A cartoon shows a skeptic shouting up to the heavens, “God! If you’re up there, tell us what we should do!” Back comes a voice: “Feed the hungry, house the homeless, establish justice.” The skeptic looks alarmed. “Just testing,” he says. “Me too,” replies the voice.[1]

We must be careful when we ask God what we should do. We may get an answer… and we may not like the answer we are given!

True religion is not for wimps. An authentic encounter with the living and eternal God touches both our hearts and our hands. God calls us to nothing less than complete spiritual transformation. Those who desire to simply dabble in religion will get nowhere. Only thoses willing to submit to the rigors of regular acts of self-examination, confession of sin, and deeds of  repentance can know deep and lasting change.

An authentic encounter with the living God will never leave us as we are – it will challenge our lifestyles, attitudes, actions, and motivations. The reason is simple: God regularly calls us to change – to repentance. If we are unwilling to change, we harden ourselves to spiritual transformation. Only a humble heart, open to God, ready to admit mistakes, willing to start again can know the fullness of what God desires.

In other words, unlike the skeptic above, when we ask God, “What should we do?” we should mean it – and be ready to act upon what God says.

The call to true religion was at the heart of John the Baptist’s message. As forerunner to the Messiah, his mission was to prepare the people’s hearts to be open to God’s salvation. He did this by calling people to repentance and faith. He invited his listeners to examine their lives, change their ways, and remove all obstacles to spiritual receptivity and transformation. He knew that without repentance their hearts would remain closed to God.

Prophetic Preaching

The message of repentance is not easy to stomach, but it is an essential part of the gospel message. It is for this reason that all true gospel preaching is both troublesome as well as comforting. Since true gospel preaching almost always possesses some element of the prophetic (in that it invites hearers to reformation and renewal) sometimes it comes across as extremely personal and invasive (“Now you’ve gone from preachin’ to meddlin’”).

The message of repentance, therefore, bites before it heals. However, this is not its only quality. The message of repentance also brings great comfort in that it opens us up to freedom from the past and hopeful possibilities for the future. In many ways, the message of repentance does what all good preaching should do: It comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. Unfortunately, we rarely reflect on the positive side of repentance. This is exactly what we will do following a brief survey of John’s ministry and message.

John’s Ministry and Message

Luke’s prologue is patterned after the introductions to many Old Testament prophetic books.[2] This is Luke’s way to clearly alert his readers to the arrival of a prophet. It also provides the setting – the time and the place – of John’s ministry. The political and religious rulers named give us a sense of the times: John’s ministry is situated squarely in the midst of social, political, economic, and religious turmoil and great personal unrest.[3]

John’s pulpit is in the wilderness. The people of Israel possessed a love/hate relationship with the wilderness. It represented a place of both punishment and renewal. After Israel’s disobedient refusal to enter the Promised Land, they were forced to wander for forty years in the wilderness. These forty years served as a sentence of judgment, but also as a time of spiritual formation. During these forty years the survivors were formed as God’s covenant people.

John’s mission is simple. As the prophet Isaiah foretold, he is “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord.” Incorporating the metaphor of road-building, John calls the people to remove all obstacles in order to fashion a level path for God’s entrance.

The people were admonished to give evidence to their receptivity by participating in “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” But John desired more than simple contact with holy water.

This is evidenced by John’s response to the people who actually do respond to his call to baptism. He boldly exclaims: “You brood of vipers!”[4] What is John doing? Why is he cutting the very people down who are responding to his message? Is he nothing but a crazy prophet? An angry street corner preacher who can never be satisfied?

No. John is not crazy. His upcoming responses prove that he has a level head on his shoulders. John is simply trying to press home his message of repentance. He does not want the people to overlook the fact that repentance is meaningless apart from repentant actions. In other words, John’s bold rebuke is given to emphasize how the people’s response of baptism remains incomplete apart from repentance proved authentic by repentant actions.

Baptism is not enough. It is worthless unless John’s followers actually repent. John desires more than participation in a religious ritual. John desires more than simply a change of mind. John calls for the cultivation of actions that “bring forth fruits worthy of repentance.” John will not allow his audience’s sense of ethnic or religious privilege to exempt or excuse them from the need to “bear fruits worthy of repentance” (8).

What Should We Do?

The crowds get John’s point! Three times they ask him, “What should we do?” John answers by addressing different groups of people in regard to the special temptations peculiar to each. John’s practical and level-headed responses prove that John was not simply a hotheaded preaching screaming rebukes to increase guilt and fear. Like the prophets before him, John preaches a message of social responsibility.

John tells the common people in the crowds to refrain from hoarding material goods to the hurt of others. He renounces greed, and invites them to share with those in need as opportunities arise. This message is particular poignant in our consumer society that celebrates unending acquisitivenness.

Tax-collectors also asked John what to do to bear fruits of repentance. The tax-gatherers were considered sell-outs to Rome. They were perceived as aiding the oppressive powers of Rome by willingly doing its dirty work. The perception was fueled by reality. Many tax-gatherers were dishonest people who exploited the system for their own financial gain. Interestingly, John does not call the tax-collectors to stop working for Rome. Instead, they were to stop exhortation, price-gouging, and all dishonest practices. They were to have integrity in their dealings.

