It's pretty hard to see the meaningfulness of a time jump like this. It means they are all the same, but the world around them is seven years more advanced. Aside from Zeref and Iwan, does that even mean anything, because Fairy Tail members are pretty much the only consistent characters we deal with. And Lucy's old man, haha. I wonder if he managed to pull it off during these seven years. Maybe he's rich again! Zeref, however, has been around since times immemorial, so seven years mean absolutely nothing to him. Oh, well, maybe the next chapters will reveal if the time jump just had to happen to signify how much ass a dragon kicks or if it had a deeper meaning after all.