The Time is Fulfilled

Scripture — Mark 1:14-15 (NRSV)

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Devotion

After Jesus’s baptism, he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where he was tempted by Satan. Following his temptation, Jesus began his ministry by preaching “the good news of God” (1:14). Mark provides a succinct summary of that good news: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (1:15).

For those of us who are used to thinking of the gospel as a message about salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the actual preaching of Jesus can be surprising, even confusing. What did he mean by saying that the time is fulfilled? What is the kingdom of God? How has it come near? And why does this news call for repentance and belief? In today’s Life for Leaders devotion, I’ll address the first of these questions.

The summary of Jesus’s preaching begins with the short statement, “The time is fulfilled.” This sentence harkens back to the Hebrew prophets, who spoke of a time in the future when God would do a new thing. The Lord would judge injustice, set free the oppressed, and establish a new order on earth. On that day, God’s people would be forgiven and their life under God’s righteous rule restored. We find a good example of this message in Jeremiah 31:33-34:

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Jews in the time of Jesus prayed regularly for the time in which God would restore their nation and rule over them once again. They yearned for the day of God’s salvation, which they assumed would mean the end of Roman domination of their nation.

Thus, you can imagine the excitement and perhaps also the curiosity that followed Jesus’s announcement that God’s time had come. Was he telling the truth? Was God finally going to make things right on earth? Or was Jesus one more messianic pretender with good news based on wishful thinking? (There were a number of these pretenders in those days, all of whom ended up being killed by the Romans, along with their followers.)

Christians recognize that God was indeed at work in Jesus, fulfilling the prophetic promises of the kingdom. The time was indeed fulfilled in Jesus. We also look forward with hope to the time when God will complete the work begun in Jesus, when the kingdom of God will cover the earth with justice and peace. Yet, as we look back to the unique time of Jesus and forward to the fullness of time of the future, we rejoice that we can begin to experience God’s salvation today. As the Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians, “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Cor 6:2). In Christ, God’s right time has come, even for us.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Mark 1:14–15. The Kingdom of God.