This topic sentence summarizes Jesus' whole ministry in Galilee. It identifies when it started, where it happened, and the essence of what Jesus' proclaimed that was the basis of His ministry.
1:14 Jesus began His Galilean ministry, the first major phase of His public ministry, after His forerunner had ended his ministry. Jesus' forerunner suffered a fate that prefigured what Jesus would experience (cf. 9:31; 14:18). Mark used the same root word in Greek to describe both men. The passive voice of the verb paradidomi("taken into custody"or "put in prison,"lit. delivered up) suggests God's sovereign control over both men's situations.
Probably Jesus chose Galilee as His site of ministry because the influence of hostile Pharisees and chief priests was less there than it was in Judea. Fewer Jews lived in Samaria, which lay between Judea and Galilee.
". . . Jesus changes setting more than forty times in his travels throughout Galilee and into gentile territory."39
Jesus heralded the good news of God. The Greek construction permits two different translations: "the good news about God"and "the good news from God."Mark probably intended the second meaning because the next verse explains what the good news that God revealed through Jesus was. Preaching this good news was Jesus' characteristic activity, and it was foundational for all the other forms of His ministry.
1:15 Jesus' message consisted of two declarations and two commands. First, He declared that the time that God had predicted in the Old Testament had arrived. He was referring to the end of the present age and the beginning of the messianic age, as His second declaration clarified (cf. Gal. 4:4; Heb. 1:2; 9:6-15).
The term "kingdom"(Gr. basileia) as it occurs with "the kingdom of God"in Scripture does not just mean everything over which God exercises sovereign authority.40It means a particular worldwide kingdom over which He Himself will rule directly.41Of course God does sovereignly rule over all and over His people in a more particular sense (2 Chron. 29:12; Ps. 103:19-20). However this is not the rule of God that the Old Testament prophets spoke of when they described a descendant of David ruling over all the earth from Jerusalem. Many Old Testament passages predicted the coming of this kingdom (2 Sam. 7:8-17; Isa. 11:1-9; 24:23; Jer. 23:5-6; Mic. 4:6-7; Zech. 9:9-10; 14:9; cf. Matt. 20:21; Mark 10:37; 11:10; 12:35-37; 15:43; Luke 1:31-33; 2:25, 38; Acts 1:6). Jesus' Jewish hearers knew exactly what He meant when He said the kingdom of God was at hand, or they should have if they did not. The presence of the King argued for the nearness of His kingdom, but it was still in the future (cf. 9:47-48).
The Jews needed to make a double response since the kingdom of God was at hand. They needed to repent and believe. These two words call for successive actions, but the action is really one act that involves two steps taken almost simultaneously. Repenting involves turning from something, and believing involves embracing something else. For example, a drowing man who is clinging to a scrap of wood needs to do two things when a lifeguard reaches him. He needs to release the wood and entrust himself to the lifeguard.
When John the Baptist called the Jews to repent, he urged them to abandon their former hope of salvation because the Lifeguard was there to save them. When Jesus said, "Believe in the gospel,"He meant, "Believe the good news that Messiah is here."Messiah was the subject of the gospel and the object of belief.
This is the only occurrence of the phrase "believe in [Gr. en] the gospel"in the New Testament. It points to the gospel as the basis of faith.
