Repent­ance

God has come close to us

For the love of Christ con­trols us, because we have con­cluded this: that one has died for all, there­fore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for them­selves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, there­fore, we regard no one accord­ing to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ accord­ing to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. There­fore, if any­one is in Christ, he is a new cre­ation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ recon­ciled us to him­self and gave us the min­istry of recon­cili­ation; that is, in Christ God was recon­cil­ing the world to him­self, not count­ing their tres­passes against them, and entrust­ing to us the mes­sage of recon­cili­ation. There­fore, we are ambas­sad­ors for Christ, God mak­ing his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be recon­ciled to God. (2 Cor­inthi­ans 5:14–20)

God has come close to us. He became man in Jesus, he gave him­self, his life in order that we might be recon­ciled to him, that we might become his children.

In the begin­ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the begin­ning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the dark­ness, and the dark­ness has not over­come it. … The true light, which enlight­ens every­one, was com­ing into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become chil­dren of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. … No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father­’s side, he has made him known. (John 1:1–5 & 9–13 & 18)

Receiv­ing Jesus

Receiv­ing Jesus means find­ing deep unity with God; it is a com­plete­ness that we can attain only through him.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Fath­er except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Fath­er also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Fath­er, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Who­ever has seen me has seen the Fath­er. How can you say, ‘Show us the Fath­er’? Do you not believe that I am in the Fath­er and the Fath­er is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own author­ity, but the Fath­er who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Fath­er and the Fath­er is in me, or else believe on account of the works them­selves. (John 14:6–11)

Jesus gave testi­mony about the reli­ab­il­ity of his mes­sage through his own life. His pure, sin­less life is also an example for us. He did not merely come so that we should pay trib­ute to him as a good per­son, a wise teach­er, through whom we might also become bet­ter and wiser. He spoke about things that touch our lives very deeply: we have to be born from above in order to gain etern­al life.

Now there was a man of the Phar­isees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teach­er come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again^[1] he can­not see the king­dom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother­’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spir­it, he can­not enter the king­dom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spir­it is spir­it. Do not mar­vel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’” (John 3:1–7)

Every­one who is ready to hon­estly con­front him­self will see and exper­i­ence the imper­fec­tion and empti­ness in his life. He knows that although he would like to love, he is often stub­born. Although he would like to be good, he is envi­ous. He knows that he often fills in his life with acts of com­pens­a­tion, when he should actu­ally find the real aim.

Jesus said to her, “Every­one who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but who­ever drinks of the water that I will give him will nev­er be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to etern­al life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your hus­band, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no hus­band.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in say­ing, ‘I have no hus­band’; for you have had five hus­bands, and the one you now have is not your hus­band. What you have said is true.” (John 4:13–18)

This woman longed for a spring which provides liv­ing water, so that who­ever drinks of it will nev­er be thirsty again. Her life, her sins, her rela­tion­ships demon­strate that she had been seek­ing in vain; she did not find real ful­fil­ment. She had to accept that Jesus exposed what was in her heart and helped her to con­front her­self with her own life and with God. Wheth­er we have the cour­age to be con­fron­ted with God or wheth­er we turn our back on him, one thing is clear: if God is miss­ing from our life there is noth­ing which sat­is­fies, noth­ing which provides real life. As long as we refuse to accept the fact that we need help and lib­er­a­tion, we can­not approach him.

And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a phys­i­cian, but those who are sick. I came not to call the right­eous, but sin­ners.” (Mark 2:17)

I can explain away my egot­ism by say­ing, “I just want to have a good time”; I can call my pride “atti­tude”, a lie “self-defence”, for­nic­a­tion “love”, but none of that changes the fact that God gave us our life for anoth­er pur­pose. He gave us life so that we might live for oth­ers, serving and lov­ing them, that we might be hon­est, faith­ful and righteous—just as he him­self is.

Many people put con­fid­ence in their own abil­it­ies, rely­ing on their feel­ings and their own strength, thus deceiv­ing them­selves. They only see the short-lived, quickly passing ful­fil­ment and close their eyes to what has last­ing value—just like the young­er son in Jesus’ par­able who thought that he could man­age to be happy on his own.

