ELEMENTARY TEACHINGS ABOUT CHRIST
CHAPTER TWO -- REPENTANCE
The first pair of elementary teachings about Christ in Hebrews 6:1 is repentance and faith. A high quality Christian experience is enjoyed whenever the elementary relationship with Jesus is understood and embraced. The first response to Jesus is to be repentance and when coupled with faith, a strong foundation is being laid in your life.
Repentance is a very simple Greek word. If you lived in Greece today, it would be used the way it was used back then. It means a change of mind or direction. We’ve made it a religious word, but the word simply means to change. If you were driving on a highway and realized you had gone the wrong way you would change directions. In your mind and heart if you realize you are going the wrong way in your life you change directions. That is repentance.
Repentance is the foundation on which we build everyday with Jesus. I have a practical definition for repentance that involves one’s whole being toward God. I define it as "an intense desire to please God by which one experiences radical life-change".
Positive change is always desirable so I support step programs, counseling and rehabilitation. These actions can make life better for anyone for their own good. But as change relates to repentance towards God, change must have a positive Kingdom component involving sacrificial loving service for Jesus. That’s the kind of repentance the New Testament teaches. Repentance is a universal inner attitude at work in the lives of those who are followers of Jesus. We follow Him with a desire to listen to Him and to obey Him; we trust Him and we want to please Him.
REGRET OR REPENTANCE
Don’t misunderstand. Regret and repentance are not the same. The difference is this. Regretful sorrow is still self-centered in that we have experienced pain and loss as a result of selfish living and we want to change for our own well-being. An example would be a decision to go on a diet. As it relates to God, the changes we make have a spiritual dynamic to them. Paul summarizes the content of his lifetime of teaching in Acts 20:21 when he said, “I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.” Paul also said that Godly sorrow leads to repentance. So the difference in regret and repentance is this. When I hurt myself I regret it and may change something for myself. When I realize I have sinned against God, I ask him to change me for him. That is repentance toward God.
When we put ourselves in that position of wanting to have our lives turned around, coupled with faith in Jesus, we enter the Kingdom of God. We receive the Holy Spirit. Then we have actual power within us to really turn around. Apart from that relationship with Jesus, we are at the mercy of our passions, our temptations, our dysfunctions, our dependencies, and our destructive habits and addictions.
Everywhere in the world there are people in need of repentance and most want to simply reform. I know that I wanted to change the things that hurt me but my personal efforts were lame. I found that, apart from faith in Jesus, true repentance that brings about change cannot become a reality. Reformation is an exercise to address regret that comes because of the consequences of one’s lifestyle and self-centered ways. That is not repentance.
REPENTANCE AND THE KINGDOM
After Paul summarized the message on repentance and faith, he said in Acts 20:25, “I have gone about proclaiming the Kingdom”. Repentance toward God together with faith in Jesus are the qualities of heart by which one enters the Kingdom. Acts 20:21-25 is the only place I know of where we have a summary of Paul’s teaching: repentance, faith, and kingdom service. That has never changed in terms of what a Christian is supposed to have as the priorities in their life, I repeat: repentance, faith, and kingdom service.
This is the content of Jesus ministry purpose in the first words out of His mouth. “The kingdom is near, repent and believe this good news”. So Jesus, even in the outset of his ministry, is announcing repentance and faith as the two qualities we must have to enter into His kingdom. The good news is not simply the news that if we believe in Jesus we will go to heaven when we die. While this is good news, it is not the good news to which Jesus referred. The good news He announced was that His rule of the entire world was near. The kingdom is near. Repent and believe the good news.
Accept the great privilege of entering His Kingdom and participate in the good news His kingdom rule. Life on earth can be better now. Our call to repentance then includes sacrificial service in His kingdom. Our presence on earth should make things look more like Jesus is in charge, not that we are in charge. Entering Jesus' Kingdom enriches our sense of purpose in life because we are involved in something that really makes a difference for good. By loving sacrificial service, we attract people to allow Jesus to be in charge of their lives. Anyone who follows Jesus will affect their surroundings in the routine context of their life so that the Kingdom rule of Jesus is more visible.
