Chapter Fifteen: Deconstructing Repentance (Part One), by Andrew Boakye, PhD

Jesus, the New Way and the New Hope
Andrew Boakye, PhD
28 Nov 2025

Prologue:

If you have moved in Christian circles for any appreciable length of time, then you’ve all heard this command: Repent! Often time, it is annotated with some kind of threat – repent or else. To be sure, even Jesus’ commands to repent were often annotated by threats of judgement - however, once we get to the end of this two-part reflection, I hope it will be abundantly clear that repentance is very much about agendas, and once we set the agenda of Jesus against the agenda of human rulers (inside and outside of the church) the gulf between the ‘threats’ becomes very clear. Read this short excerpt from Romans 12 - some of which may remind you of the Sermon on the Mount, which we will come back to later - and then let’s do some introductory reflection:

14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18 If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 Instead, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:14–21).

I reiterate, if you have been around Christian circles for any meaningful length of time, then you will know that ‘repentance’ (in whatever way you wish to define that for now) is presupposed in your involvement with the Christian faith. If someone has repented, why does Paul need to tell the Roman disciples not to repay anyone evil for evil, not to avenge one another, or even to feed and care for one’s enemies. Surely all of this is inherent in having ‘repented’ in the first place? Imagine if you will, this hypothetical, but not unthinkable, ancient scenario. One of the sisters works at a local footwear stall and her boss is something of a hard taskmaster who makes her work late. She has to travel home late by herself, and a rowdy bunch of good for nothings follow her home and, on the way, viciously assault her. The Roman patrol units are certainly not going to spend any valuable time coming to the aid of a local peasant-girl known in her housing complex to be the member of a strange cult which denies the gods of Rome and refuses to go to the public festivals to pour libations to the local district deities. A group of men in the church decide that the only solution is to take justice into their own hands, hunt down the men who assaulted the sister and administer their own brand of retribution. Listen to Paul’s words again: Do not repay anyone evil for evil…If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay”, says the Lord...Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Consider the complete breakdown of communications in the Church in Corinth. One of the members, probably a prominent member, perhaps a wealthy member from a higher social class, was in a sexual relationship with his stepmother (1 Cor. 5:1b). He was probably a wealthy donor, which is why his moral improprieties, of a kind which would even scandalise the unbelievers (1 Cor. 5:1a), were not challenged by the rest of the community. The local house church leaders would not want to get on his bad side, lest he revoke his financial support for the group. Yet this person was a disciple - a member of the community and someone who we would expect to have “repented”. Indeed, Paul had instructed the community that they should not associate with people who engage in such sexual misconduct, and he was very specific. He did not mean sexually immoral unbelievers, but those who claimed to be of the faith - people who had ‘repented’ and yet were still engaged in unlawful practices (1 Cor. 5:10–11). This includes the list of miscreants in 1 Corinthians 6 also; Paul reminds the believers that those who engage in sexual misconduct will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Time for another theoretical scenario.

Among this list are Christian men who are sloping off with prostitutes (1 Cor. 6:15–20). Also, among those disinherited from the Kingdom of God are the malakoi and the arsenokoitai (1 Cor. 6:9 – literally the ‘soft’ and the ‘sodomites’). Whilst this is not the place to speculate about the precise meanings of these very difficult Greek terms, let us assume that they refer to what is most likely, based on the little available evidence, and imagine the following. There is a 15-year-old boy who has embraced Christ, and who works as a slave for a local elite businessman. Part of his regular duty is to perform sexual favours for his master. As a slave, he is the property of the businessman and does not have the legal right or authority to refuse his master’s advances. After he repented and joined the Corinthian house church, he knew that this kind of sexual behaviour was impermissible – but what was he to do? He was property, after all, and was not considered to have agency. He could run away, but there were severe penalties for runaway slaves. He pleaded with the master that his newfound faith did not allow for involvement in pederasty (the very common practice of elite men, usually married men with families, engaging in sexual acts with young teenage boys). Whilst the master was not totally unsympathetic, he was not going to compromise his own carnal entertainments because of a slave – it would completely unmanly to capitulate to the demands of your own slave-boy. When the Corinthians received Paul’s letter whilst he was stationed in Ephesus, the elder read it out. The young boy’s blood ran cold when he heard:

9 Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, men who engage in illicit sex, 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, swindlers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God (1 Cor. 6:9 11, emphasis added).