And he said, “There was a man who had two sons. And the young­er of them said to his fath­er, ‘Fath­er, give me the share of prop­erty that is com­ing to me.’ And he divided his prop­erty between them. Not many days later, the young­er son gathered all he had and took a jour­ney into a far coun­try, and there he squandered his prop­erty in reck­less liv­ing. And when he had spent everything, a severe fam­ine arose in that coun­try, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired him­self out to one of the cit­izens of that coun­try, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was long­ing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him any­thing. But when he came to him­self, he said, ‘How many of my father­’s hired ser­vants have more than enough bread, but I per­ish here with hun­ger! I will arise and go to my fath­er, and I will say to him, “Fath­er, I have sinned against heav­en and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired ser­vants.”’ And he arose and came to his fath­er. But while he was still a long way off, his fath­er saw him and felt com­pas­sion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Fath­er, I have sinned against heav­en and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the fath­er said to his ser­vants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and cel­eb­rate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to cel­eb­rate.” (Luke 15:11–24)

We have to find our way home—to him—because all of us are lost until we live in the Father’s house, close to him, in his pro­tect­ing, shel­ter­ing love. If we live without him, we turn away from the self-giving love with which he drew close to us. This is the greatest sin: not to recon­cile to God. Every one of us needs God’s love and for­give­ness because he desires to set us free from dis­hon­esty, egot­ism, van­ity, envy, pride, lovelessness—from all the sin in our lives.

For we ourselves were once fool­ish, dis­obedi­ent, led astray, slaves to vari­ous pas­sions and pleas­ures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by oth­ers and hat­ing one anoth­er. But when the good­ness and lov­ing kind­ness of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in right­eous­ness, but accord­ing to his own mercy, by the wash­ing of regen­er­a­tion and renew­al of the Holy Spir­it, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that being jus­ti­fied by his grace we might become heirs accord­ing to the hope of etern­al life. (Tit­us 3:3–7)

There are points in which we can per­haps change ourselves with our own strength or will­power. There are mis­takes which we can per­haps cor­rect. But that does not provide us with new life, it does not change us to the core. We can only have real life, etern­al life, when God draws close to us and gives us life.

If we con­tin­ue to live without God, as the world does, the decisions we make without God dis­tort our char­ac­ter in many ways. It is not enough to gauge or com­pare ourselves with oth­ers. Jesus showed us the stand­ard he set.

And Jesus said, “Neither do I con­demn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” (John 8:11)

Per­haps you have nev­er done as many bad things as this woman whose story is described in John 8:1–11; per­haps, in your own way, you are a good per­son; per­haps you even revere God in your own way—nevertheless you might be miss­ing something.

And as he was set­ting out on his jour­ney, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teach­er, what must I do to inher­it etern­al life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the com­mand­ments: ‘Do not murder, Do not com­mit adul­tery, Do not steal, Do not bear false wit­ness, Do not defraud, Hon­our your fath­er and moth­er.’” And he said to him, “Teach­er, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, look­ing at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treas­ure in heav­en; and come, fol­low me.” Dis­heartened by the say­ing, he went away sor­row­ful, for he had great pos­ses­sions. And Jesus looked around and said to his dis­ciples, “How dif­fi­cult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the king­dom of God!” And the dis­ciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Chil­dren, how dif­fi­cult it is to enter the king­dom of God! It is easi­er for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich per­son to enter the king­dom of God.” And they were exceed­ingly aston­ished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are pos­sible with God.” (Mark 10:17–27)

Jesus did not run after that young man to see if he would at least be ready to give away half of his pos­ses­sions. Giv­ing a part of what I have is not enough. Liv­ing an eth­ic­al life, being reli­gious, stick­ing to cer­tain prin­ciples is not suf­fi­cient. Jesus calls you to sur­render your whole life to God, to place your long­ings, plans, and wounds in his hands. Every­one has his own “wealth” which sep­ar­ates him from God if he is not ready to give it up in order to do God’s will. Per­haps it is not pos­ses­sions, but know­ledge, fame or a relationship.

Who­ever loves fath­er or moth­er more than me is not worthy of me, and who­ever loves son or daugh­ter more than me is not worthy of me. And who­ever does not take his cross and fol­low me is not worthy of me. Who­ever finds his life will lose it, and who­ever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Mat­thew 10:37–39)

Many people wanted to be with Jesus, because they were fas­cin­ated by his love, pur­ity, wis­dom and good­ness. But when Jesus began to speak about what it means to fol­low him, many left him. Repent­ance, which con­sists of receiv­ing Jesus, is nev­er lim­ited to an emo­tion­al exper­i­ence, a burst of feel­ings, but is a deep decision to be obed­i­ent, to allow him to be Lord and trans­form my very being.

And call­ing the crowd to him with his dis­ciples, he said to them, “If any­one would come after me, let him deny him­self and take up his cross and fol­low me. For who­ever would save his life will lose it, but who­ever loses his life for my sake and the gos­pel’s will save it. (Mark 8:34–35)

While many people are touched by Jesus in some way, we can­not set lim­its on him. We can­not accept from him only what seems good and pleas­ant to us, want­ing the “bless­ings” while at the same time refus­ing to carry the cross, which involves being des­pised by the world like he was, shar­ing his fate, being obed­i­ent till death.

