5 minute read
Repent and Believe, Part 1
DAY 2
Mark 1:14-45
Okay, the preliminaries are over. Mark has introduced us to Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God. Now he moves forward to show us Jesus’ public ministry. And what a demonstration! Jesus is constantly on the move, exciting the crowds, agitating the religious leaders, and challenging his closest disciples.
Today’s passage sets the pace: In a few short verses, Jesus announces his mission, calls his first disciples, casts out a
demon, heals Peter’s mother-in-law, spends the whole night healing people, gets up early to pray, and then heals a man with leprosy. All in about twenty-four hours.
By my count, this section is 607 words long—but only 95 of those words come from Jesus. That’s only about 16 percent of the text. Not only that, but Jesus tends to speak in short, staccato phrases: “Be silent, and come out of him!” “I do choose. Be made clean!” (1:25, 41). Rather than focusing our attention on Jesus’ teaching in his opening chapter, Mark keeps our gaze fixed firmly on what Jesus does—and he does a lot.
But there is one place where Jesus says a little more than this: at the very beginning. “The time is fulfilled,” he proclaims, “and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (1:15).
Repent and Believe
It seems simple enough. Just confess your sins and proclaim your faith in God. But look at what comes after Jesus’ announcement. Or rather, look at what doesn’t come after it. Nowhere in these opening stories do we see anyone repenting in the traditional sense of admitting their guilt or confessing their sins. In fact, the first time that Mark even mentions sin is a few days after these events, after he has finished preaching in the towns surrounding Capernaum (2:5).
I can’t impress upon you enough how important this is. Mark is telling us something we can easily miss if our understanding of repentance is restricted to begging God to pardon
our sinfulness. The Greek word Mark uses for “repent” is metanoia. The word means “to change one’s mind” or to think in a new way or redirect one’s heart.
It’s as if Jesus is saying, The time for the kingdom has come, and you’ll miss it if you don’t change your way of thinking. So do it! Change your mind; change your assumptions [repent]; and welcome this new thing with open arms [believe].
What are we to change our minds about? Mark doesn’t tell us directly, but he uses the stories of healings and exorcisms in the next few chapters to show us. We get a glimpse of them here, and a more obvious one will come in the next chapter. For now, let’s look at just one story: the disciples’ early-morning interaction with Jesus.
That Is What I Came Out to Do
We’ve already seen Simon, Andrew, James, and John leave their nets to follow Jesus. He has promised they will fish for people, and in these opening scenes, plenty of people seem to have entered their nets: the whole town of Capernaum shows up that evening looking for healing. Everyone wants a piece of Jesus, and he willingly obliges. He works miracles long into the night. But when morning comes, he is nowhere to be found.
This is where this scene opens. The disciples pursue Jesus and find him in a deserted place, praying. They try to persuade him to come back, but Jesus refuses. He doesn’t want a repeat of the night before; he wants to move on to the
towns surrounding Capernaum “so that I may proclaim the message there also” (Mark 1:38).
The disciples were looking for more miracles and more crowds, but Jesus was looking for changed hearts and minds. This was his primary mission. So Jesus redirects their thinking. He helps them repent—change their minds—so that they can focus on the good news he is proclaiming.
This is the first of many times that Mark will portray the disciples as misunderstanding Jesus’ mission, and I believe he includes these little scenes for a reason. He’s not interested in telling us how slow to believe the disciples were as much as he is in asking us what we believe. And that’s where I want to end this chapter. Jesus came out to do something, and he asked us to take on a new attitude and a new way of thinking in order to receive it. We’ll spend the next few days examining this new way of thinking more closely, but for now let’s get ourselves in the right frame of mind. You can use the following questions in prayer today to help you get ready.
For Reflection
1. How would you describe the “good news” that you believe? Spend a few minutes writing out your understanding of Jesus’ gospel message. See if you can boil it down to two or three sentences—and be careful not to use pat phrases like “Just love people” or “Place your faith in Christ.”
2. When Jesus called Simon and Andrew to follow him, he promised they would end up fishing for people. What kind of “fishing” do you think they were expecting to do? How were their expectations different from—or similar to—Jesus’ expectations?
3. Do you think Jesus is asking you to “catch” certain people in your life in the net of his good news? As you read the next few chapters, see if God suggests to you a humble, winning approach to help them encounter Jesus.
4. Imagine that you are one of the disciples who found
Jesus early in the morning. You are about to urge him to come back into town to be with the people, but you notice he is praying. What does that scene look like to you? What is the expression on Jesus’ face as he prays?
Look at him for a moment before speaking to him. What do you want to say to him now?