One more hypothetical; young Rebekkah was a young Jewish girl who had heard members of the local Christ-believing sect speaking with their neighbours about how their lives had been transformed by Jesus. She was very interested and began spending time with the disciples in secret, listening to them share their experiences of being in Christ. Listening to them share, she became overwhelmed with a fresh clarity and was baptised into Jesus. She started attending the house church secretly, lying to her family and saying she was just visiting ‘friends’. For a while she would attend the house church and the synagogue, lest her family discover that she had been baptised. However, she often couldn’t contain her joy and would tell people in the marketplace where she worked that she had started meeting with the Jesus group. Eventually, word got back to her family, who all became extremely angry, put pressure on her to abandon this Jesus nonsense and heaped abuse on her. Eventually, her parents and siblings told her that unless she cut her ties with this group that she could no longer be part of the synagogue or indeed their family. She started missing some of the meetings of the house church because she was so distressed and worn down. Every so often, she would find a way to meet with the disciples, but her appearances became increasingly infrequent. Pressure at home, from the synagogue leader and from other members of the Jewish quarter where she lived became intolerable. She decided that she would go to the house church one more time and explain to the disciples that she could no longer be part of the group because of how her family and community were abusing and persecuting her. Indeed, she discovered that many members of the mainly Jewish house church were facing similar pressures from their families. Word had spread that an important, encouraging and challenging letter was going to be read to the house church that evening, and the whole assembly was eager to hear what it said. After some light refreshments and prayers, the elder started reading and eventually came to a place where he read out the following words - words which pierced Rebekkah’s heart:

19 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching (Heb. 10:19–25).

Rebekkah knew deep in her heart that Jesus had not only changed her heart – he had changed the world. When the elder had first started reading, he had begun by saying: Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. 3 He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. Of course, Rebekkah thought; Jesus was not just another Jewish prophet, but God’s special son, the Messiah, who perfectly reflected God’s eternal glory into the world, and nothing could be worth giving up on him - He would certainly never give up on her. He, who promised, was faithful and Rebecca knew she should not neglect meeting together with the house church. Rather, she should be an encouragement to the other Jewish believers. What was she to do? As a young Jewish girl, she relied on her family unit for protection and provision. She loved her family and loved her community - she loved celebrating the Jewish feasts, listening to the Law read out and discussing it with her peers. Yet she knew that Jesus was Lord, and that her family would never accept her as long as she lived under his lordship. The pressure at home was intensifying - the day before the meeting where the letter was read out, Rebekkah’s father had told her that if she did not stop attending the Jesus group, that she was no daughter of his. She fought back tears all the way to the meeting.

If you were hoping that I was going to provide some neat solutions for any of the above fictional quandaries from the early church, then you are about to be disappointed. Indeed, part of the entire purpose of this reflection is to begin to problematize some of the challenges that believers face, really start to consider what repentance is and how it functions within Christian community. Some of our journey will involve refining our definitions of it, placing it within the landscape of ancient Jewish and Christian thought, grappling with its challenges and ultimately presenting it as a powerful, profound and positive point of pivot in the life of a believer with ongoing ramifications for what it means to be in the Kingdom of God. This will require two parts. Part one will be largely contextual but hopefully will set the stage for an investigation in Part two which aims to give us resources to really think through the meaning of repentance, including reviewing where it may have been misunderstood and misapplied within the Christian experience. Let us begin with the crucial question - what is repentance and what did it mean to the earliest believers?

Give Up Your Agendas!

