While the Bible is filled with commands, and these commands must unquestionably be heeded by believers, the overarching story line of the Bible is one of rescue and deliverance—of gospel. The message of the Bible, at its core, is what has been done by God in Christ for sinners, as the first verse of Mark underscores: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Mark wrote to recount good news. His Gospel relates what God has done for us in Jesus. 

—Dane Ortlund 

Source: Content taken from Mark: A 12-Week Study by Dane C. Ortlund ©2013. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. 

A first-century Christian who read Mark would have understood the “gospel” as a message to be heard, not a book to be read. That is the way Mark uses the term gospel (euangelion) throughout his work (Mark 1:14, 15; 8:35; 10:29; 13:10; 14:9)—always a message that is preached and heard. After Mark wrote, his book became known as a “Gospel,” thus creating two related but distinct understandings of the word gospel (i.e., a book about Jesus’s life or a message about him that is preached). However, as Mark writes, the gospel was only known as a preached message. Mark, then, is providing his readers with the beginning—that is, the fleshed out, detailed backstory to the gospel they had heard preached 

—Peter Orr 

Source: Content taken from The Beginning of the Gospel: A Theology of Mark by Peter Orr ©2023. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. 

Here for the first time the words and deeds of Jesus were remembered and proclaimed in a written form… It is intended to be neither a formal historical treatise nor a biography of Jesus, but a proclamation. The evangelist’s intention is grasped when the opening line of the Gospel is paraphrased, “The beginning of the preaching of joyful tidings.” What follows is an historical narrative oriented around a crisis—the death of Jesus the Messiah. There are valid reasons for believing that the Gospel was written for people who themselves confronted a crisis not dissimilar to the one faced by Jesus.  

—William L. Lane

Source: Lane, William L. The Gospel of Mark. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1974.

In the last twenty or thirty years, I’ve often heard Mark used as an evangelistic book, which is what it is. It comes, as most of you know, in two halves. The first half is about the person of Christ—who is he? And the second part, which starts somewhere in chapter eight, is [about] what the Son of God did and why he came into the world. So in technical language this Gospel is about the person and work of Jesus. Or if you like it in Paul’s language, it’s about “Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). 

—Dick Lucas 

Source: Lucas, Dick. “Mark’s Gospel—An Overview.” Podcast Audio. This podcast originally appeared here at The Gospel Coalition.

The purpose of John Mark’s writing was to encourage the Gentile church in Rome. He wanted them to see Christ as the Suffering Servant-Savior, and so arranged his material to show Christ as One who speaks and acts and delivers in the midst of crisis.[1] Mark has no long genealogy, no birth narrative, and only two of Jesus’ long discussions.  

Christ is all action in Mark! Mark used the historical present tense 150 times. Jesus comes. Jesus says, and Jesus heals—all in the present tense. There are more miracles recorded in Mark than in the other Gospels, despite its being far shorter. Everything is in vivid “Eyewitness Newsbriefs,” brilliantly vivid and fast-moving. Mark uses the Greek word for “immediately” some forty-two times (there are only seven occurrences in Matthew and one in Luke). The conjunction “and” is unusually frequent (beginning twelve of Mark’s sixteen chapters) and adds to the rush of action. Christ’s life is portrayed as super-busy (he even had trouble finding time to eat—see 3:20 and 6:31). 

It takes a slow reader about two hours to read Mark through at a single sitting; and if you take the time, you feel surrounded by crowds, wearied by demands, and besieged by the attacks of demons. You are also repeatedly brought face-to-face with the human emotions of Jesus and the astonishment of the multitudes. Mark is the “Go Gospel”—the Gospel of the Servant-Savior.  

The acknowledged key verse, the one that summarizes the Gospel of Mark, is 10:45—”For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” This verse is part of the answer to the question, what will the gospel make of us? It will make us servants like the Master, effective servants who do not run on theory but on action. He was (and is) Christ for the crisis! Power attended his every action. This same Christ brings power to life now, and a serious study of Mark will bring that power further to our lives.  

1. William L. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975), p. 25.

—R. Kent Hughes  

Content taken from Mark: Jesus, Servant, and Savior by R. Kent Hughes ©2015. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Mark takes pains to show that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of God in the flesh. He opens by saying, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1), and everything in the book leads up to Peter’s great confession, “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29). In a day and age when the world insists Jesus was at best a great teacher, we desperately need to see and be reminded of these truths. Mark actually seems to downplay Jesus’ teaching in order to focus on the power and authority with which he carried out his ministry, demonstrating again and again that he was like no other man. This is a perspective we dare not neglect.

