Unbelief in Nazareth

And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. (Mark 6:4–6)

Despite the incredible miracles performed in nearby villages, coming home to Nazareth, where Christ grew up, he was met with unbelief.

Faith and unbelief have not as much to do with evidence as with the moral disposition of the human heart. Some believe with very little outward encouragement — without being urged by their family and friends, without being compelled by the physical evidence. Some do not believe even when it would seem that they have every reason to.

What they declared about Christ: This unbelief of his hometown was not out of ignorance. He had spoken “wisdom” to them in the synagogue, which they clearly admitted (6:2). Luke’s gospel gives us the gist of his message (Luke 4:16–30), and indicates that the message alone was the trigger of the rejection. As Paul wrote:

For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? (2 Cor. 2:15–16)

Christ lived out that reality on that day — having been the fragrance of life to those who believed, but the stench of death to those who did not.

They had heard of his “mighty works” done “by his hands” (6:2). Like the Sanhedrin dealing with the apostles after his resurrection (Acts 4:16), they did not deny the miracles. Indeed, they were beyond refutation. Let this be clear to us, that logic, wisdom, testimony, or miracles are able by themselves to turn people to Christ. As Christ taught in Mark 4:26–27, we do not know how the kingdom of God grows in one heart and is stifled in another.

Faith and unbelief are mysteries to us. Whether, in our minds, we place the mystery into the hands of God and call it “election” or “predestination,” both words of which are used in scripture, or we focus the mystery into the heart of man and say it reveals the evil of the human heart, or we put the emphasis on Satan and say that he kept these hearts bound — whichever way we seek to understand it we will see that (a) all three of these factors come into play in the conversion of any person, and (b) that there remains a mystery to it all to us.

What it revealed about Christ: Jesus Christ was not the product of Nazareth. His life, character, attitude, mission, and disposition came from heaven, not from Nazareth. Christ is revealed to us as having come from an average, rather negative-minded, small town. He experienced the common things of life — work, family, rejection, false accusations, all of those along with the common joys of life as well. Though he was called A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3), he was not embittered by his background, nor by the rejection of the townspeople. But it all did mean something to him.

Here is another place where we find the fulfillment of the prophecy, “Surely he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). Christ longed for his townspeople to believe in him — just as he longs for the whole world to do so. Since he loves the whole world, it is hard to say that he loves one more than another — the Father watches over the lone, forgotten sparrow, and Christ loves to the uttermost. Yet we would do a disservice to his humanity if we did not see the pain of his hometown’s rejection to his heart. Does Christ know what it is like to be rejected by those closest to you? Does he know what it is like for those dearest to not believe in you? Yes. He does.

Nazareth was a small place and these were the people who had seen Jesus grow up, who knew his mother and his siblings. It would appear that Joseph his legal earthly father had passed away by the time Christ began his ministry. They called him “the carpenter” — in Matthew’s account they also called him “the carpenter’s son” indicating that Joseph was also of the same trade. But this presents to us that Jesus of Nazareth was, as a man, a manual laborer. He identified himself with the common man, the man who rose each morning to go about his work, who grew weary and tired throughout the day, who rested in the evening knowing that he had put in a day’s work.

He was a common man of his culture, with family responsibilities, work loads to carry, and, having been the eldest and Joseph, presumed to be his father, no longer living, he had a mother to care for as well. Can I say as a pastor to all my fellow pastors and servants that we should take this to heart. Christ entrusted his family obligations to the heavenly Father and did not forsake the fulfillment of his calling by God nor his obligations to his family. And we need not choose one or the other, rather we should put them both before the Lord and trust that he will provide for us in ministry the financial and material means to fulfill our family obligations. (See 1 Timothy 5:8)

The heart of unbelief: Their unbelief revealed their pride. They were offended by the wisdom of Christ because they were proud. It is pride that prevents people from believing the gospel. For whatever reason, and under the deception of the devil, the proud figure that to agree with another person about something moral or ethical, requires their humiliation. The truth of God never leaves the believer in humiliation. It liberates us! But yet, to those who are blinded by the world, they remain stubbornly fixed to their own pride and their own ideas.

Remember that in synagogues of Jesus’ day, the family leaders took turns giving the sermon, and each of the patriarchs of that town had spoken recently themselves in the synagogue. Nothing can fill a man with pride like the habit of regularly preaching or teaching the word of God to others. All of us teachers must remain humble before the Lord and before one another. “Let God be true, and every human being a liar” (Rom. 3:4). People can become stubbornly fixed to their own ideas, even lifting their own interpretations above those of Christ. It was the pride of false teachers that caused so much pain to the church at Corinth, as Paul wrote: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor. 8:1).

Unbelief reveals bias and prejudice: A biased and prejudiced mind is a proud mind as well. It shows an unwillingness to look at Christ in a different light. Towns, even small towns, begin to develop certain reputations — if you do not believe this, just go and live some place like Nazareth. All of the various villages have opinions about all of the other villages around them. Nathanael’s words, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46), perhaps had some validity to them.

Nazareth was a negative place, a place where children could not grow up and turn into adults without being put back in their place. It was a place where a thirty-year-old was treated like a ten-year-old. It was a town that strangled all the hope out of its youth, that, like Gadara on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, preferred its people to be emotionally-stunted, closed-minded, and small-minded.

Ritual had replaced relationship for their religion. They went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, but they did not worship God when he showed up, and even complained against him for no real reason. This is the bias of unbelief — proud, closed-minded, unimaginary, negative, unwilling to dare to believe that something might change. Unbelief prefers to assurance of hopelessness than to take that tiny step of faith in God and believe that he is real and can bless us and redirect us.

The reaction of Christ. Only a few miracles were performed by Christ. We should be careful not to misunderstand this point. Christ performed great miracles when there was no faith at all — most notably resurrections from the dead. Our faith does not fuel the power of God. God created the entire universe without anyone around to advise him or to believe in him. God always initiates his work, and those few miracles would serve as seeds planted by Christ in people’s lives, that could grow and develop.

But yet faith is important for God to move. He invites us to join him on mission and — again, we find another mystery — though we cannot understand exactly how our faith opens doors and how God chooses to move where people believe, we do see that he does so. He commands us to pray that he would send forth laborers, that laborers would present the gospel clearly, that doors would open. But faith is always first and foremost invested in Christ himself — not in his miracles but in him.

He marveled at their unbelief: The word “marvel” means to wonder, and sometimes to wonder with admiration. When used with others in scripture, it does indicate surprise — Peter marveled at the empty tomb, wondering what it meant (Luke 24:12). It does not denote surprise by Christ, as though he was taken completely unaware that this was a possibility. John tells us, “Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man” (John 2:24–25). Rather it reveals his pleasure at the faith of the Centurion (Luke 7:9), or displeasure in this case of his townspeople.

Here were people with every reason to believe, yet they had not the heart for it. The demoniac, who had every reason not to believe, believed anyway. The woman with the twelve-year-long flow of blood, who had been deprived of her fortune through useless physicians, had every reason to be jaded, suspicious and bitter, yet she believed in him.

What this means for us: Let us be quick to believe Christ. Let us be humble ourselves. Let us always measure our faith by the biblical teachings and not by our own opinions. Let us encourage people and lift them up — especially the young people, to whom belongs the future. Let us trust Christ and look to see his hand in all things, to be quick to obey and to follow his leadership. Let us do good to people while we have the opportunity.

Let us also take into consideration the place Christ came from. His life and character are only explainable because of heaven. He knows what it is like to be surrounded by negativity. He can strengthen us and encourage us as we follow him.