Jesus asks what you want before he tells you what to do. In Mark 10 he puts nearly the same question to two of his closest followers and to a blind beggar: what do you want me to do for you? Their answers show what each one loves. This study reads that chapter and one scene from Luke slowly. The goal is to see where your own heart already runs, and how following Jesus reshapes it toward what he loves. Then you will spend a week answering his question honestly.
You can work through it alone with a Bible and something to write on. A group can cover it in one long session or in two shorter ones that break before the practice. Each passage should be read aloud before anyone discusses it. The order matters. First the text, then what Yolanda Solomon, the discipleship director at Epiphany Church in Brooklyn, says about discipleship in a Jude 3 Project conversation with Lisa Fields, and only then your own life.
Start with the request, not the lesson
Read Mark 10:35-37 by itself. Do not skip ahead to the famous saying about serving. Notice how the brothers open: “Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire” (Mark 10:35). In older English, “we would” means “we want.” They ask for a blank check before they name the request.
Jesus does not refuse. He asks a question: “What would ye that I should do for you?” (Mark 10:36). Then they say it plainly: “Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory” (Mark 10:37).
Before you interpret anything, write down three plain observations:
- What do James and John assume Jesus is about to receive?
- What do they want for themselves inside that future?
- What does Jesus do before he corrects them?
In a group, give people two quiet minutes to write before anyone speaks. Ask only for what the verses say, and gently set aside answers that jump to applications. This first step goes faster than people expect. If it takes less than five minutes, read the verses aloud a second time.
The third observation is the easiest to miss. Jesus draws the desire out into words. He lets them say what they actually want, and a want you have never said aloud is very hard to examine.
Where Mark places the scene
Scenes in Mark’s Gospel are arranged with care, so read the verses on either side. Just before this request, in Mark 10:32-34, Jesus tells the twelve what waits for him in Jerusalem. He will be condemned, mocked, scourged and killed, and he will rise on the third day. The brothers’ request comes immediately after.
Earlier in the chapter, a rich man asks what he must do to inherit eternal life (Mark 10:17-22). Read verse 21 slowly: “Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.” In the verse, Jesus loves him before he names what stands in the way. The man leaves grieved, “for he had great possessions” (Mark 10:22).
Now read the end of the chapter. A blind beggar named Bartimaeus calls out, and Jesus asks him, “What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” Bartimaeus answers, “Lord, that I might receive my sight” (Mark 10:51). Once he can see, he follows Jesus in the way. Solomon notices this habit in Jesus. Among the questions she says he asks people is this one: “What would you have me to do for you?” Keep the three answers in this chapter in mind. The discussion will come back to them.
What Jesus does with their desire
Read Mark 10:38-45. Jesus first tells them, “Ye know not what ye ask” (Mark 10:38). He asks whether they can drink his cup and share his baptism. Most interpreters read the cup and baptism as images of the suffering he has just predicted. Later in Mark, Jesus prays in Gethsemane for the cup to pass from him (Mark 14:36). The brothers answer that they can. Jesus says they will share his suffering, but the seats are not his to hand out.
The other ten hear about it and are “much displeased with James and John” (Mark 10:41). Jesus answers all twelve. Among the Gentiles, rulers lord it over people. “But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all” (Mark 10:43-44). In the KJV, minister here means one who serves. For “servant of all,” other translations read “slave of all.” Then comes the reason: “For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
Careful readers take this passage in two ways, and each has a basis in the text. In one reading, Jesus mainly rebukes the request. They do not know what they ask, and the scene exposes self-seeking among his followers. In the other, Jesus redirects the desire. He never calls the wish to be great wicked in itself. He says “whosoever will be great” and then redefines greatness. The text can hold both. The request is corrected, and the hunger for significance is pointed toward service rather than simply removed.
One more observation, offered as an interpretation many readers have made and not as something the text announces. At the crucifixion Mark writes, “And with him they crucify two thieves; the one on his right hand, and the other on his left” (Mark 15:27). The places the brothers asked for go to two condemned men at the moment Jesus is most fully giving his life for many. If the echo is intended, it is sharp. They wanted seats beside his glory without knowing what his glory would look like.