Unfor­tu­nately, a kind of “repent­ance” is often preached today in which, with ref­er­ence to the grace of God, a per­son is not required to take up the cross daily, where they do not have to lose their life—or if they do, then only later as the cul­min­a­tion of a long and drawn out pro­cess of repent­ance. In this way the truth is dis­tor­ted. There is, how­ever, only one truth. It is only through acknow­ledging and accept­ing God’s word that we can have etern­al life.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my dis­ciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are off­spring of Abra­ham and have nev­er been enslaved to any­one. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, every­one who com­mits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house for ever; the son remains for ever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:31–36)

Receiv­ing Jesus means identi­fy­ing ourselves com­pletely with the truth he revealed. Then it is no longer I who set the stand­ard for my life. It is no longer my plans, my aims, my concept of the world, myself and God that mat­ter. Instead what mat­ters is the reality.

I appeal to you there­fore, broth­ers, by the mer­cies of God, to present your bod­ies as a liv­ing sac­ri­fice, holy and accept­able to God, which is your spir­itu­al wor­ship. 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. (Romans 12:1–2)

The truth is not a sub­ject­ive notion which I can reshape to suit my own ideas. I am the one who has to adapt and sub­mit myself to the truth. Jesus expects us to trust him and everything he said uncon­di­tion­ally. Only the truth can sat­is­fy us. Only in the truth can we find true love.

Who­ever has my com­mand­ments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Fath­er, and I will love him and mani­fest myself to him.” (John 14:21)

Receiv­ing Jesus, there­fore, does not only mean that I believe that he lived, died and rose from the dead, but that I sub­mit my life to everything that he revealed. Pray­ing a “sinner’s pray­er” after being emo­tion­ally moved by a ser­mon is not sufficient.

When Zac­chaeus the tax-collector received the call of Jesus he was moved by the love and mercy Jesus showed him. But he did not stop there; he was will­ing to change his life and to act. He was imme­di­ately ready to give up everything in his life which was not in accord­ance with God’s will.

He entered Jericho and was passing through. And there was a man named Zac­chaeus. He was a chief tax col­lect­or and was rich. And he was seek­ing to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small of stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a syca­more tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zac­chaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hur­ried and came down and received him joy­fully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sin­ner.” And Zac­chaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded any­one of any­thing, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today sal­va­tion has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abra­ham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:1–10)

Liv­ing accord­ing to God’s will

The gos­pel is pre­cisely this “good news” of God’s grace that enables us to fol­low Jesus, to love with a pure, true love, just as he did. If we accept this gladly, it will bear fruit in our lives as well….

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inex­press­ible and filled with glory, obtain­ing the out­come of your faith, the sal­va­tion of your souls. … As obed­i­ent chil­dren, do not be con­formed to the pas­sions of your former ignor­ance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your con­duct, since it is writ­ten, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Fath­er who judges impar­tially accord­ing to each one’s deeds, con­duct yourselves with fear through­out the time of your exile, know­ing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inher­ited from your fore­fath­ers, not with per­ish­able things such as sil­ver or gold, but with the pre­cious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blem­ish or spot. He was fore­known before the found­a­tion of the world but was made mani­fest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believ­ers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. Hav­ing pur­i­fied your souls by your obed­i­ence to the truth for a sin­cere broth­erly love, love one anoth­er earn­estly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of per­ish­able seed but of imper­ish­able, through the liv­ing and abid­ing word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass with­ers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains for ever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:8–9 & 14–25)

Repent­ance, there­fore, is vis­ible, tan­gible and real in a person’s life, because Jesus’ sal­va­tion pur­i­fies us from our former pas­sions “for a sin­cere broth­erly love” and gives us the strength to “love one anoth­er earn­estly from a pure heart”. This is the fruit which can­not be imit­ated and that only his power can cause in us. It is pos­sible to do many things “in the name of Jesus”, and nev­er­the­less deceive ourselves….

“Not every­one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the king­dom of heav­en, but the one who does the will of my Fath­er who is in heav­en. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not proph­esy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I nev­er knew you; depart from me, you work­ers of law­less­ness.’” (Mat­thew 7:21–23)

Jesus brought God’s love to us in order that through him we might also be able to love. He does not invite us to a reli­gious pro­gramme, but to self-devotion. The first Chris­ti­ans, who repen­ted through the preach­ing of the apostles, under­stood this mes­sage and shared their lives with one anoth­er. Day by day they lov­ingly devoted their lives to each oth­er (see Acts 2:37–47).

Beloved, let us love one anoth­er, for love is from God, and who­ever loves has been born of God and knows God. Any­one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made mani­fest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the pro­pi­ti­ation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one anoth­er. No one has ever seen God; if we love one anoth­er, God abides in us and his love is per­fec­ted in us. (1 John 4:7–12)

If you repent, if you receive Jesus and, through him, the love of God, you will be able to join the apostle in saying:

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the broth­ers. Who­ever does not love abides in death. Every­one who hates his broth­er is a mur­der­er, and you know that no mur­der­er has etern­al life abid­ing in him. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the broth­ers. (1 John 3:14–16)