A kingdom is a realm in which a king rules, and Jesus said in Luke 17:21 “the kingdom is within you”. Have you submitted your life under the authority of King Jesus? The Kingdom is within those who are ruled by Jesus. Our effectiveness and our impact are limited because the majority of people in our culture, or any culture, are still self-serving. They have not chosen to enter the Kingdom. Most are not seeking the common good. They are seeking their good.
REPENTANCE PRESUMED
Another thing I noticed in the New Testament is that repentance is not mentioned a lot. We rarely see the word. I believe the readers already possessed an intense desire to please God so repentance on their part is presumed by the writers. It is implied in the New Testament because all of the letters are written to people that had repented. Repentance did not need to be constantly emphasized in the writings. That’s why only in Paul’s summary of what he taught did he actually say it. But he said repentance was the first thing he included in his message everywhere he went both in homes and public places.
One of the reasons this is important is that repentance cannot be presumed in the modern Western Christian culture. We have a cultural Christian context unlike that of the early believers. When a person identified one’s self as a follower of Jesus at that time, there was a price to be paid. It was costly. Apart from the desire for a radical life change brought about by repentance, no one had a motivation to call oneself a Christian.
It was dangerous for most people to do the things Christians did because it was so out of step with the culture. There would be consequences to pay. There would be potential persecution and loss. In Hebrews 10:34, it says the believers “joyfully accepted the confiscation of their property”. All kinds of personal problems could arise from within an adversarial culture of paganism, the Roman government and primarily from leaders within Judaism. Opponents would engage the Roman government in helping to carry out persecution, which prevailed frequently. It led to Paul’s execution, and the execution of many early believers. Just as Jesus was crucified at the insistence of the Jewish leaders, but carried out by the Roman authorities, so that same pattern continued. Therefore, nobody who claimed to follow Jesus was inclined to do so without genuine, life altering repentance.
In our culture it is almost the exact reverse. It is often advantageous to call yourself a Christian, whether repentant or not. In our culture there are candidates who refer to themselves as Christians even though there are no signs of repentance toward God in their lives. We should not even presume repentance on the part of those who sit in our congregations on Sunday. There are sometimes motivations involved that are self-serving rather than a motivation to serve in Jesus’ Kingdom with loving sacrifice.
It is the opposite of repentance when someone only wants the benefits of congregational life. Those things could include a professional minister on call, similar to being on retainer, a comfortable place to gather with friends and family, assistance with training of children and youth, a context in which to experience some prestige and exert some power, recreational facilities and an enjoyable program on Sunday. In this culture one can lack repentance entirely and still be a respected member of the Christian community.
Repentance implies some aspect of sacrifice because pleasing the Lord is likely to involve forsaking something that is dear to us. In the Western culture there is hardly any persecution as a result of the radical life change that constitutes repentance.
THE PRIORITY OF REPENTANCE
This foundation of truth is listed in Hebrews 6 as the first of the six elementary teachings. I do not believe it is in the first position arbitrarily. I struggle with this when making decisions with people in my business. To what degree am I seeking their good, only my good or the delicate balance of a win win situation. I believe win-win is a quality of the kingdom: that we don’t harm anyone as a part of kingdom service nor do we generally expect that we ourselves will be harmed by others as a part of kingdom service. We give ourselves to Him who is a perfect king.
Jesus is a benevolent dictator. This is the biblical and the ideal form of government. A repentant person has voluntarily come under the authority of our benevolent King. They have agreed to serve the good of His kingdom which then means, since He is good, that our surroundings become better because of our service. Life around us becomes healthier, more vibrant, more beautiful, more meaningful, more peaceful, and in every way like the place you would think of where Jesus would be in charge. Isn’t that a great thing? What a privilege we have to be able to serve the King of the universe and have a personal intimate relationship with him as we serve. We only experience this if we have repentance and faith.
