Mark contains a raw energy which the other gospels do not have. Whereas Matthew, Luke and John are content to tell their stories in a more measured fashion, you can almost feel the energy of Mark’s gospel bursting from the pages. If one gospel was going to be made into a Hollywood action movie, it would be Mark’s!

That is not to say that Mark’s gospel doesn’t contain some very thoughtful content and structure. The introduction is a good example of this: in the first chapter or so of Mark, many themes are introduced which are going to be picked up throughout the rest of the gospel. This includes the passage we are looking at today.

The time is fulfilled

If you do a survey in the street and ask people “Who was Jesus?”, you’ll get quite a few different answers. Chances are a few people will say he didn’t exist, a few will say he was a moral teacher, a few will say he was the leader of a religious movement, and a few will say he was the Son of God. However, I’m willing to bet that not many people would say he was the Messiah.

What does this have to do with the time being fulfilled?

When Jesus came, he didn’t come out of the blue, with no warning. His coming had been predicted centuries before by the prophets. Mark starts his gospel with a quote from Isaiah (see 1:2-3), signifying that John the Baptist was the fulfilment of a prophecy – and John the Baptist was to “prepare the way of the Lord”. The Jews had long been expecting a Messiah-figure to come and liberate them. (Of course, their actual expectation of what the Messiah would do were wrong – but we’ll go into that another time…)

This is what Jesus means when he says “The time is fulfilled”: he means, the time is now right for the prophecies to be fulfilled. Jesus’ life and work were foreshadowed and predicted by many old testament prophets including David, Micah, Elijah, Jonah, and particularly Isaiah.

Obviously we don’t have the time in this article to look at all of those! But the important thing to remember is that Jesus did not come in isolation: he came standing on the shoulders of God working for hundreds of years through the prophets. God had a plan, and Jesus was the culmination of that plan.

The Kingdom of God is at hand

If you’re like me, you won’t have heard the Kingdom of God talked about very much. But it is a central theme of Jesus’ teaching – in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God all the time! The Lord’s Prayer has the line “Your kingdom come”, which many people pray without thinking about. But what does it mean for God’s kingdom to come? What is, in fact, God’s kingdom?

Well, it involves (drum roll please)… God as king! You may think that’s obvious, but let’s try and explore this in a little more depth. What would you say is the essential, or biggest, problem of the human condition? What would you say causes the most problems?

I would say it is probably selfishness and greed. Putting ourselves before others – and, according to the Bible, more importantly – putting ourselves before God. The essential problem with mankind is that we do not recognise God as ruler and submit to his authority. We want to do things our own way, not God’s.

The Bible recognises this problem. Later on in Mark, when Jesus is asked about the most important commandment, he says the greatest commandment is “love the Lord your God”, and then “love your neighbour”. in other words, it is a reversal of the natural order of things.

And this is exactly what God’s kingdom is: a reversal of the natural order of this world. God is king over us, instead of ourselves. God is king over the natural order, instead of chaos. And so when Jesus says “The Kingdom of God is at hand”, one of the things that he means is I am at hand – Jesus demonstrates the Kingdom of God many times in Mark’s Gospel, and we will be looking at a few of those times in subsequent articles.

But suffice it to say, for now, that the Kingdom of God is seen as something we need to be in: we should be under God’s rule. The Kingdom of God brings eternal life and peace, whereas the alternative – outside the kingdom – brings “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. Jesus’ primary concern is giving people access to the Kingdom, and it is this to which we turn to now.

Repent and believe in the gospel

As we have already seen, the Kingdom of God involves a reversal of the natural order of the world. This is closely linked with the idea of repentance: to repent basically means turning away from one’s own selfish nature, and turning towards God and his ways.

What Jesus is telling us here is how to enter the Kingdom of God: we need to turn around from any ways we have which are against God’s, and turn to him. But that’s not the whole story! Jesus also says that we need to “believe in the gospel”.

Why should we also need to believe in the gospel? Well, the whole point of Christianity is that none of us are fully capable of repenting, of turning away from our old selfish and sinful natures. However much we try, we will never be able to fully turn around from living a life for ourselves and not for God. We cannot do this on our own – we need God’s help. Jesus came to give us this gospel (“good news”) – which is, although we can’t do it on our own, with God we can do it.

As Jesus says later on in Mark’s gospel, “With man this [being saved] is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” (Mark 10:27)

The Kingdom of God cannot be entered through human effort alone, but the good news is that we don’t have to. By believing in Jesus, we can repent and enter the Kingdom – we can be friends with God.

We will pick these themes up again in subsequent articles, but I want to leave you with one question. Have a read through our passage again, specifically looking at the actions of the first disciples. The question is: do you feel that Jesus is calling you today, and if so, what do you think that might look like for you?