Passing Away

 

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK

PASSING AWAY

Mark 13:28-31

28 "Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 29 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. 30 I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

NIV

The whole of understanding these words is in the correct translation of the word generation. In some senses, it is used to mean a span of about 38 years, which is interesting in that it was about that many years after Jesus left that Jerusalem was destroyed. Yet, at the same time, this word is referred to as the human race, or genealogy of people, such as the race or nation of Israel. Within the context of both the previous warnings of Jesus and that fact that he mentions that Heaven and earth will pass away, he cannot be referring to just a few select people who are currently living, but to all the “genea”, the whole of this age of humankind. For now, we are in that age of humankind. That is before the beginning of creation, there was only God. Humankind did not exist, there was no generation. All of mankind may have existed within God, in some sense, but we had not yet been formed into our present existence, and one day we will all no longer be in our present existence, for the age, the generation of humankind will be no more and we will once again be within or with God. So then when Jesus says that we, humankind, this age or period of time that we live in, will not pass away until all the events leading up to the Day of the Lord happens. However, he also includes that when it does happen, this heaven and this earth will pass away, which agrees with the revelation He gave to John and that there will be a new heaven and a new earth and a new city that will come down out of heaven and there is where we will live with God, being in a new creation, in a new form, no longer humankind, no longer corruptible, no longer perishable, but in an everlasting eternal form with the everlasting word, that will never pass away. It is also interesting the Greek word translated as words, is logos, which means the word, or an expression of thought, or it can also just mean word, as in Jesus is the word, and the Word became flesh. Jesus will never pass away and thus as we are in Christ then we too will never pass away for we will be changed in a twinkling of an eye. So the day we pass away is the day humankind will no longer be and new creation, a new age, the age of eternity exists.