Repent & Believe!

 

A talk given on November, 10th, 2004

 

 

The title of this afternoon’s talk is “Repent and Believe!” This may seem a strange topic to preach to an audience of converted Christians. A month ago I would have thought the same thing. However, I have recently been doing some reading from N. T. Wright’s book The Challenge of Jesus, in which he constantly provokes us to re-think conventional ways of understanding many of Jesus’ words and actions. The result of not to abandon orthodox conceptions of Jesus’, but to simply add more colour and understanding to what traditional Christianity have always affirmed.

One example of this is our understanding of what Jesus meant by the injunction to repent and believe. This phrase has, of course, gone the way of many Biblical phrases to become a standard cliché, like ‘born again.’ Whatever people use the phrase has come to mean, when applied to Jesus it usually includes the need to place a belief in Him. However, in it’s original context, Jesus could not have been concerned with this kind of belief, for obviously the people Jesus was addressing would have believed in Him because He was right there.

If I can read now from Wright’s book, we’ll see how he understands this phrase.

 

How are we to unlearn our meanings for such a phrase and to hear it through first-century ears? It helps if we can find another author using it at around the same place and time as Jesus. Consider, for example, the Jewish aristocrat and historian Josephus, who was born a few years after Jesus' crucifixion and who was sent, in AD 66, as a young army commander, to sort out some rebel movements in Galilee. His task, as he describes it in his autobiography, was to persuade the hot-headed Galileans to stop their mad rush into revolt against Rome, and to trust him and the other Jerusalem aristocrats to work out a better modus vivendi. So, when he confronted the rebel leader, he says that he told him to give up his own agenda, and to trust him, Josephus, instead. And the words he uses are remarkably familiar to readers of the Gospels: he told the brigand leader to `repent and believe in me', metanoesein kai pistos emoi genesesthai.

This does not, of course, mean that Josephus was challenging the brigand leader (who, confusingly, was called `Jesus') to give up sinning and have a religious conversion experience. It has a far more specific and indeed political meaning. I suggest that when we examine Jesus of Nazareth, forty years earlier, going around Galilee telling people to repent and believe in him or in the gospel, we dare not screen out these meanings. Even if we end up suggesting that Jesus meant more than Josephus did - that there were indeed religious and theological dimensions to his invitation - we cannot suppose that he meant less. He was telling his hearers to give up their agendas, and to trust him for his way of being Israel, his way of bringing the Kingdom, his kingdom-agenda. In particular, he was urging them, as Josephus did, to abandon their crazy dreams of nationalist revolution. But, whereas Josephus was opposed to armed revolution because he was an aristocrat with a nest to feather, Jesus was opposed to it because he saw it as, paradoxically, a way of being deeply disloyal to Israel's god, and to his purpose for Israel to be the light of the world. And, whereas Josephus was offering as a counter­agenda a way which they must have seen as compromise, a shaky political solution cobbled together with sticky tape, Jesus was offering as a counter-agenda an utterly risky way of being Israel, the way of turning the other cheek and going the second mile, the way of losing your life to gain it. This was the kingdom invitation he was issuing.

 

           So according to this understanding, the injunction to repent and believe was a call for the Jews to accept Jesus’ kingdom-agenda rather than their own. The first-century Jews had a belief in the kingdom. The prophecies of Daniel and Isaiah – with their shining descriptions of life in the kingdom - were the bread-and-butter of their thinking. Daniel spoke of a time when all the Kingdoms of the world would be given into the hands of the saints of the Most High, when the descendents of Abraham would possess and rule God’s kingdom under the overlordship of the Messiah. The later half of Isaiah spoke of a time when the kings of the Gentiles would flock to God’s people and the riches of all the nations would be brought before the feet of God’s people. That was the understanding of the future shared in common by both Jesus and His audience. The point of departure lay in the way of reaching that point.

In first-century Judaism, there were roughly three different approaches you could take, and there were groups associated with each approach. One approach was to fight against the Romans believing that God was on your side and would use your efforts to bring in the kingdom. Another approach was to withdraw and study the Torah, isolated from the political situation around you, and wait for God to come and intervene. The third approach was to compromise, learn to live with the Romans, get as much out of life as you can and hope that God will somehow validate it. Writing about these three different approaches, Wright says,

 

If you go down the Jordan valley from Jericho to Masada you can see evidence of all [three approaches]. First, the quietist and ultimately dualist option, taken by the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran: separate yourself from the wicked world, and wait for God to do whatever God is going to do. Second, the the compromise option, taken by Herod: build yourself for­tresses and palaces, get along with your political bosses as well as you can, do as well out of it as you can, and hope that God will validate it somehow. Third, the zealot option, that of the Sicarii who took over Herod's old palace/fortress of Masada during the Roman Jewish war: say your prayers, sharpen your swords, make yourselves holy to fight a holy war, and God will give you a military victory which will also be the theological victory of good over evil, of God over the hordes of darkness, of the Son of Man over the monsters.

