THE CALL (1:1-15)

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.

—Albert Schweitzer

Mark’s beginning is characteristically succinct.  “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  The danger here is that we are so accustomed to speaking of and reading about a “gospel,” or even “the gospel” and also “the Son of God,” that we don’t bother to think about what these terms meant in their original context.

WHAT IS THE GOSPEL? (1:1)

Let’s take the term “gospel” first:  What does it mean?  We kick the word around a lot in Evangelical circles.  It is derived from the old English word godspell, and is used to translate the Greek term, evangelion.  The best transliteration of the term is “good news” or “good message.”  However, we might have a better understanding if we consider some prominent ways in which the word was used at the time of Jesus.

The pagan context

Consider this inscription from 9 BC

The providence which has ordered the whole of our life, showing concern and zeal, has ordained the most perfect consummation for human life by giving to it Augustus, by filling him with virtue for doing the work of a benefactor among men, and by sending in him, as it were, a deliverer for us and those who come after us, to make war to cease, to create order everywhere . . .. ; the birthday of the god [Augustus] was the beginning for the world of the glad tidings that have come to men through him.

[Quoted in N. T. Wright’s What Saint Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 1997), 43.  A slightly different reading of the same inscription is found in John Dominic Crossan’s Jesus:  A Revolutionary Biography (New York:  HarperCollins, 191994), 1.]

Here we have the announcement of the birthday of Augustus Caesar dubbed as a gospel—“glad tidings” or good news.  As Biblical and historical scholar, N. T. Wright, sums up the evidence:  “In the Greek world, as is well know among scholars, evangelion is a regular technical term, referring to the announcement of a great victory, or to the birth, or accession, of an emperor.” [ibid]

The point here is that a “gospel” refers to a public announcement of victory.

The Jewish Background

Wright also points out two passages from Isaiah which bear on the original meaning of the word “gospel.”  The first is Isaiah 40:9 (I include verse ten for context).

Get yourself up on a high mountain,
O Zion, bearer of good news.
Lift up your voice mightily,
O Jerusalem, bearer of good news;
Lift it up, do not fear.
Say to the cities of Judah,
“Here is your God!”
Behold, the Lord God  will come with might,
With His arm ruling for Him.
Behold, His reward is with Him,
And His recompense before Him (emphasis added).

In the common Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, the word for “good news” is evangelion.  The same is true of Isaiah 52:7.

How lovely on the mountains
Are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who announces peace
And brings good news of happiness,
Who announces deliverance,
And says to Zion, “Your God is King!” (emphasis added).

These texts are about a return from exile for God’s people when their land will be returned to them and God will again dwell in their midst on Zion in Jerusalem in the Temple.  It is important to remember that the Temple was God’s palace.  In fact, the same Hebrew word is used throughout the narrative of First Kings and First Chronicles to describe the construction of both God’s “Temple” and King Solomon’s “palace.”  Both structures are given the same name because they are both royal houses wherein a king is enthroned.  At the time of the exile, God abandoned his palace and allowed Nebuchadnezzar to destroy it.  Instead or ruling from there, he came on his throne and dwelt with the exiles in Babylon, as revealed in Ezekiel 1.

Thus, prophesying the return from exile when God’s presence will again be in Jerusalem is an announcement of his enthronement.  It fits in quite well with the pagan use of the term in the first century.  Both Jew and Gentile alike use the term to refer to the victory or ascension of a king—perhaps the triumphant beginning of his rule.  For the Jews this meant the one true God who had chosen a people and chosen to dwell enthroned among them at the Temple in Jerusalem.  For the pagans it meant some other god had begun to rule as king—often these false gods were might men like Caesar who claimed to be divine.

The Christian Proclamation

What is the upshot of all this?  Quite simply, while the gospel does result in changed lives and forgiven individuals, the gospel message is not simply a method for changing one’s life or receiving forgiveness.  In other words, the gospel is not a description of how one goes about getting “a personal relationship” with God.  When a new King has conquered and, as a result, ascends to his throne to rule, the news causes his enemies to tremble in fear.  It causes those who want to benefit from his rule to bow their knees in submission to his authority.  That is the kind of news the Gospel is.  That is what Mark is writing about—the conquest and triumph of a new king.

NEXT INSTALLMENT: The Meaning of the word, “Christ”