Mark 1:1 (KJV)
The beginning of the gospel
of Jesus Christ,
the Son of God
From other translations:
The beginning [of the facts] of the good news (the Gospel) of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. [AMP] The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. [ESV] The good news of Jesus Christ--the Message!-begins here, [MSB] The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. [NIV] Here begins the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. [NLT] The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. [NKJV]
Now let us see what this verse is telling us.
Marcus starts here with “The beginning of the gospel”, and he begins to testify of what he finds important to pass on to us.
You may also have intended to make a new start, a new beginning. For example at the start of a new year. That can’t hurt of course, but is there anything to it?
We’ve had that before. Good plans, good intentions, but unfortunately it didn’t work out as we planned, it stopped with the good intentions.
We made up our minds to really live according to God’s will now, but we failed, we have gone back to the old path of sin, and we have let ourselves be carried away by the lusts of the present world again.
This is because we cannot do that on our own. But when the Lord makes a new beginning with us, things change.
This is the new beginning of which is spoken here: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
Here begins the glad tidings about the Lord Jesus, God’s Son, who was sent into the world to seek, and to save the lost. But we must not only read, or hear, that good news, it must also be brought into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and come to life there, so that the new beginning will also grow there.
We must receive a new heart, and love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all your being, and also walk in His ways. Then you can rightly speak of a new beginning.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the glad tidings of salvation and grace, has been brought into this world, and the preaching of the message continues to this day.
Mark himself had witnessed how this Gospel continued to break through in those early days with strength.
As a helper to Paul, and in company with Peter, he had seen its progress down to Rome, the world capital of those days.
It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that means that Jesus, the Christ, is the content and center of it. Everyone’s attention should therefore be directed primarily to Him, and through Him to all who have been incorporated into Him by genuine faith.
No reverse attention. Not the first attention to His followers like we see so often these days. No, all attention to Him first. For without Him, His followers are nothing. Without Him they want nothing, they can do nothing, they have nothing. Without Him they don’t even have life!
Do you know that you have no life without Him?
When you have a living knowledge of Him, and I mean not only knowledge with the head, but a profound relationship with Him, that lives, and is active in the depths of your heart, in the depths of your being, you will also understand that He is only your life. That He has become the First in your life, and that He also must remain the First.
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