Phillip D. R. Griffiths and John Piper are two Christian authors who have one interesting thing in common. They have both written books critiquing the work of N.T. Wright. In both cases, the heart of their challenge has to do with Wright’s various attempts to rethink Paul, in the light of a movement within New Testament studies thinking through how Luther and the Reformers centralised and vocalised the doctrine of justification by faith. The movement, known as the New Perspective on Paul, has several widely read protagonists dating back to the early 60s. These include Krister Stendahl, Edward Parrish Sanders, James D G Dunn, Terrence Donaldson, Douglas Campbell, and the list goes on. However, both Griffiths and Piper decided to write volumes criticising Wright because of his huge popularity and influence. Whilst I myself have had my criticisms of Wright (as has my former doktovater Professor Peter Oakes, whose PhD was supervised by Wright), I am largely in agreement with Wright’s position on Paul.

I start with this preamble because I know that there are some popular writers who become so trusted by popular audiences that their words are treated as if they came from heaven. Griffiths book has the rather provocative title When Wright is Wrong and speaks largely in defence of a traditional Lutheran reading of Paul. I think there is some mileage in pointing out the flaws in very popular writers, but I also think we should give credit where it’s due! It is very rarely when I claim that any book or publication has changed my life - indeed, I am not sure that I’ve ever said it about a book other than the Bible itself! I will credit Tom (N. T.) Wright, however, with helping me rethink the concept of repentance from his magnificent book The Challenge of Jesus. I would recommend that anyone who is serious about thinking through the role of Jesus in the proclamation of the Kingdom of God grapples with the volume. As I attempt to deconstruct repentance in this reflection, I will cite Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus, as I really don’t think I can improve on him!

Consider first Wright’s evaluation of what is often understood about repentance in modern Christian contexts:

“Jesus’ opening challenge as reported in the Gospels was that people should “repent and believe.” This is a classic example… of a phrase whose meaning has changed over the years. If I were to go out on the street in my local town and proclaim that people should “repent and believe,” what they would hear would be a summons to give up their private sins (one suspects that in our culture sexual misbehaviour and alcohol or drug abuse would come quickly to mind) and to “get religion” in some shape or form—either experiencing a new inner sense of God’s presence, or believing a new body of dogma, or joining the church or some sub-branch of it. But that is by no means exactly what the phrase “repent and believe” meant in first-century Galilee” [N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 43].

Part of why I consider Wright’s proposal to be useful in a reflection on deconstructing repentance is that we must continually deconstruct language as it evolves. Just think for a moment about the term “Holy Ghost”, which you would find throughout authorised versions of the Bible like the King James Version. In the 17th century, the word “Spirit” would have conjured up ideas of ghosts and spectres. By the 19th and 20th centuries, the opposite was true. We would associate “ghosts” with Halloween, and so the Holy Ghost became the Holy Spirit. There is no difference between the two concepts – only how the language (English in this case) is received in any given era. As such, Tom Wright endeavours to get people to ask, “how would the phrase ‘repent and believe’ have sounded to a 1st century Jewish audience listening to an apocalyptic prophet preaching about how the imminent Kingdom of God was going to change the world”? He helpfully petitions the work of an early Jewish historian named Josephus (who we have referenced a few times before). This is what Wright goes on to say:

“Consider, for example, the Jewish aristocrat and historian Josephus, who was born a few years after Jesus’ crucifixion and who was sent in 66AD 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 word he uses are remarkably familiar to readers of the Gospels: he told the brigand leader to “repent and believe in me,” metanoēsein kai pistos emoi genesesthai” [Wright, Challenge, 43–44].

Observe the transliterated Greek at the end of the paragraph above. Josephus, like the authors of the New Testament, was writing in Greek. The phrase we find in Mark 1:15 looks like this when transliterated into English: metanoeite kai pisteuete en tō euangeliō. Really the only difference is that Josephus was trying to get people to believe in him, whereas the phrase in Mark 1:15 has Jesus calling people to believe in the Gospel.

Wright’s point here is a fairly straightforward one; quite clearly, Josephus was not calling the Galilean rebels to have a religious experience and give up their private sins. If we can understand what Josephus meant, given that he was writing in much closer cultural, political and geographical proximity to Mark, it is possible that we might shed some useful light on the precise meaning of ‘repent and believe’. Obviously, the context within which Jesus was speaking was different from the one in which Josephus was speaking, and we should not be misled into simply assuming that Josephus and the Jesus of Mark meant exactly the same thing. However, thinking about the possible political implications of Josephus’ statement could actually help us think through the religious implications of what Jesus was asserting. Once more I defer to Wright:

“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 had, 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 counter-agenda a way that 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. This was the play for which he was holding auditions” [Wright, Challenge, 44, emphasis added].

