ABSTRACT
The preacher to this point was John. The beginning of Jesus’ ministry is marked by the arrest of John. Mark portrays the sequence of first John and then Jesus. Now Jesus came/returned into Galilee. Three important transitions occur at this point. ‘From John to Jesus’ marks the first change, which encompasses the other two. The second is from the desert region of the Jordan into Galilee. The third transition is from John’s preaching of a baptism of repentance to Jesus’ proclamation of ‘the gospel of [the kingdom of] God…’. Mark (unlike Matthew 3.2; 4. 17) starkly distinguishes the preaching of Jesus from the preaching of John. With the appearance of Jesus in Galilee, after his baptism and testing, his preaching carries a new urgency which distinguishes it from the preaching of John by asserting that the kingdom of God was now present in a new way. The new state of affairs was the ground for calling for repentance, but is also proclaimed as ‘good news’ in which the hearers are called to believe. While the call to repentance was common to the preaching of John and Jesus, Jesus’ proclamation of the ‘gospel’ and his call to ‘believe’ in it were new. The ‘gospel of God’ was the good news which had God as its subject or, expressed more fully, concerned the presence of the kingdom of God. As preached by Jesus this was good news to be believed. This event was bad news for Satan and those who practised evil. It was good news for the oppressed who longed for liberation. Judgement and deliverance are two sides of the coming of the kingdom of God. The ‘gospel of God’ is also to be understood as good news from God declared by his messenger.
