Does Jesus accept us as we are—or call us to ‘repent’?
The idea of 'repenting of sin' causes us a chip of a problem nowadays. It causes u.s.a. a trouble in relation to those outside the church as well equally those inside the church and faith. For those exterior, at that place is a sense that Christians are 'holier than one thousand', and are telling them that they are 'sinners' whilst we are 'righteous', which feels like a put downward. And there are wider questions almost whether the language of 'sin' communicates anything at all; it is not a category that ordinary people understand.
Only there is a problem for those on the inside likewise. A couple of years ago at New Vino, Danielle Strickland suggested that nosotros need to recover a sense of God's cosmos and blessing of us, rather than continually home on our sinfulness. Some might have heard in this echoes of Matthew Fox'south 'original blessing', simply others welcomed it; a well-respected evangelical leader said to me 'We need to go away from our obsession with Augustine on this!'
This is reflected in Pete Greig'due south popular and helpful volume How to Pray. He uses the acronym P-R-A-Y, and having been brought up with the A-C-T-Southward of prayer in my youth, I assumed that the R would stand for 'Repent' and was taken by surprise when I discovered that it stood for Rejoice. Grieg does does on repentance in one of the afterwards chapters, walking through the Lord'south Prayer and covering 'Forgive u.s. our sins, every bit nosotros forgive those who sin against u.s.a.', but near of this chapter is nigh reconciliation, and the give-and-take of repentance as part of an exploration of theexamen occupies less than 1 page (pp 160–161). This is in stark contrast to the Anglican tradition of confession as a substantial part of worship, not least in the Book of Common Prayer.
Part of this question relates to unlike understandings of atonement, and whether (for example) we should understand Jesus' death and resurrection as dealing with the problem of man sin and God's wrath, or whether (as I believe) in that location is a range of unlike ways of understanding this. Simply there is a much more straightforward issue to consider: the question of Jesus' own language in relation to his annunciation of the kingdom of God.
Come and join u.s. for the Third Festival of Theology on Tuesday 8th Oct!
There is no doubt that the coming of God's kingdom means the inversion of electric current structures of power and the dethroning of the rich and powerful, every bit Mary in the Magnificat eloquently expresses in Luke i.46–55. This contradicts many human being expectations, and is expressed past Jesus in the saying that 'The start will exist last, and the final start' (Matt xix.thirty, twenty.sixteen and elsewhere).
But centre of Jesus' pedagogy is the proclamation of the kingdom—even the near sceptical NT scholar has agreed that his teaching in Mark 1.15 belongs to the historical core of what Jesus said and taught. And the announcement come with the invitation not but to receive good news, but also to 'apologize'. The background to this language is the idea of God's coming in the OT, and in particular the idea that develops of the 'keen and terrible day of the Lord'. Just this idea is distinctly cryptic. On the one hand it will involve the deliverance of State of israel from its enemies who will be judged by God (Is two.12, an idea which we likewise find in Luke 1.71), simply also accountability of Israel to her holy God (Amos 5.18). The visitation of God is consistently associated with the purification of his people also equally with their vindication.
It is hardly surprising, then, that John the Baptist'southward announcement of the coming kingdom is expressed in the language of judgement, both in Matthew and in Luke. Some of the elements of judgement are not carried over into Jesus' teaching (compare Jesus' quotation in Luke 4.18–19 with the original in Isaiah 61.i–two), only the consistent feature of Jesus' teaching is the inclusion of the language of 'repentance.' When I mention this in an online conversation a few days ago, a friend responded 'Ah, butmetanoia is a much richer idea than that.' Is it? And what precisely does it mean?
I was recently pointed to Craig Keener's helpful article on 'Bible interpretation methods you should avert' and it included this important observation:
1 should likewise avoid determining the meaning of words by their etymologies. That is, you lot cannot break a word down into its component parts and always come up up with its meaning, and you normally cannot make up one's mind the meaning a word has by looking at how it was used centuries earlier or how the discussion originated…
For example, some take the Greek discussion for "repent," metanoieo , and divide information technology into two parts, of which the second, noieo , is related to thinking. Therefore, they say, "repent" just ways a change of mind. The problem with this interpretation is that the pregnant of words is determined by their usage, non by their origins! The New Testament by and large uses "apologize" not in the Greek sense of "irresolute i's mind" but in the sense of "turn" in the Former Attestation prophets: a radical turning of our lives from sin to God's righteousness.
Information technology was interesting to run across the despair and anger in the comments online when this was posted; earnest clergy were cross that Craig'due south comments were robbing them of well-used methods of word study in pedagogy and preaching, and he was defendant of being 'elitist' in his restriction of how we are immune to read the Bible! The claiming here is the question of how nosotros ever know what words mean.
Many people will look to etymology—the origin of a word. Merely 'nice' originates in the Latin word for 'foolish', and that is non what we ordinarily hateful when nosotros employ the word. (The thought that the significant of words is shaped by their origin is called the 'genetic fallacy'). We might then await at surrounding civilization—how was the give-and-take used in Greek and Roman civilization?Metanoia is indeed used in the sense of 'a change in thinking' in Plato and Menander (co-ordinate to the Liddell and Scott lexicon), only this was several hundred years before, and in a different context. But remember of how words are used differently in a church context from wider civilization.
Keener puts his finger on a primal question: how was this term used in the Greek Sometime Attestation, the Septuagint (referred to as 'LXX'). I accept a impress lexicon (Abbott Smith) which gives exactly this data: what Hebrew word does this Greek give-and-take translate. This is vital because of continuity betwixt the OT and the NT, because the NT writers quote the OT so much, and because, when they practice, they most oftentimes quote from the LXX rather than translating from the Hebrew—because it was the 70 which was most read by both Jesus followers and the diaspora Jewish community. And the verbmetanoeo translates the Hebrew termshuv, which literally ways 'to turn effectually' and is used in the fashion we would used the word 'repentance'.
Repentance, which literally means to turn, is the activity of reviewing one's deportment and feeling contrition or regret for past wrongs. It generally involves a commitment to personal change and the resolve to live a more responsible and humane life.
The other result that Keener raises is the use of the term in the NT, and reviewing this is sobering. If you do a word search, yous will notice that, far from beingness a 'rich idea' associated with 'thinking once again', the verb and the nounmetanoeo andmetanoia are straightforwardly used in the sense of turning from sin in response to the invitation of God.
Woe to yous, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in y'all had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. (Matt 11.twenty)
And the consequences of declining to apologize are sentence and decease.
Do y'all think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this style? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you as well will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—practise you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell y'all, no! Simply unless you repent, you too will all perish! (Luke 13.2–five)
Gentle Jesus, meek and balmy? I think non!
There are, of class, rich resource in the NT in relation to 'thinking once again', not to the lowest degree Paul's invitation to us to allow God to 'renew our minds' in Romans 12.2. And, crucially, grace is linked to repentance, in that it is only God'due south grace which gives us the moment, the resources, and the opportunity to repent:
Or practice you testify contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God'south kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? (Romans 2.iv)
For the grace of God has appeared that offers conservancy to all people. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live cocky–controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. (Titus two.xi–12).
This does not immediately answer either the 'inside' nor the 'outside' questions in relation to sin that I started with. Simply when Jesus (and others) talking nigh 'repentance', they really practice mean 'turning from sin' and turning to the invitation of God, rather than anything more sophisticated which we might find rather more congenial.
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