Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
As this series is focused on the commands Christ gave the church, I’m intentionally skipping over the responses Christ gives to the devil when he is in the desert facing temptation. While that experience is important to the nature of Jesus gives examples of using scripture to rebuke the enemy; the words spoken in that section aren’t commands given to people. I think that distinction is important to make.
With that in mind, we arrive at Matthew 4:17 (NASB)
From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Repent is a hard one for some folks. First, let’s handle the etymology. As the New Testament was primarily written in Greek, we need to understand the word choice Matthew uses here. The Greek word used is metanoia. Meta meaning “after” or “change” and noia meaning “mind.”
Meanwhile, the word repent comes from an old French word, repentir, which means to feel regret and stems from that Latin word paenitere, meaning to regret or feel sorry. The Latin root, poena, means punishment. This creates a big chasm between how we’ve been taught to repent versus what Jesus is actually telling us to do.
So, let’s get this clear:
Repentance is not an apology or feeling guilty for your sin. Repentance is allowing God to transform you and fundamentally change who you are, allowing you to turn away from sin and pursue God instead.
To be a little more blunt: if nothing in your life changed, you didn’t repent. If you’re still clinging to things that you know draw you away from God rather than draw you closer to him, you didn’t repent. If your mind didn’t change, if there was no transformation, you didn’t repent.
Here’s the good news, though. Repentance is easy and God does most of the work. We will always struggle with sin, it’s part of being human, but when we repent, we stop using being human as a justification for continuing in sin and start using God’s word as a shield to help prevent us from sinning.
There will always be temptation. When you feel that temptation starting to build, you have three choices. You can give in and satisfy whatever is tempting you. You can lie to yourself and tell yourself that you’re strong enough to resist, knowing you will eventually fail. Lastly, and the option I recommend, you can pray. God already knows you’re tempted. But when you feel the temptation creeping in and you take it to God because you don’t want that sin in your life anymore: that’s what repenting looks like.
Jesus didn’t come to sacrifice Himself and rise again just to make us feel bad and apologize. He did so to give us an option to pursue God instead of sin, to let us live for something greater than ourselves. Each morning, when I pray, I ask God to protect me from myself and from the enemy. I know that my flesh does not crave God, but my heart does. My soul does. I’d like to tell you my mind does, but that’s where the flesh does its work.
When I was teaching English in China, part of my teaching training was learning about the power of immersion learning. I would instruct my students to surround themselves with things they enjoyed but were in English instead of Mandarin. If they loved basketball, they should listen to the English commentary. If they watched the news and couldn’t get local news in English, they should put the subtitles in English. I told them to listen to English music. Because the more they surrounded themselves with their target language, the easier it would be to learn it.
Christianity works in much the same way. While some may argue that profanity isn’t a sin; is it really the kind of language you think Christ would use? If not, don’t talk that way. It’s fine to have a love for music, but is the message in the lyrics you’re singing along to one that draws you closer to Jesus? It’s fine to be politically active, but are you prioritizing God’s message over your political party’s agenda?
See, what Jesus was telling us to do was to change who we were. That’s not something any of us can do on our own. Repenting is giving up everything about who we are to God and allowing Him to remake us how he sees fit. It’s scary, but it’s what we’re called to do.
Sometimes, God works slowly, allowing that change to progress over time. Sometimes, God works quickly and pulls the rug out from under us because we need to crack our thick skulls on the floor a couple of times to get the message (that’s me more often than I’d care to admit). Letting go of that control and giving it to God is one of my biggest struggles.
Here’s my challenge to you: Think of your favorite thing to do. Ask yourself this question: If God told me, in a crystal-clear voice, to stop doing this, could I? Any activity you can’t say “Yes” to on this question is something that has a bigger hold on your heart and mind than God.
A walk with God is, in its most fundamental state, the process of allowing Him to eliminate who we are in favor of who He wants us to be. If you’re not allowing Him that level of access in your life, you need to repent because the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
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