The same brothers on another road
Read Luke 9:51-56. A Samaritan village will not receive Jesus, and the same two brothers ask, “Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?” (Luke 9:54). Elias is Elijah. Jesus turns and rebukes them. The rest of verse 55 and part of verse 56 appear in the KJV, but the earliest manuscripts disagree about including them. Nothing in this study depends on those extra words.
In Mark the brothers want status. In Luke they want power over people who rejected their master. Solomon draws the lesson from the Luke passage: “it shows us that sometimes we have enemies and we try to make our enemies Jesus enemy.”
What Solomon adds, and how to test it
Solomon calls “discipleship” a very churchy word and puts it plainly: “A disciple is a follower, an apprentice.” Her main claim is about the order of change. She says “you become more and more like Jesus, not necessarily by what you do, changing first, but by what you love changing.” She reads the rich man this way. When Jesus tells him to give up his money, Solomon says “he knows that that’s what that man loves.” Her summary is short: “Jesus always gets to the heart.”
She describes the change she hopes for in terms that fit James and John closely. As people encounter Jesus, she says, “people become more important than things,” and they discover that “it’s not all about money, and it’s not all about power.” She even names a modern form of the brothers’ request: “how far up the corporate ladder I can climb.”
Test her claim against the text instead of simply accepting it. Mark 10 does call for action. The rich man is told to sell and give. The twelve are told to serve. So Solomon is not saying behavior is unimportant. Her point is that Jesus aims his command at what the person treasures, and that action follows a change in what they love. The rich man’s record of keeping commandments was strong. His love for his possessions is what stopped him.
Solomon also names a motive that can quietly drive discipleship. She observes that “a lot of us see discipleship as a means to fixing ourselves up so God will actually care about us.” Verse 21 speaks to that motive at least for this one man. Mark says Jesus loved him before the demand and before the man walked away. Whatever else the scene teaches, Jesus’s love for him was not a reward for passing the test.
A practice for this week: answer his question honestly
This practice uses the question Jesus asks in Mark 10:36 and 10:51. It takes about ten minutes a day for seven days. If your group meets twice, introduce it at the end of the first session and open the second session with the day-seven sentence, for anyone willing to share it.
- Day one. Read Mark 10:35-37. Write your own honest version of the brothers’ request, beginning with the words What I want you to do for me is… Do not tidy it up. If it is about recognition, security, a title, or someone finally admitting you were right, write that down.
- Days two through six. Each evening, write two short lines. First, name one moment that day when you reached for the seat on the right hand: wanting credit, wanting to win, wanting to be served first. Second, name one small act of service you did, or could have done, that no one would praise. Do not grade yourself. You are tracing where your heart already runs.
- Day seven. Read Mark 10:42-45 alongside your notes. Go back to your first-day request and ask what it would look like if Jesus kept the desire underneath it and pointed it toward serving. Write one sentence in answer.
Two cautions. This is not a chart for proving you are improving. Solomon warns that people want overnight change, and she says “heart change takes time.” Also, the notes are private unless you choose otherwise. Leaders should say this out loud when they introduce the practice. If someone admits in the group that what they really want is recognition, resist the urge to correct them on the spot. Jesus let the brothers say it first. Lisa Fields observes that discipleship often fails because “we lack patience,” and a group can make that same mistake with its own members.
Questions for discussion
Let people answer from the text before they answer from their own lives. Someone who only listens is still taking part.
- Read Mark 8:31-33 and Mark 9:31-34. Each time Jesus speaks of his death, what do the disciples do next? What pattern do you see when Mark 10:32-37 is added?
- Compare the answers that the rich man, the brothers and Bartimaeus give Jesus in Mark 10. What does each one want, and which of them ends up following him?
- The other ten are angry with James and John. What might their anger reveal about what they wanted?
- Jesus tells the brothers they will drink his cup. Read Acts 12:1-2. How does that verse change the way you hear their confident answer in Mark 10:39?
- Solomon claims that changed loves come before changed behavior. Where does Mark 10 support that claim, and where does the chapter push you to say more than she does?
- Lisa Fields suggests from 1 Peter 3 that “our behavior should lead to questions.” If someone watched how you handle being overlooked, what questions might they ask?
- Which version of the brothers do you recognize more easily in yourself: the one asking for the seat in Mark 10, or the one asking for fire in Luke 9?
Before the week ends, read Mark 10:45 once more. Then look back at the sentence you wrote on the first day and ask where the person it describes is going to sit.