The Call to Repent
How John the Baptist made way for the Kingdom of Christ.
Once upon a time in Judaea, a voice cried out in the wilderness, calling on the people to repent and warning that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” That voice belonged to John the Baptist, a prophet who lived wild, wearing camel-hair clothing and subsisting on a diet of locusts and wild honey. In answer to John’s call, people came from all over the country to repent and be baptized by him in the River Jordan.
What did John do when he baptized, and what did he mean by repentance?
In modern times the word “repent” has come to mean experiencing and expressing regret: that is, being and saying sorry. But repentance in the Biblical sense was about more than mere thoughts and emotions, words and gestures. It necessarily resulted in action.
As Thomas Nelson explained in The King James Study Bible:
“Repent (Gr. metanoeō ) means a change of mind that results in a change of conduct. Repentance is not merely sorrow.”
For example, someone might feel guilty and apologize after losing his temper. But if, after his pangs of conscience pass, he goes right back to blowing his top, that means he never repented.
To repent is to mend your heart and to mend your ways. If you truly mend your heart that will manifest in the mending of your ways. And, whatever you feel or say, if you do not mend your ways, that reveals that you have not yet mended your heart.
John the Baptist was calling on his generation to undergo what Nelson called, “a complete change of attitude regarding God and sin”: a paradigm shift so revolutionary and transformative that it is tantamount to one’s old sin-enslaved self dying and a new God-worshipping self being born.
Thus John facilitated repentance with the ritual of baptism, which can be thought of as symbolizing death and birth as well bathing. The baptismal waters are all at once:
bathwater that washes away the contaminating residue of sin,
the waters of the great unknown (i.e., primordial chaos) into which we immerse our old selves to drown and be dissolved, and
the life-giving waters (i.e., amniotic fluids) from which we emerge reborn.
The people of John’s time were in desperate need of such a fundamental reorientation, because God’s flock had gone astray. Some of the false shepherds who had led them astray came to the Jordan to see what all the fuss was about. These were members of two Jewish sects that were preeminent at the time: the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
John denounced them as a “brood of vipers” and called on them to avoid God’s wrath by producing “fruits in keeping with repentance.” (Matthew 3:7-8 NIV)
What did John mean by that? Repentance, again, is a change of heart manifesting in a change of behavior: but not just any behavior. Repentance means a change for the better: a closer alignment with God’s will. A change of heart for the better is known by a change in behavior for the better. And a change in behavior for the better can be known by its fruits: i.e., the results it seeks and thus tends to yield. As Jesus later said, “by their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matthew 7:20 KJV)
The Pharisees especially needed to hear this message, because they promoted fruitless and meaningless behaviors—empty observances of customary traditions unmoored from divine purpose—as the way to get right with God.
But they were wrong. So too, John warned, were those who thought they were already right with God merely because they were physically descended from Abraham, who had a covenant with God:
And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. (Matthew 3:9 NIV)
To be a child of Abraham in the important sense was not a matter of blood, but of belief and behavior: of trusting and following God as Abraham did.
And, as John’s ministry heralded, God had now sent his son Jesus to offer guidance and salvation to all mankind. Those who accepted that offer, whether Jew or gentile, would remain or become children of Abraham and beneficiaries of God’s covenant with humanity that started with Abraham.
Jesus was even then on his way to the Jordan to be baptized by John and thus inaugurate his public career. Christ the King had come and his kingdom was at hand. To secure one’s place in that kingdom requires allegiance to its king. John made way for Jesus by helping people to repent and thus to prepare their hearts to receive his gospel and enter his eternal kingdom through an even more powerful baptism:
“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Matthew 3:11 NIV)