—R.C. Sproul

Source: Mark: An Expositional Commentary by R.C. Sproul © Ligonier Ministries 2019. Used by permission of Ligonier Ministries. All rights reserved.

Most scholars agree that Mark’s purpose was neither biographical nor historical but theological: to present Jesus as the Christ, the mighty worker rather than the great teacher. Hence, Mark makes fewer references to the parables and discourses of Jesus, but he meticulously records each of Jesus’ healings and miracles—specific miracles and allusions to others—as evidence of the fact that Jesus was the Messiah sent from God. 

—Henrietta Mears 

Source: This content is from What the Bible Is All About, written by Henrietta Mears. Copyright © 1953, 2011 by Gospel Light. Copyright assigned to Tyndale House Publishers, 2015. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a division of Tyndale House Ministries, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. 

I want you to keep your eye on the nature of the gospel all the way through this course. What is the gospel as taught by Mark? But secondly, will you keep your eye on every paragraph that teaches us how to serve Christ and gives us an example of how he served the Lord in his wonderful ministry. Mark’s Gospel is not only a proclamation of the gospel, it is a training manual…You know, we think of the Gospels as being Jesus speaking to the clamoring and pressing crowds, but actually if you come into the center of Mark, you’ll find again and again that having left the crowds, he [Jesus] takes the disciples on their own for little private seminars and they have what you might call a ministry training session—a question and answer session. Do watch for those. They come again and again at the end of an episode of public ministry and they’re quite fascinating. And they’re extraordinarily contemporary because the mistakes the disciples make and the things they need to learn are just right for us. 

—Dick Lucas  

Source: Lucas, Dick. “Mark’s Gospel—An Overview.” Podcast Audio. This podcast originally appeared here at The Gospel Coalition.

We are reminded of the point of the Bible, the point of the history of Israel, and the point of Christ coming to earth: “the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4). The book of Mark is in the Bible to show us what God decided to do when we turned our back on him—he sent his own “beloved Son” (Mark 1:11), and on the cross turned his back on that beloved Son so that penitent sinners can know that God will never turn his back on them. Our fickleness, our messiness, our inconsistency, is the point. Christ came “not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). 

—Dane Ortlund  

Source: Content adapted from Mark: A 12-Week Study by Dane C. Ortlund. This article first appeared on Crossway.org; used with permission. 

The Gospel of Mark plays a unique and strategic role in the Christian Bible. In this account of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, we see him fulfilling in himself the Old Testament hopes for a coming king, the Messiah, yet we also see the stark ways in which Jesus confounds public expectations of what this king will do: he will suffer. Mark’s Gospel also gives us a vivid portrayal of what authentic discipleship looks like for those who follow a rejected king. 

Mark’s Gospel is concerned with presenting Jesus as the Messiah, the king, the Son of David, who is rejected by the religious authorities and calls his followers to radical discipleship in the kingdom of God. 

—Dane Ortlund  

Source: Content adapted from Mark: A 12-Week Study by Dane C. Ortlund ©2013. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. 

Mark writes to narrate “the beginning of the gospel”—to give the backstory to the proclamation of the message about Jesus. The title also anticipates the end of the book. Famously, the book finishes with the women fleeing from the empty tomb in amazement and not saying anything to anyone “for they were afraid” (16:8).[1] The risen Christ does not appear, and the Gospel seems to end in an anticlimactic way. However, the identity of this volume as “the beginning of the gospel” fits with the abruptness of the ending. Mark writes in a context where the gospel is known and where people have communicated the gospel, unlike the women who fled because of fear. He also writes with an implied encouragement that his readers will continue to be involved in the proclamation of the gospel. The abrupt ending reflects the fact that “Mark’s Gospel is just the beginning of the good news, because Jesus’s story has become ours, and we take it up where Mark leaves off.”[2] 

1. The Greek is even more abrupt, with the last word being the word “for” (gar). Because of this abruptness, a number of longer endings can be found in some manuscripts, but it seems unlikely that any of these are original.

2. Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 1096.

—Peter Orr  

Source: Content taken from The Beginning of the Gospel: A Theology of Mark by Peter Orr ©2023. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.