Studies in the Gospel According to Mark - CCS by E Schuyler English.
The Gospel According to Mark, the briefest of the four Gospel records, is also, comparatively, the most neglected. Matthew, because it presents the King, and the fullest accounts of the Sermon on the Mount and the Olivet Discourse; Luke because of its very human appeal, presenting as it does our Lord in His manhood with all His tender sympathy; and John, because the Deity of Christ is so clearly shown and the unfathomable beauty of His words under circumstances such as the Upper Room and in the Garden of Gethsemane – each of these three Gospels are the favourites of many. All of them have been subjects of innumerable writing, both as a whole and in portions.
However, Mark is often times overlooked, but it too, has its significant characteristic message, revealing, as it does, more clearly that others the Servant-Nature of the Son of God. In Mark’s Gospel, what is shown so vividly is the humiliation of the One who, “being in the form of God, thought it not a thing to be grasped after, but emptied Himself, and tool upon Him the form of a Servant, and… humbled Himself, and became obedient unto… the death of the Cross” (Philippians 2:5 – 8). Mark’s Gospel is the Gospel of action and service, the service which culminated in the Servant-Son’s giving of Himself as a ransom for the souls of many.”
