Question: In Matthew 9:27-31, why did Jesus tell the two blind men whom He had healed not to tell anyone? Why would He not want the two men to go and share this? He had already preached the Sermon on the Mount and had already performed life-changing miracles in front of crowds. This must mean that He was already well known and His works were not a secret to the population. After the two men go and spread the news (and more and more people came to hear of Jesus), it is recorded that Jesus had compassion on the crowds and brokenness He encountered (9:36). I am just curious towards the purpose of Jesus’ urging.
Answer: Jesus telling people not to talk about Him is so prominent in Mark’s Gospel that Bible academics of the 19th and 20th centuries gave it a name: “the Messianic secret.” They argued that Jesus didn’t actually know who He was until the end of His life. They were quite mistaken about that, but it does confirm that Jesus telling people not to talk about Him is prominent. That means that even though He healed ALL the people in crowds and that came to Him (see Matthew 8), He didn’t want the chatter about Him to be missing the point. Like this, should our relationship with God be based on Him fixing our problems or based on Him giving us a life that IS the fix to all problems, whether we are sick or dying or not? Or we might say, Jesus wanted to be known for who He was (which the miracles confirmed), not just for what He did; His is God, not a rock star.
Do you have a Bible question? Please feel free to send it to me here.