“The time has come at last—the kingdom of God has arrived. You must change your hearts and minds and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15, Phillips).
The time has come at last. The waiting is over—the waiting along with its longing for what might be. That which we long for is now here. It is available for us to embrace.
The kingdom of God has arrived. The Greek word translated as “has arrived” means it is here, now, in our midst. It is something we can experience, something we can participate in, something we can be a part of.
The kingdom of God—life shaped by the character of God, patterned after the ways of God—life that is not dominated by the brokenness of life and its harshness—life that breaks free from the power of our default, anxiety-driven, self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit—life that rises above the chaos caused by that self-serving spirit—God’s kind of life experienced as our reality here, now. The kingdom does not mean we escape our humanness or its struggles. Rather, through the work of the Spirit, it changes the nature of our humanness and how we deal with it.
These first two phrases in verse 15 invite us to embrace a different way of living in the present. It calls us beyond simply doing what the day (the schedule) demands while waiting and longing for something different, something more, something more fulfilling or meaningful or enjoyable or life-giving. It calls us to embrace the present moment and all it holds. It calls us to engage the people and the events of the day as the arena in which we can experience the kingdom that is here, now, in our midst.
The kingdom is here, now, in our midst. However, to recognize it and experience it requires change on our part. “You must change your hearts and minds”—we are accustomed to the familiar translation “repent.” The word in the original Greek means “to think with a different mind.”
Experiencing the kingdom that is here, now, in our midst requires a change of heart—that is, a change in the spirit out of which we live. We cannot experience the kingdom while living out of our inherent anxiety-driven, self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit. Such a spirit blocks our ability to recognize the kingdom that is here, now, in our midst. It blocks our ability to experience it. This default spirit is at odds with the ways of the kingdom.
In addition, experiencing the kingdom that is here, now, in our midst requires a change in how we think. Thinking the way the world trained us to think—merit-based, deserving-oriented thinking with its us-them, compare and compete mentality—blinds us to the presence of the kingdom, keeping us from experiencing it. Experiencing the kingdom requires thinking that is shaped by the character of God and the ways of God—what the apostle Paul called the mind of Christ—thinking taught and guided by the Spirit.
“Believe the good news.” Changing our hearts and minds—repentance—is our response to the good news we hear. It is embracing the good news as truth. It is building our lives upon this new understanding—this new way of thinking and this new spirit. It is allowing our new understanding of spiritual truth to shape how we live and what we do. It is living by faith—a quiet confidence and settle assurance in the truth we have heard and embraced.
The kingdom is good news because it ushers in a different way of living—at least, in our lives when we believe. This new way of living is not based on self-effort with its trying-harder-to-do-better pattern. It is not based upon conforming to laws and moral standards and belief systems. It is not based on having to measure up. Rather, it involves living in glad dependency upon the Spirit who lives in us and is at work in us to transform us into the likeness of Christ.
Changing our hearts is part of the transformative work of the Spirit. Christ has broken the power of Sin in our lives, setting us free from its enslaving power (Romans 7:14-25). (Sin is that default, anxiety-driven, self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit out of which we inherently live. It is Sin with a capital S. Sins—plural with a small s, i.e., behavior, wrongdoing—are the symptoms of this inner disease.) With the power of Sin—Sin with a capital S—broken, the Spirit is now at work to cleanse it from our hearts, infusing the servant spirit of Christ in its place. The Spirit empowers us to break free from our old sinful behaviors—sins, plural and with a lower case s—to break out of our old sinful patterns (Romans 8:12-13).
In addition, the Spirit is training us to think with the mind of Christ. The Spirit teaches us the deep things of God (1 Corinthians 2:6-16) by teaching us the things of God that Jesus taught (John 14:26, 16:12-15). The Spirit bears witness with our spirit regarding truth, moving us beyond the ways the world trained us to think into the deep spiritual truths that flow from the character of God.
Our response to the good news of the kingdom—which includes the Spirit’s transformative work—is to believe. That is, it is to open our lives to the Spirit and the Spirit’s work. It is to embrace the truths the Spirit teaches us so that our hearts and minds are changed, transformed into the likeness of Christ.
Because of the ministry of Jesus and through the
continuing work of the Spirit in our lives today, the kingdom is here, now, in
our midst. It is a reality we can experience; we can participate in; we can
partake of today. That’s good news! It was good news in Jesus’s day. It’s still
good news today!