In the bible, I am not aware of a single place where the two words are mentioned together without repentance being first. It’s always in that order: repentance and faith. Faith is far more likely than repentance. Faith has a lot of wonderful benefits. If we believe Jesus died for our sins, then we can experience cleansing by Him. If the only purpose of being a follower of Jesus is that you have your sins forgiven so that you are able to go to heaven when you die, it would a pretty lame representation of Jesus and the New Testament writer’s teachings. They always started with repentance.
We have a priority instruction, from John the Baptist, before Jesus came on the scene and became the object of our faith. Repent! John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. In his teaching, prior to Jesus coming forth in his public ministry, repentance was the means of salvation. Followers of John were saying, I am turning my life over to God. I want to do what he wants me to do. It did not solve the guilt, stain, or penalty of sin, but it solved the problem of one’s relationship with God. Then Jesus appeared and died for all of our sins. Then, faith in Him, as the sin-bearer, became the second of the elementary teachings. But the first, repentance, was a priority before Jesus died.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Repentance does not end with the initial salvation experience. Repentance and faith together are the two necessary qualities to "enter the kingdom" which is Jesus favorite phrase to describe salvation. Or we may say we are born again, saved, regenerated, follow Jesus or any of the words used to describe being properly related to God. Every time we sin, we need to repent of that sin. Whatever sin we become aware of needs repentance. I might say to him, “Oh my Lord, I am so sorry. I really want to please you, please forgive me”. In faith I might say, not only please forgive me but, cleanse me in the blood of Jesus— I trust you to take my sins away. The sins don’t go away without repentance.
When we repent, we are participating in the teaching of John the Baptist. When we believe, we are adding to repentance our faith in the teaching of Jesus. But these two attitudes of the heart and mind went hand in hand in Jesus’s ministry too. As soon as Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, in a baptism of repentance, for the remission of sin, He said, “The kingdom is near, repent and believe the good news”. Faith had always been a part of the experience in the followers of God among Jews and proselytes. However, it was not a very knowledgeable faith because The Messiah had not yet come.
I don’t even know how certain they were that His coming had to do with a personal faith and a personal cleansing. They viewed Him more as a national savior. Jesus surprised most of the people who were expecting their Messiah when it turns out that He came to establish an invisible world wide Kingdom and to die for our sins, individually as well as corporately. We must individually engage with Him through repentance and faith for those sins to be forgiven. I picture the Old Testament believers having a faith that was a little different in that it was faith that God would somehow make a way for them. David, in psalm 51, is the epitome of true repentance: he prays for forgiveness, confesses his sin, and cries out to the Lord. He doesn’t yet have a clear understanding of a savior dying for his sin, but he says to God, “You will not abandon me to the realm of the dead”.
Repentance means to turn around: to turn away from self, sin, selfish ambitions, self centered living, self serving ways and turn to Jesus and His ways. His ways are the ways of a servant serving in His kingdom to bring about the common good for all whose lives that He can touch through us. It means that just as God sends the rain on the just and the unjust, when we repent, we want to help any and all people in need. But, it is true that, if time is limited, we especially help those in the household of faith. We are to be kind to all people. That’s a part of repentance. We are to treat them well, whether they are believers or unbelievers. In your relationships, a repentant lifestyle is a great witness.
We are to live a repentant lifestyle toward believers that is sacrificial in that we give them tangible, practical, perhaps monetary, assistance so that the body of Christ is strengthened. A Christian who is being contentious, unkind, or disruptive in the work of the body of Christ is demonstrating the opposite of repentance. It is good if the leaders who teach, speak, and lead will communicate how important it is to live a repentant lifestyle, allowing the Holy Spirit to produce through us the qualities of God that are not humanly natural but are probable to the repentant believer living by faith: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, generosity, faithfulness, and self control. When those qualities exude from our lives, it is indicative of a repentant, Holy Spirit filled follower of Jesus Christ.