What does all of this amount to? I think it raises some incredibly important critical questions when it comes to how the modern church perceives of repentance and how deconstructing this perception can help us be more faithful to the call of Jesus, more sensitive to the challenges of those who are navigating doubts about their experience of the Christian narrative and more attuned to the broader needs of society.

Consider what N.T. Wright above suggests Jesus was trying to do. He was suggesting that the gospel contained a revolutionary plan for being the people of God. You may remember from an earlier post that I suggested there were various responses from Jewish groups to the strong sense of dislocation they felt whilst pagan rulers were in charge. There were extremists like the Zealots or the Sicarii who wanted to bring down the pagans through violent, armed revolution. Such a course of action failed spectacularly twice in fairly quick succession in the mid-1st and early 2nd centuries. The Jewish War of 66–73CE resulted in the destruction of the temple in the year 70CE and the Bar Kochba revolt, which was launched in 132, was brutally suppressed in 135CE. There were separatists like the Essenes, the sect that composed the Dead Sea Scrolls, for whom it was not just the failure and corruption of the pagan leaders which was of deep concern, but even those who held sway in the Temple and were charged with leading Israel herself. As such, they fled to the deserts of Qumran, convinced that God was going to act amongst their community to bring on the end times and bring judgement upon the rest of the world. Later in history, there were even Christian groups who took this approach, like the Montanists (whose most famous convert was the great 2nd/3rd c. doctor of the church, Tertullian – later in his life). There were compromisers like the Herodians and the Sadducees, who preferred to collaborate and cooperate with the Roman establishment than try to oppose them. Groups like the Pharisees, who were very popular with the people, tried to call people back to rigorous study and application of the Law of Moses. Indeed, it was their efforts after the destruction of the temple in 70 which largely gave rise to what we now know as Rabbinic Judaism.

This is where thinking about Josephus’ rendition of repentance could be helpful. Each of these Jewish groups named above, and many more like them, had their own agenda - their own way of thinking about what it meant to be the people of God. Each group represented a way of engaging with God in the hope that He would act through their stance to bring about His Kingdom - that great divine movement which would usher in the final age and pronounce liberation and justice upon the righteous. It seems to me that it was within this landscape and in view of these challenges that Jesus issued his call to ‘repent and believe in the Gospel’ - so what did he mean?

Much like Josephus trying to convince the Galilean rebels (whose leader, to add to the confusion, happened to be called Jesus!!!!!) not to go headlong into a military conflict with Rome, Jesus was trying to persuade Israel not to go down any of the above avenues, none of which would bring about the purposes of God. They had to change their way of thinking – that is repent – about what it meant to be God’s people according to their own personal, religious, political and socio-cultural agendas, and embrace Jesus’ way of being the people of God. There was, of course, a venomous sting in the tail; Jesus was not suggesting that he had a way of being the people of God, but the way. Repent and believe meant give up your agenda for what it means to be God’s people and trust me (Jesus) - the programme for being the people of God is the Gospel. I would go as far as saying that this is why it was so important for the earliest Jesus movement to carefully, if incompletely, articulate the relationship between God and Jesus. This was not just another prophet, sage, priest or populist philosopher saying what it meant to be the people of God, but, in some way, God Himself. As the author of Hebrews would stress, “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (Heb. 1:1–2).

Where we see this programme most powerfully expounded is in Jesus most popular way of teaching - His parables. So, Hauck rightly asserts:

Many of the parables of Jesus seek to clarify for the hearers the nature and coming of the kingdom of God, to impress vividly on them the new thoughts of Jesus concerning this kingdom, and even more so to stir them to make the appropriate resolves. Thus, Jesus speaks in parables about the imminent establishment of God’s kingdom [Friedrich Hauck, “Parable,” in G. Kittel, G. W. Bromiley, & G. Friedrich (Eds.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 759].

