What Manner of Man Is This?

Matthew 8 reads like a gallery of people the Savior reached. First a leper, who under the law of Moses had to live apart and cry “Unclean” (Leviticus 13:45–46). After healing him, Jesus sends him to the priest with the offering Moses commanded (8:4), so the man receives his place among the people along with his health. Next, a Roman centurion, an officer of the occupying army, asks Jesus only to “speak the word” (8:8), and Jesus marvels at his faith and says many will come from the east and west to sit down with Abraham (8:10–11). Then Peter’s wife’s mother, and a crowd of the sick at evening. Matthew sees Isaiah fulfilled in all of it: “Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses” (8:17; Isaiah 53:4).

🔗 Cross-references

• Isaiah 53:4 ↗The prophecy Matthew quotes: the Messiah would bear our griefs and carry our sorrows.
• Alma 7:11–12 ↗Alma teaches that the Savior took upon Him our pains, sicknesses and infirmities so He would know how to succor us.
• Leviticus 13:45–46 ↗The law that required lepers to live apart, which makes Jesus’s touch so striking.

Mark 2 is built around four objections, and each answer shows who Jesus is. First, “who can forgive sins but God only?” (2:7). Jesus heals the man lowered by his friends “that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” (2:10). Second, why does He eat “with publicans and sinners”? Because “they that are whole have no need of the physician” (2:16–17). Third, why don’t His disciples fast? Because the bridegroom is with them (2:18–20). Fourth, why do they pluck grain on the Sabbath? Because “the sabbath was made for man,” and He is “Lord also of the sabbath” (2:27–28). Every complaint became a chance to reveal Him.

🔗 Cross-references

• Luke 5:17–26 ↗Luke’s account adds that the friends let the man down through the tiling.
• Mosiah 4:2–3 ↗King Benjamin’s people plead for mercy and receive a remission of their sins and peace of conscience.
• Doctrine and Covenants 58:42 ↗The Lord promises that when we repent, He forgives and remembers our sins no more.

In the synagogue, critics watch to see whether Jesus will heal on the Sabbath “that they might accuse him” (3:2). He asks whether it is lawful to do good or evil, to save life or to kill, and they say nothing. Mark records that He looked on them with anger, “being grieved for the hardness of their hearts” (3:5), then told the man to stretch out the very hand that didn’t work. Soon after, Jesus goes up a mountain and ordains twelve, “that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach” (3:14). The chapter ends with His family asking for Him, and a remarkable promise: whoever does the will of God is His brother, sister and mother (3:35).

🔗 Cross-references

• Doctrine and Covenants 107:23 ↗The Twelve are called in our day as special witnesses of the name of Christ in all the world.
• Ether 12:27 ↗The Lord promises to make weak things strong for those who humble themselves and have faith in Him.
• Mosiah 5:7 ↗King Benjamin teaches that through covenant we become the children of Christ.

Jesus teaches from a boat to a crowd on the shore (4:1). The parable of the sower is really about soil: the same seed lands on a hard path, on rock with little depth, among thorns, and on good ground (4:3–8). He explains that the thorns are “the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things” (4:19), a list that sounds very modern. Short parables follow: a candle meant for a candlestick, seed that grows while the farmer sleeps, “he knoweth not how” (4:27), and a tiny mustard seed that becomes a shelter for birds. That evening He falls asleep in the boat during a storm, and wakes to calm it with three words.

🔗 Cross-references

• Alma 32:28 ↗Alma compares the word to a seed that swells within us if we give it place.
• Luke 8:15 ↗Luke adds that good ground is an honest and good heart that keeps the word and brings forth fruit with patience.

Luke’s centurion sends Jewish elders to ask for help, and they tell Jesus he is worthy because he loves their nation and built their synagogue (7:4–5). The centurion sends a different message: “I am not worthy” (7:6). The next day, at the gate of Nain, Jesus meets a funeral. The dead man is a widow’s only son. No one asks for a miracle. Jesus sees her, has compassion, says “Weep not,” touches the bier and raises the young man (7:13–15). Then John the Baptist, by now in prison (Luke 3:20), sends disciples to ask, “Art thou he that should come?” (7:19). Jesus answers with what they have seen and heard, and honors John as more than a prophet.

🔗 Cross-references

• 1 Kings 17:17–24 ↗Elijah raised a widow’s son, one reason the crowd at Nain may have cried that a great prophet had risen.
• James 1:27 ↗Pure religion includes visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction.
• Isaiah 35:5–6 ↗Jesus’s answer to John echoes Isaiah’s signs: blind eyes opened, deaf ears unstopped, the lame leaping.

A Pharisee named Simon invites Jesus to dinner. Guests at such a meal reclined with their feet stretched away from the table, which is how a woman could stand “at his feet behind him weeping” (7:38). She washes His feet with tears, wipes them with her hair and anoints them. Simon silently judges her and Jesus both. Jesus answers with a parable of two debtors, one owing five hundred pence and the other fifty; a penny was about a day’s wages for a laborer (Matthew 20:2). Then He lists what Simon never offered: water, a kiss, oil. Her love was the evidence of forgiveness, and Jesus told her, “Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace” (7:50).

🔗 Cross-references

• Alma 36:19–21 ↗Alma describes the exquisite joy that replaced his pain when he was forgiven.
• Moroni 6:8 ↗As often as people repented and sought forgiveness with real intent, they were forgiven.
• Luke 15:1–2 ↗The Pharisees murmur again that Jesus receives sinners and eats with them.

Return to the storm and read it slowly. It was evening, and crossing the lake was Jesus’s idea (4:35). Several of the disciples were fishermen who knew this water, and still the boat was filling. He was asleep “on a pillow” at the back of the boat (4:38). Their question is raw: “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” He answers first by calming the sea, and only then asks about their fear. They end the night more awed than before, asking, “What manner of man is this?” (4:41). The storm didn’t prove that He didn’t care. It revealed who was in the boat with them. As you take the sacrament today, bring Him the storm you are in.

🔗 Cross-references

• Doctrine and Covenants 6:34 ↗Fear not and do good; if we are built upon the Lord’s rock, earth and hell cannot prevail.
• Psalm 107:28–29 ↗Sailors cry to the Lord in their trouble, and He makes the storm a calm.