The Arrest That Unleashed the Kingdom

I was reading this passage yesterday and was drawn back to it this morning. 

“Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.’” (Mk 1:14-15) 

It seems that Mark is drawing a connection between two facts: John is arrested, and Yeshua begins to proclaim the kingdom of God. 

1. Purposeful Prose 

Mark is not giving us a neutral timeline. His Greek is purposeful; using the phrase paradidōmi, “handed over.” Mark uses the same verb later:  

• The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him (Mk. 9:31).

• The Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles (Mark 10:33).

  
  

So Mark is already framing the story as conflict, not coincidence. It seems that Jesus does not begin public proclamation despite John’s arrest, but in response to it. The arrest marks a turning point in redemptive history. 

2. He must Increase 

We see at least two factors motivating Yeshua: 

1. The injustice of John’s arrest represents all the injustices that Jesus came to address. This time it is his cousin, his friend, his prophet. 

2. John’s role had come to an end as the preparatory prophet who prepared the way for the Messiah's revealing. “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

   
   

John is the last of the prophets in the old order, standing at the threshold of the kingdom. He is not the last prophet, but the new order of prophets and apostles will minister on the other side of the resurrection. John’s arrest does not cause Yeshua’s ministry, but signals that the time has arrived (kairos, not chronos). 

This fits Jesus’ proclamation: “The time is fulfilled” (Mk. 1:15). 

3. This is a Declaration of War 

This is not war as we understand it. Even as I write, violence between nations is being carried out. I have lived through two years of war, only minutes from my house. But it is essential—deeply urgent to understand: While nations may have to fight just wars, as Augustine wrote, for the sake of their nations and to correct injustices, the New Testament ecclesia has no mandate to fight physical battles. If I am called to fight for my country, I do so as a faithful citizen of that country. If my conscience tells me that the battle is not just, then I must object. But all that falls within my role as a citizen of a political earthly entity. At the same time, I am a citizen of heaven. In that role, I fight a different battle. 

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph 6:12). 

This is why I say there is no such thing as a Christian nation. Nations are not humans; they have no souls, they cannot be saved. Only the people within that nation. There is only one nation that will permeate salvation, and that is the fullness of the kingdom of God that is coming when Yeshua returns. No one would argue that China is a Christian nation, but it has over 160,000,000 believers! More than America. We are never called to combine our national affiliation with our spiritual allegiance to Jesus.  

4. A New Kingdom is Breaking Through 

As I wrote in When Kingdoms Collide, one day the kingdoms of this world will be absorbed into the kingdom of God and Yeshua will reign (Rev 11:15). As the prophet writes: “And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day the Lord will be one and his name one (Zech 14:9). The impact will be political, spiritual, and economic. 

Marken scholar Ronald Kernaghan comments on these verses: 

The kingdom of God is an expression that embodied the hopes of the Jewish people that God would one day remove all evil from the world and inaugurate a new, unprecedented age of blessing, prosperity and joy. This hope was nourished by a number of important Old Testament texts, and it touched every area of life. It was spiritual because the power of sin would be destroyed and Yahweh would be universally worshiped as the one true God (Is 11:9). It was political in that God’s people would be released from the power of the various Gentile governments that had afflicted them with so much suffering through the course of history (Dan 7:13–14, 22, 25). War and the lust for power would be replaced by the politics of peace (Is 9:7). It was an economic hope because the new world would know nothing of poverty, hunger, famine or deprivation (Is 32:1–8; 35:1–2).¹ 

The war is real, but it is for the souls of men, not territory, while we wait for his glorious kingdom to arrive in fullness.  

Since I returned to academia in 2020, one of the things that I have come to understand is that the gospel writers wrote as writers. They were not merely pens of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit worked through their different writing styles and personalities. They were all gifted writers and intentional.  

Mark 1 lays out a pattern. 

1. Jesus defeats Satan in the wilderness (Mk 1:12–13)

2. John is arrested (the kingdom’s herald is silenced) (Mk 1:14)

3. Jesus steps forward and proclaims the kingdom (Mk. 1:15)

4. Calls his first disciples (Mk 1:16-20)

5. Immediately after, Jesus begins casting out demons (Mk 1:21–28)

6. Jesus then heals a massive number of people of their diseases and casts out demons (Mk 1:32-34).

   
   

One might see the arrest of John as a satanic reaction to Satan’s defeat in the wilderness. He is striking back like a snake. And notice Yeshua attacked demons, not the Romans. In fact, when the Roman oppressors came to him humbly asking for help, he ministered to them. Remember the centurion in Matthew chapter 8?  