Or in the words of Strauss:

Jesus’ teaching in parables is closely associated with his proclamation of the kingdom, and most parables illustrate or illuminate aspects of the kingdom. This is especially true of the parables of Mark 4; Matthew 13, and Luke 8, which frequently begin something like “The kingdom of God [or heaven] is like.…” [Mark L. Strauss, Four Portraits, One Jesus: A Survey of Jesus and the Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2020), 542].

Moreover:

In addition to such direct teachings about the Kingdom, parables give illustrations of some patterns in God’s dealing with humans, provide insights into Jesus’ own person and his work as God’s Messiah, and they extend the call to enter the Kingdom [J. Julius Scott Jr., New Testament Theology: A New Study of the Thematic Structure of the New Testament (Ross-shire, UK: Mentor, 2008), 60].

The parables represent the sharp turn in the change of thinking required to be the people of God. This is why they should not simply be understood as pithy aphorisms or clever stories about aspects of God’s character, although they often embrace this also. Rather, they should be understood as (often) deeply provocative and subversive retellings of Israel’s history, present location and destiny, which demonstrate how the Kingdom is going to reshape Israel and the world. When Jesus taught such parables, he, of course, expected some kind of response. The substance and energy of this response was the mind change, which we label ‘repentance’. This is not a religious or sanctimonious term. It is a declaration that one has decided to let go of their programme for existing in the world and embrace what the Gospel demands about existing in the world. It cannot simply be reduced to a list of behavioural changes. People the world over make adjustments and even completely overhaul the way they live for all sorts of reasons. They might decide to stop smoking or drinking because of the dangers of addiction and the deleterious health effects. They might change their dietary habits to prevent ill health in older age or exclude certain foods which provoke allergic reactions. They might decide to go to anger management to save a relationship or decide to be more serious about their approach to academic study so they can pass exams, get a decent job and not starve! In other words, people make behavioural changes all the time, for all manner of reasons – positive and laudable reasons – which need not have anything to do with being God’s people. Repentance is a far more profound, far reaching and all-encompassing change. It is not about embracing dogma - indeed, in many ways it is about letting go of dogma. Repentance according to Jesus, and it certainly seemed to be the position adopted by the earliest believers, is to submit to the Kingdom of God by allowing the teaching and worldview of Jesus to reconfigure the pathway by which we exist in the world. It is to show up as the people of God in the world having placed Jesus shaped lenses over our eyes. It is to see and to respond to the world as Jesus himself would have, and this was controversial, subversive and revolutionary.

I often read Jesus’ most celebrated sermon as a summons to this new way of being – a call to be the people of God, according to the Kingdom of God. That is, to live as His people with God ruling as King in our hearts through Christ, in the power of the Spirit. The Beatitudes in particular are not so much a call to live in a particular way (although for all practical intents and purposes, I dare say they were often read as such, and I think much could be gained from doing so). Think about what Jesus was actually saying and consider by way of example, Matt. 5:8: “Happy are the clean in heart, because they will see God” (my translation). This is not a command to go and have a clean heart, although, as I suggested one could do much worse than read it that way! Rather, this is Jesus saying that in view of the dawning Kingdom of God, those who have clean hearts will be happy. They will be happy when God’s Kingdom arrives because their clean hearts will give them a renewed form of vision by which they will see and understand the movements of God in the world. All the Beatitudes work like this - congratulations to a certain group of people - the meek, the poor in spirit, those who mourn, etc. It is these people who will be in good spiritual, emotional, religious and social shape to receive and be energised by the Kingdom of God.

The rest of the Sermon on the Mount works in similar fashion. It is a summons to the people; a call to look deeper and beyond the surface and to truly understand the heart and destiny of God’s Law. Consider briefly this command of Jesus from the “antithesis” section of the Sermon on the Mount:

