Mark 8:22-9:1
Mark 8:16-17
“Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, the death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and the death of your whole body in the end: Submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. - C.S. Lewis
“Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” - C.S. Lewis
Discussion questions:
The two-stage healing of the blind man is a picture of the disciples (embodied by Peter): they see Jesus, but not fully or clearly. What are some ways we can see Jesus with distorted or partial spiritual sight?
Jesus says: The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected and be killed and, after three days, rise again. What is so moving about this statement? How does this statement prepare us for the costly demands that follow it (8:34-9:1)?
Jesus makes it clear that following him - what is often and rightly called “discipleship” - is costly. Yet Christians today often expect it to be easy. Why?
What might Jesus be calling you to “deny” in yourself (8:34)? What might he be calling you to “lose” for his sake (8:35)? How can the promised reward - resurrection life (see 9:1) - spur you toward such self-denial and self-sacriice for the sake of the gospel?