 

Jesus offers a challenge to all three of these approaches. The Sermon on the Mount challenges those who would fight their enemies, and emphasizes instead the need to turn the other check and to show love and light to your persecutors. Jesus’ kingdom-agenda offers a direct challenge to those who were seeking to bring in the kingdom with the sword. When Jesus said that “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword,” He was not advocating a blanket pacifism or a philosophy of non-resistance but simply showing that those who would bring in the kingdom through arms will die in the attempt.

Jesus’ kingdom-agenda also offered a challenge to those who would make peace with the Romans like Herod. Though the allegiance Jesus demanded did not require His followers to pursue a path of civil rebellion, it did say pretty clearly who the final authority was - even Caesar derived his authority from God. Thus, the persecution Christians encountered in the early church was not because they refused to obey Caesar, but simply because they wouldn’t acknowledge Him has being the ultimate authority. Even though the early Christians were law-abiding citizens, they were perceived as a threat because they saw things a different way; they refused to compromise and fit into the system. So Jesus’ kingdom-agenda offered a challenge to those who sought a comfortable life by fitting in with the Romans. Today it is the world rather than the emperor that we are encouraged to make peace with. Though we are no longer forced at pain of death to say ‘Caesar is Lord,’ we are forced, at pain of belittlement and peer pressure, to say “It’s really okay; there’s nothing really wrong in that,” to hundreds of little things, to which our dissent must seem as pedantic in the eyes of the world as the early Christian’s refusal to say ‘Caesar is Lord,’ must have seen in the eyes of the state.

Finally, Jesus’ life also challenges those who would withdraw from the world situation and quietly wait for God to intervene. Jesus’ death at the hands of the political authorities of His day, could have been avoided if He had of withdrawn from the world scene and pursued the quiet kind of religion that is “a personal matter” or which has only to do with you and your relationship to God. On the contrary, Jesus’ engaged with the powers at be, not through the sword, but through being light, and that is what cost Him His life.

So when Jesus says to His audience, “repent and believe,” He means what Josephus meant when he spoke to the rebel leader: give up your own agenda and accept mind. Jesus’ audience would have heard His words as referring specifically to His kingdom-agenda. They would have heard the Sermon on the Mount as a direct challenge to all three of these other kingdom-agendas. To repent and believe in Jesus, therefore, is all about accepting His way and living a life which affirms His kingship. As this suggests, Jesus’ kingship is as much a present reality as it is a future hope.

When I was writing my book on the kingdom I was very focused on the biblical prophecies about the future kingdom of God that will be established at the renewal of the earth. But then one day it hit me that in the church the kingdom of God should already be happening. In the church, Christ’s kingship is not something that is yet to come but something that should be an active, day-by-day reality. This is why Jesus and the Apostles sometimes speak of the kingdom of God as if it is yet to come while elsewhere they speak of the kingdom as if it has already arrived. Jesus said to the people, “surely the kingdom of God has come upon you [present]” (Mat. 12:28) and yet taught His disciples to pray, “Your kingdom come…on earth as it is in heaven [future]” (Mat. 6:10). The Apostle Paul could both refer to the future appearing of the kingdom (2 Tim. 4:1) as well as say that the Lord has “conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love [present]…” (Col. 1:13).

A parallel is what happened when Jesus was on the earth. Jesus didn’t fulfil, or even nearly fulfil, all the things that the Old Testament says the Messiah will do. However, the things Jesus did do, such as His healings, acted as a down payment or guarantee that He would come and accomplish the rest later. In a similar way, as the church acknowledges and practices Jesus kingship now, it is a down payment or guarantee that one day the entire world will acknowledge Jesus’ kingship. That is why the present life of the church is so important eschatological. The devil seeks to disrupt and divide the church in order to destroy the firstfruits of God’s kingdom, for he knows if he can destroy the firstfruits then he can prevent the harvest.

The function of the church is, therefore, akin to the function of Israel in Old Testament times. We might wonder why so much of the Old Testament is taken up with the civil laws given to Israel. The laws that God gave the people of Israel were not just so that their nation would function smoother; on the contrary, it was because they were meant to be a cameo of the kingdom. Similarly, the community of the new covenant is again meant to be a cameo of the kingdom, and even more so since the kingdom has actually been inaugurated now in Jesus. This explains why so much of the New Testament, particularly the letters, are taken up with teaching on interaction and relationships within the church. The New Testament teaching on church relationships is not merely helpful advice for getting on better with each other any more than the laws given to Israel was so that the nation would function better. On the contrary, the New Testament teaching on church relationships, like the laws given to Israel of old, are so that, as a community, we can be a cameo of the future kingdom. Thus, the stress the New Testament puts on there being such things as love, mutual accountability and a bearing of each other's burdens in the church, as well as the mandates for church discipline, have an eschatological (forward-looking) importance. By following these guidelines within the church, the firstfruits become holy to the Lord (Rom. 11:16). Spiritually, this opens up the way for the final harvest in which all the world will live by these same standards. Therefore, to turn aside from our responsibilities to our brethren in the church is to turn aside from our responsibilities to a world lost in darkness.

 

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