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

The command to love one’s neighbour from Lev. 19:18 was commonly seen as a summation of the Law amongst Jewish writers (cf. Gal. 5:14; Rom. 13:9). However, you will notice in Jesus’ recollection of what his audience once heard. He does not just say love your neighbour but hate your enemy. There is no specific command in the Law to hate one’s enemies, but the sentiment would certainly represent popular piety in Jesus’ day amongst Jews who were frustrated by successive Pagan rulers who vaunted themselves as gods and had disdain for the Jewish Law (cf. Acts 25:19 – there, Festus refers to Jewish liturgy as their “superstition”, using a word that translates as demon-worship)! The following excerpt is from one of the Dead Sea Scrolls (The Rule of the Community) which I mentioned earlier were composed by a group of radical separatists, most likely the Essenes. The teaching was very clear - love the members of the community and hate everyone else:

The Master will teach the saints to live according to the Book of the Community Rule, that they may seek God with a whole heart and soul, and do what is good and right before Him as He commanded by the hand of Moses and all His servants the Prophets; that they may love all that He has chosen and hate all that He has rejected… and that they may love all the sons of light, each according to his lot in God’s design, and hate all the sons of darkness, each according to his guilt in God’s vengeance (1 QS 1:1–2, 9–10, emphasis added).

Just under two centuries before Jesus began his preaching and exorcism ministry, a Syrian king, a descendant of one of Alexander the Great’s generals who ruled over part of his kingdom after Alexander died, embarked on a radical programme of spreading Greek life and philosophy. This included an attempt to force the Jews into embracing Greek and even Pagan practices and effectively nullifying their own ancestral religion. The Syrian king, Antiochus IV, was resisted by a zealous Jewish family called the Maccabees who waged a violent offensive against the Syrian armies. Antiochus had, amongst other things, attempted to sacrifice pigs in the Jewish temple and set up an idolatrous statue in the temple (1 Macc. 1:54). These Syrian gentiles were the enemies of Israel, and the Maccabean family did not only inspire great hatred against those who would attempt to dilute or nullify the Jewish faith, they even extended that hatred to any Jews who might be tempted to compromise. It is against this backdrop that Jesus said, ‘love your enemies’. Again, this was the call to repentance. You may have had a way of being the people of God that involved loving those who love you, look like you, share your worldview, politics or values, but showing hatred and contempt towards anyone who thought differently. Imagine a staunch supporter of the Maccabean family being told to show love and compassion towards one of the Syrians who tried to wipe out Judaism.

By the time Matthew, Mark and Luke were writing, the new enemy was Rome. I am reminded of the episode when, around the year 40CE, gentiles from the city of Jamnia in Palestine set up an altar for Emperor Gaius (i.e., Caligula), which the Jews destroyed. When Caligula discovered the vandalism, he demanded that an enormous gold-plated statue of himself be set up in the Jewish temple (a mixture of good advice and serendipity prevented this from happening)! Again, imagine these Jews being told to love the gentiles of Jamnia and even Emperor Caligula himself! I note these things just so you get a sense of how radical Jesus’ Kingdom call to repentance really was and what it would entail. This was no mere change of behaviours, but a total and complete reshaping of how one viewed and understood the world. I hope this is beginning to contextualise what exactly we might mean when we throw out the term ‘repent’!

Reflect along with me on Jesus’ thoughts about how people practice three very important spiritual disciplines as recorded in Matthew 6 – giving to the poor, praying and fasting:

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2 “So, whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 7 “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him… [then teaches the Lord’s Prayer]

16 “And whenever you fast, do not look sombre, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

This is a tightly constructed unit of three sections with some obvious connecting threads. In many ways, the overarching theme is hypocrisy – hypocrites in v.2 give benevolence to the sound of trumpets, as are people who pray in public to be seen by others in v.5 and people who like the agony of fasting to be on full display in v.16. In each case, Jesus says such hypocrites have ‘received their reward in full’ (adulation, praise and respect from onlookers). Then Jesus suggests the following: when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 17 When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

In each case, Jesus emphasises that, “Your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you”. The religion of a repentant people begins in the heart, where God sees – not in bragging about how well you perform spiritual disciplines so people can congratulate your unimpeachable holiness. The Kingdom of God – God ruling in our minds, hearts and dispositions, is a state of affairs where pleasing God is paramount and impressing people is not just unnecessary, but positively counter-productive. A repentant people are concerned about how to please God. James, whose letter shows a clear acquaintance with the Sermon on the Mount, writes:

26 If any think they are religious and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world (James 1:26–27).

Religion that God champions, that is, religion, which is shaped by the Kingdom of God, is concerned with doing for the world what God would do for the world out of devotion to Him. This is the imitation of Christ and the way to be God’s people in the world. It is not concerned with scoring brownie points with onlookers by shows of religious prowess.

