Acts i. 14).  That with such a clear sense of his new and serious mission Jesus’ first official act was one of kindly relief for social embarrassment is most significant.  He chose to show his divine authority to his new disciples in a way that brought joy to a festal company.  Little as the disciples were likely to appreciate it at the time, it was beautifully indicative of the simplicity and everyday lovableness of Jesus’ idea of the earnest service of God.

105.  With the disciples thus strengthened in faith, and the mother not separated from him though unable to know his deepest thoughts, and the brethren who could not yet nor later understand their kinsman and his work, Jesus went down to Capernaum (John ii. 12), which proved thenceforth to be the centre of his greatest work and teaching.  There for a time, how long cannot be known, he continued in quiet fellowship with his new friends, until the approach of the Passover drew him to Jerusalem to make formal opening of his Messianic work in that centre of his people’s religious life.

Part II

The Ministry

I

General Survey of the Ministry

106.  The attempt to arrange an orderly account of the way in which Jesus set about the work to which he was called at his baptism is met at the outset by a problem.  The vivid and familiar words of Mark (i. 14), seconded by the representation in both Matthew (iv. 12) and Luke (iv. 14), indicate the imprisonment of John as the occasion, and Galilee as the scene of the inauguration of Jesus’ public ministry.  The fourth gospel, on the other hand, tells of a work of Jesus and his disciples in Judea prior to the imprisonment of John (in. 24), and makes this work follow at some interval after the inauguration of the Messianic ministry in Jerusalem.  The minuteness of detail of time and place in the early chapters of John (i. 19 to iv. 43), together with the vividness of their narrative, give them strong claim to credence.  They thus record a ministry earlier than that narrated in the other gospels, proving that the actual inauguration of Jesus’ work occurred in Jerusalem at a Passover season previous to the imprisonment of John.  This is known as the Early Judean Ministry.

107.  The fact that Peter was wont to tell the story of Jesus’ life in such a way as to lead Mark to set the opening of the ministry after the close of John’s activity, indicates that that beginning of work in Galilee seemed to the disciples to be in a way the actual inauguration of Jesus’ constructive and successful work.  Peter cannot have been ignorant of the labors in Judea, though he may not himself have accompanied Jesus to the Passover.  A new stage in the life of Jesus began, therefore, with his withdrawal to Galilee.