Soldiers also desired to know what to do to demonstrate repentant hearts. These soldiers could have been from Herod’s temple guard or (more likely) Roman (and thus Gentile) soldiers. Either way, they served the oppressive powers of Rome. Again, it is interesting to note that John does not tell them to leave the military. Instead, he warns them to avoid abusing their power – to refrain from bullying, thuggerying, using threats, intimidation, or sheet brute force to rob people with impunity. Furthermore, they were not to use their complaints about low wages as an excuse to rob and pillage.

The fruit of repentance that John calls for leads to transformed lives, and thus, a transformed society. Everyone is called to repent of the small-scale injustices which turn a society sour. John calls people to transform their ways of relating to others. They were to treat others with generosity and integrity. They were to refuse to abuse their authority. They were to remain committed to human dignity and recognize that people are not to be ignored, used, or abused. John calls for a just society – but a just society that is to be achieved through a just people.

It is interesting to note that John’s message is not a call to change the system, but to change people within the system. Like us, John lived in a time of social, political, economic, and religious turmoil, yet he calls individuals – all individuals – within this society to take responsibility and face their own moral predicament. In order to change the world, they must first change themselves. Thus, John underscores the need for personal repentance for true personal and social transformation.

The Positive Side of Repentance

Sadly, repentance is often viewed in a negative light. Its positive qualities are rarely affirmed and celebrated. For the most part, we recoil against those who call us to spiritual self-examination. We don’t like to be reminded that are sinners and we don’t like to be told what to do.

Sin is unmentionable word for many – even in the church. It’s a “downer,” a “negative term,” it does nothing to build up our self-esteem. And yet, we must not forget the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, “The greatest sin is the refusal to acknowledge one’s sinfulness.”[5] “The final form of sin—the unwillingness to be regarded as sinners.”[6]

We don’t like to be reminded we are sinners and we don’t like to be told what to do. Repentance is a call to action – to change. How many of us really want to know what God wants us to do – especially if it involves change?

But perhaps our perspective would change if we recognized that we shortsell repentance if we focus solely on its negative side. There is a freedom that is found in a life of continual repentance. Repentance is both negative and positive. Negatively, it exposes the insufficiencies of our achievements up to now. Positively, it reveals the possibilities of greater obedience and love. Since this is rarely recognized, I want to highlight three positive aspects of repentance:

Repentance transforms the evils of the past into the means of a future good: “Repentance does not mean the repudiation of the past, but its transfiguration and winning over to another perspective…Repentance turns the negative content of the past, sin, into the means of achieving perfection. It becomes, as one ascetic put it, dung for the cultivation of virtue.”[7] Evil remains evil, but it is transformed into a means to good! With the past put behind us, the future opens with new possibilities.

Repentance looks forward to the future with hope. God graciously gives us opportunities to get up and start anew, putting the past behind us once and for all. Repentance offers us the possibility of a fresh start. Without this opportunity there would be no escape from our mistakes. We could only despair of our past, or live in regret. With repentance, a hopeful future, free of the chains of the past, is possible. Our failures do not have to be final.

Repentance maintains and promotes intimacy with God. “Repentance is the road to love; it serves love. It leads from an insufficient love to more love.”[8] Greater love is not possible without continual repentance. We cannot grow unless we recognize our mistakes, confess them, and change. “When we have gotten a wrong sum at the beginning of a sequence of calculations, we cannot improve matters ‘by simply going on.’”[9] Repentance, therefore, pushes us higher. Though it is not itself a virtue, it is “the motor of all the virtues.”[10]

The life of repentance is a life of hope and love, a life of truthfulness with self and with God, a life adequately dealing with the past, and looking forward to the future by dealing with sin in the present. It is this fullness of life – the life of repentance – that John calls us to. Only in this way can we love God and neighbor as we should, for only repentance opens our hearts wide enough to receive God.

Conclusion

Again and again the question resounds, “What should we do?” Repentance is not just a change of mind or a change of heart, but a change of actions. All spiritual progress begins with turning away from what is hindering our progress in obedience to God’s will, that is, love for God and neighbor. We clear the path to obstacles for spiritual transformation through the practice of repentance.

It all begins by saying, “What should I do?” and meaning it. Can you ask this question honestly? Are you open to what God will say? Even more importantly: Are you open to act upon what God will say?

This is not easy for preachers or hearers, but why should we expect it to be? True religion is not for wimps. An authentic encounter with the living and eternal God touches both our hearts and our hands. God calls us to spiritual transformation and redemptive actions. We are not called to dabble in religion, but to practice our faith, to act upon our beliefs, to be disciples who follow Jesus.

The message of repentance is so threatening that John the Baptist ultimately loses his head (literally!) because of his message. Jesus will simply pick up where John left off and he will be crucified. Paul will carry the torch and experience imprisonment and beheading.[11]

It appears that it is easy to recoil against the call to repentance. But when we recognize that though repentance bites, it also heals – that it has positive aspects that outweigh all the negatives – then repentance becomes a liberating, life-giving, transformative practice. It clears the path and makes us channels of grace. It clears away the dead wood to make room for new life. Yes – the message of repentance is truly good news!

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© Richard J. Vincent, 2008