Think Wink.

I return to Mark 1:14-15,

Now after John was imprisoned, Jesus went into Galilee and proclaimed the gospel of God. He said, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the gospel!”

I have recently been listening to D.A. Carson speak on the NT usage of the OT. Each lecture that I listen to is about how the NT uses Psalm 2:7, “You are my son! This very day I have become your father!” Gearing up for the discussion for Jesus proclamation ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ, this has helped me make a vital connection to the preceding context of Mark and to understand what was coming and how it ties into the whole work of Mark’s Gospel.

Now let us back up and see why Carson’s lectures have been so helpful to me in understanding this simple statement. Mark records Jesus’ baptism and temptation in Mark 1:9-13 as follows,

Now in those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan River. And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens splitting apart and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my one dear Son; in you I take great delight.” The Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, enduring temptations from Satan. He was with wild animals, and angels were ministering to his needs.

The part that I want to focus in on is the divine utterance in Mark 1:11, “You are my one dear Son; in you I take great delight.” The first part of the statement is taken from Psalm 2:7, it echoes back to Psalm 2:7. So I think that it would be helpful to look at this Psalm in its own context to get a background. In Psalm 2:1-3, the king, the messiah, is in trouble. The nations and the peoples that surround him and his kingdom are plotting to remove him and take over Israel. But in his anger, Yahweh mocks them and scoffs at them and declares that he has installed his king on the throne of Israel. Psalm 2:6 in fact says, “I myself have installed my king on Zion, my holy hill.” In other words God has placed this king on the throne, personally. The attack on the king is in fact an attack on God. But now notice Psalm 2:7-9,

The king says, “I will announce the Lord’s decree. He said to me: ‘You are my son! This very day I have become your father! Ask me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, the ends of the earth as your personal property. You will break them with an iron scepter; you will smash them like a potter’s jar!’”

The king speaks of God’s installing him as king is the king becoming God’s son and God becoming his father. The king, in a functional sense–as opposed to an ontological sense–becomes God’s sense. Yahweh is the King of Israel. The king of Israel is Yahweh’s representative and does Yahweh’s will on earth. Thus as a son does as his father, so the king rules in the place of Yahweh as Yahweh’s mediating agent. And as Yahweh’s son, his inheritance is the nations, the ends of the earth. It could be argued, based upon the Hebrew, that this might not be universal but it would most certainly cover the surrounding nations that are plotting in vain to destroy the king and his kingdom. And as ruler of those nations, Yahweh says that this king, this messiah, will rule them with a rod of iron and dash them like pottery. Thus they need to bow down before Yahweh and his son, the king of Israel, lest they be consumed by God’s wrath through the armies of the king and made to bow down (Psalm 2:10-12). This being declared a king by God in God declaring the king to be the son of God is the background for this statement.

In Mark 1:11, God here is declaring not so much that Jesus is his “Son” in the more ontological sense, but in the more functional sense. This is fleshed out much in John 5:16-30. But the sense which is communicated by the Psalm that the divine utterance refers to is that of Jesus being the mediating ruler of God’s kingdom.

With this in mind, let us return to Jesus’ declaration in Mark 1:15, “the kingdom of God is near (ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ).” God has established Jesus as the king over his kingdom. Jesus is now the sovereign Lord of Lords and King of Kings (Revelation 19:16). And he declares that with his arrival onto the scene in Galilee, having been established at his baptism as the sovereign of God’s kingdom, the kingdom of God has come. And then we look at the Galilean ministry. Jesus shows he is sovereign over unclean spirits, disease, sin, the Sabbath, even death. In Mark 1:22 and Mark 1:27 the people who witnessed his ministry were impressed by the authority that Jesus exercised in his teaching and in his casting out the unclean spirit. The sovereign rule of God has broken onto the scene and Jesus is testifying to his divinity.

The ultimate sign of this kingship is the resurrection. In the resurrection, Jesus as king is vindicated and is established fully and finally and decisively as king. By virtue of his resurrection, Mark 1:11 is vindicated. That one small statement in Mark 16:6, “He has been raised (ἠγέρθη, only one Greek word does Mark use to declare the resurrection),” finally and firmly establishes that the kingdom is in fact here. The kingdom of darkness and of Satan has been invaded by Yahweh’s ruling agent in whom all authority has been placed (Matthew 28:18). Jesus’ ministry testified to Jesus’ authority over the powers of darkness and evil; Jesus’ ascension establishes that he went to the throne to mediate God’s rule.

How is this good new? Mark declares in Mark 1:14 that this is the good news of God. How so? I think Paul most succinctly tells us how Jesus’ resurrection-testifying rule is gospel for us and I’ll end with his statement. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:20-28,

But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also came through a man. For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ, the firstfruits; then when Christ comes, those who belong to him. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has brought to an end all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be eliminated is death. For he has put everything in subjection under his feet. But when it says “everything” has been put in subjection, it is clear that this does not include the one who put everything in subjection to him. And when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subjected to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all.

Death and all that stands in our way of having pure, intimate relationship with God is removed and we inter into God’s presence which Psalm 16:11 says is “absolute joy” and “sheer delight.”

Dr. Jerry Falwell

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The Jesus Christ Gospel part 2