And when Yeshua proclaims, he backs that up. Just after this proclamation, Mark has him attacking the forces of darkness by setting people free of demonic oppression. 

• He taught in the synagogue with an authority that the people had never seen in their rabbinic teachers.

• A demon manifested, and he cast out the demon, “Be silent, and come out of him!”

  

He specifically did this on a Sabbath to rile up the religious who are often the enemies of salvation, not merely in first-century, Pharisaical Judaism, but in medieval Catholicism, and even today in some evangelical circles, who are more concerned about earthly kingdoms than the kingdom of God. Please understand, Jesus had more than enough power to take over Rome, but he didn’t. He understood that phase one of the breaking forth of the kingdom of God into the earth was the salvation of souls. Phase two is coming. As George Ladd famously said, the kingdom of God is already but not yet. 

And the impact was exactly what he hoped for:  

And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee (Mk 1:27–28). 

5. The arrest of John exposes the true battlefield 

It is important to see John’s imprisonment as a satanic attack against Jesus. He is seeking to silence the most important prophet in Jewish history. What he doesn’t know is that John had to decrease so Jesus could increase. Once again, Satan foolishly plays right into God’s plan. 

Mark wants us to understand that the earthly powers are aligning with dark spiritual forces. Herod, before arresting John, was unconscious of the fact that he was being used by demonic forces. Rather, this is a biblical way of describing how power works in a fallen world. 

So when John is arrested: 

• On the human level:

  Herod arrests a prophet because John threatens his moral legitimacy.

• On the spiritual level:

  The powers opposed to God’s reign are attempting to silence the kingdom’s witness.

  

And this shows us that kingdom proclamation invites resistance. This is why Yeshua told us to count the cost. It reminds us of the story of the seven sons of Sceva, who thought casting out demons looked “cool,” but didn’t count the cost.  

It also shows us that resistance does not delay the kingdom of God. Yeshua was ready.  

6. Martyrdom is Weak Faith? 

By placing Jesus’ kingdom proclamation immediately after John’s arrest, Mark is saying: The kingdom does not advance by protecting its prophets. The true prophets of God always pay a high price—from Jeremiah to John—to be faithful to the word of God.  

Recently, I was sent a clip of a TV preacher claiming that John understood the secret of survival, because all the other apostles were martyred—as if, if only the other apostles had more faith, they would not have been martyred. This is not the biblical view of martyrdom, which presents such a death as a kingdom honor.  

Hebrews 11 honors the heroes of the faith who died for Yahweh. After the resurrection, Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father, except for one moment—when Stephen is killed.  

But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55-56) 

Jesus gives Stephen a standing ovation, clearly indicating that he was full of faith, not lacking. Both James, Peter, and Stephen, the apostles, all suffered honorably for the kingdom. Their deaths, like John the Baptist’s, were kingdom actions that advanced God’s agenda. The late second-century writer Tertullian coined the famous quote: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” 

• The kingdom advances by faithful witness in the face of opposition.

• Neither imprisonment nor death means defeat.

• The silence of John’s voice meant the Voice had arrived.

  

Conclusion 

Mark wants us to see that the arrest of John did not interrupt the kingdom of God; it unveiled it. When the herald is silenced, the King steps forward. The timing is not accidental but revelatory: opposition exposes where the true battle lies. The kingdom does not advance by seizing territory, protecting its prophets, or overthrowing empires, but by proclamation, repentance, deliverance, and faithful witness—even unto death.  

John’s imprisonment, like Yeshua’s cross that will follow, appears as defeat only to the eyes of this age; in reality, it signals the inbreaking reign of God that no earthly or spiritual power can stop. The kingdom is already breaking into the present through transformed lives and liberated souls, even as we await its fullness at Yeshua’s return, when every rival rule will finally give way. Until that day, the global eccelsia does not retreat in the face of resistance—it proclaims, because the King has already come.

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 [1] Ronald J. Kernaghan, Mark, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 41.