“I’m (truly) sorry”
Repentance in the Gospels
Preparing for Jesus’ arrival, John the Baptist preached to the crowds, “Produce fruit that shows repentance”. After his sermon, various individuals asked him, “What does repentance look like for me?”
For some, who had disregarded the needs of others and held onto possessions as their security, a repentant heart would result in giving away excess.
For tax collectors, who demanded more payment than what was allotted to them, a repentant heart would mean turning from that dishonest behavior.
For soldiers, who could use their power against people and who complained about their salaries, a repentant heart would no longer put itself first. (Luke 3:7-14)
Repentance would be evident in their individual actions, specific to their own sin struggle. “After Repentance” would look like an opposite lifestyle of “Before Repentance”.
Zacchaeus clearly models what John preached:
“But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” (Luke 19:8)
Zacchaeus confessed. He didn’t deny or justify his sin when he could have claimed that it was just the cultural norm for tax collectors to cheat. He didn’t place demands on his victims or paint himself as the victim of his surroundings. Money and possessions had been the center of his life, but with a repentant heart, he would go above and beyond to remove from his life what he had idolized and restore to people what they had lost because of him.
There would be loss of intangibles that he would be unable to repay, but he would do whatever was in his power in order to make amends through his material goods. In repentance, his effort toward compensation would be generous.
Zacchaeus gives us a very specific example of broader principles taught by Jesus:
1.“You will know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:20) Jesus began this chapter warning His people not to judge others’ hearts and to examine themselves before pointing a finger at others. Then, He illustrated that the condition of a heart can be evaluated by the lifestyle it produces and the effect that a person has on their environment and relationships as time passes.
2.“The mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” (Luke 6:45) In a parallel passage to Matthew’s, Jesus revealed the source of conversations and word choice. Whether harmful or holy, they come from what’s on the inside.
3.Jesus came to call sinners to repentance and declared that heaven rejoices when one person repents (Luke 5:32; Luke 15:7). Jesus and all of heaven expect and celebrate genuine repentance with joy, showing us what our own posture ought to be toward it.
4.“Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in a day, and turns to you seven times in a day, saying, ‘I repent’, you must forgive him.” (Luke 17:3,4) These are the steps outlined here by Jesus:
Watch for sin
Rebuke for sin
Repent of sin
Forgive for sin
We keep our eyes open to sin, and when we see it, we confront it. No one is above this process or excluded from it. Forgiveness is necessary as a follow-up to repentance, but this is where we often confuse forgiveness with restoration, relationship, trust, vulnerability, etc.
Aphiemi is the Greek word meaning “forgive, release, set free”, according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words. When we forgive, we release or set free from the punishment we’d like to inflict on an offender. Instead of taking vengeance ourselves, forgiveness turns the offender over to judgment by the law, and, ultimately, to God’s justice.
But only time, observing whether repentance is lived out in a lifestyle change like Zacchaeus’, will prove whether restoration, relationship, trust, or vulnerability can be possible between two humans. God knows the heart, but we can only see its fruit, revealed by the passing of time. This is a much bigger subject than a blog post or email can encompass, but I hope it’s the beginning of clarity that provokes deeper study on the subject.
Next week we’ll look at repentance as it was demonstrated in the early church.
