audience of Gentile (non-Jewish) Christians. Yet, it also contains a lot of links to stories in the Old Testament, which Jewish readers would have been able to identify. Can you find any Old Testament references in this passage? What do you think this says about who Jesus is?