Reflecting on Repentance

In Part 2, we will turn our attentions to a particular parable, which will allow us to further nuance the meaning of repentance and reflect on its place within the Christian experience. To bring Part 1 to a close, I ask you to meditate on the following.

Firstly, it is easy, and perhaps more comfortable and less challenging to reduce repentance to embracing a new moral code, having a religious experience of some kind and signing up to the rules of a local Christian community. Whilst none of these is inherently dangerous, none is without problems, most of which stem from their innate subjectivity. Who decides what the new moral code is? Can simply becoming religious from a stance of non-religious really please God? What if the rules are different depending on which Christian community one is a part of? Some of the difficulty in how repentance is interpreted within communities stems from navigating the above. If we are part of communities who routinely use scripture in order to systematise community dogma, that is quite likely a red flag.

Secondly, it is not uncommon for Christian leaders to assume that repentance should be an instantaneous act. We think of the light of Christ flooding our souls and individuals having a kind of Damascus Road experience. One only needs to read Paul’s letters to realise that even within believing communities, there were splits, divisions, sinful behaviours, practices that would even shock the non-Christians, different ways of understanding certain doctrines and other such challenges. Being repentant did not mean being perfect, and if it did, we would all be in trouble! Increasingly, we are witnessing people with backgrounds in abuse, trauma, addiction and various kinds of mental health impairments seeking solace in Christian community. What might repentance look like for them? Does one cloak fit everyone? If someone has spent 20 years using crack cocaine to medicate the pain of abuse, and then comes into the church, does repentance realistically look like an immediate cessation of the use of drugs? What about people who experience such challenges after they are baptised into Christ and received into the community? I do not want to oversimplify these issues, and indeed, I am not qualified to speak authoritatively about any of them. I do think the resources within the Christian tradition can speak a powerful word to them, however, just so long as we have a sufficiently clear view of what repentance means.

Thirdly, it helps to begin to see repentance as a change of our social lenses. Repentance is the beginning of how totally opposed people groups can come together. Somehow Jesus had a zealot and a tax collector in his inner circle. Paul bridged the gap between Jew and Gentile, although this was never a completely problem-free enterprise. Repentance has more to do with how we are located in the world after our experience of Jesus than it does about inheriting a list of religious dos and do nots or terms of conditions for membership within a local believing community. Repentance is about giving up our life agenda and embracing the gospel. It is acknowledging that Jesus is the template for existing as a human in God’s world and devoting one’s life to the continual learning and formation of this perfect life in order to reflect the glory, compassion and love of God into the world. What this looks like for one believer will be different for another believer, but the net result will be the same. The identity of God will be propelled into the world from a repentant community, not because they have all embraced the same dogma and rules, but because they have engaged the same Jesus, pronounced him as Lord and devoted their life to reflecting his character in every aspect of how they exist.

Fourthly, I urge you to spend some good time reflecting on the Sermon on the Mount and ruminating over what it means to be called to respond to the current political and religious climate by turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, loving your enemy and not hypocritically performing spiritual disciplines to be patted on the back by religious onlookers (etc., etc., etc.). Reflect on the Sermon on the Mount and ask yourself what it means to have the kind of religion which God sees and rewards. How might we impart this understanding to younger believers who are in the throes of attempting to impress the social media world – even the religious social media world!

Stay tuned for the conclusion of this reflection. Having set the stage and asked some initial questions about the meaning of repentance in an ancient context, I now want us to consider how we might wrestle with a parable, understanding it as a commentary on the Kingdom of God which we enter by repenting and believing. Asking these questions and considering these thoughts will, amongst other things, help us to read very familiar parables with fresh eyes and allow them to speak to us in renewed and powerful fashion.

Stay tuned as we consider The Parable of the Rejoicers and the Grumblers.

To Be Continued….