Mark 10 closes with two accounts. The first is of James and John coming to Jesus to ask for the two coveted seats of honor at Jesus’ right and left when the Lord reigns in glory as the enthroned king (10:35–45). The second is of blind Bartimaeus, who importunately cries out for mercy from Jesus, heedless of the crowd’s attempts to silence him, and is healed (10:46–52).
The two stories are intended to be mutually illuminating.
In both accounts:
- Jesus is confronted with a request (vv. 35, 48–50);
- Jesus initially responds by asking, “What do you want me to do for you?” (vv. 36, 51);
- The parties making the request clearly understand who Jesus is, prompting them to lay before him their true heart’s desire (vv. 37, 47–48).
A fourth parallel exists that is more subtle, underneath the surface of the narrative: In both cases the party making the request is suffering from blindness.
This emerges when we view the differences between the two accounts. While Jesus asks both the sons of Zebedee as well as Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?”, James and John request glory while Bartimaeus requests mercy. James and John thought they deserved honor and received a no from Jesus. Bartimaeus knew he deserved nothing and received a yes from Jesus. James and John came with a sense of entitlement, Bartimaeus—whose very name meant “son of uncleanness/filth”—with a sense of unworthiness.
James and John, while physically seeing, were spiritually blind. Bartimaeus, while physically blind, was spiritually seeing. All three men were blind; only Bartimaeus knew it.
The strange way naturally blind human beings like you and me receive true sight is by asking for mercy. All it takes is an admission of personal blindness. And what stops up mercy from flowing into the lives of blind sinners is not the blindness itself (that’s the very reason Jesus came) but stubborn denial of blindness (John 9:39–41). “If you have anything of your own,” Charles Spurgeon preached, “you must leave it all before you come. If there is anything good in you, you cannot trust Christ.” All we bring is our need. All we bring is our blindness.
How can the solution to rebellious human blindness be so fraudulently easy?
The solution is so easy for one reason—Jesus.
Jesus Christ was, in the deepest sense, seeing. He is the only person to walk this earth never to have been blinded by sin. Yet he came to the end of his life and received not what he deserved (a crown) but what we deserve (a cross). As he explained to his disciples in the wake of James and John’s request, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). On the cross, Jesus allowed himself to become blind so that you and I, blind sinners, can see again. He came “to open the eyes that are blind” (Isa 42:7) not by exhortation but by substitution.
Jesus asked the sons of Zebedee, and he also asked Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?”
Crucially, he asked this question a third time, not to any human but to his own Father. “What do you want me to do for you?” (Matt. 26:39)
James and John asked Jesus for glory. Bartimaeus asked Jesus for mercy. God the Father asked Jesus to lay down his life, securing both glory and mercy for those who admit their blindness, and cling to Christ.
Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?
In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
