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“This is the time of fulfillment.
The Kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”
This was a call for listeners to rid themselves of old and dysfunctional ways of thinking. It was a call to transcend ways of thinking based in the selfishness of the ego and instead to learn to see things from God's perspective. It was a call to leave conformity to the present age, and to what the world said was normal, in order to be transformed by the renewal of their minds.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (see Romans 12:2).
Such transformation could not be real unless it led to action. In the normal course of things thoughts tend toward words which take shape in actions. This is why it is vital to rehearse and ruminate on true thoughts and give voice to true words. But we are also capable of hypocrisy, and thus must guard against it. The point of a Christian way of thinking is that it is meant to lead to a way of being from which good actions follow naturally. The point is not so that we can be part of an in group or have a positive self image. Such things are entirely beside the point.
“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Simon and Andrew internalized the call of Jesus in a way that revolutionized their inner lives and allowed them to take radical action for the sake of the kingdom. For perhaps the first time their thoughts were not determined by the limited and narrow vantage point of self but were rather received from a higher and infinitely expansive perspective. The ego would hear the call "Come after me" and respond, 'Forget about it'. But the renewed Christian mind would realize that it was for this that it had been made. The convert would leave behind the story he had been writing about himself in exchange for his part in the story that God was telling.
The freedom Jesus was able to immediately engender in the lives of his disciples caused them to believe in his capacity to bring freedom to the world. They themselves experienced miraculous transformation and thus believed in the possibility of that transformation at scale. After all, Jesus had rooted himself in messianic prophecy by calling them to be fishers:
Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the LORD, and they shall catch them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks (see Jeremiah 16:16).
What do we believe is possible for our world? Are we still seeing things from a perspective warped by this world, or are we relying on the renewed minds that are God's gift to us? Are we still weeping for the things of this world that we cannot keep forever, or have we realized that God can be more to us than all of those things? Right thinking can help us put God first. When we really do this we experience radical freedom from which we not only can serve him, but desire to do so above all else.
O LORD, I am your servant;
I am your servant, the son of your handmaid;
you have loosed my bonds.
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