Jesus wants man to repent. He began his preaching with, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”[1]
Jesus said that repentance delivers man from perishment: “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”[2]
Jesus also wants man to be righteous: For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.[3] Having righteousness is necessary because without it man “will never enter the kingdom of heaven”. God said: Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.[4] 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 states: Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practise homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5:19-2 reiterates: Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. And Hebrews 12.14 says: Strive for … the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
God’s plan for man is for him to be with God in a loving relationship. Repentance delivers man from perishment. Deliverance from perishment is being with God in terms of time because if at some point in time one perishes he cannot be with God who is eternal. Righteousness is being with God in terms of behaviour. God behaves in certain ways and if one is to be with him in a loving relationship he too must behave similarly.
What Is Repentance?
The Old Testament is written in Hebrew and word for “repent” is נָחַם (naham) which literally means “groan” and connotes remorse. The New Testament is written in Greek and the word for “repent” is μετάνοια (metanoia) which means “change of mind”. Although both remorse and change of mind are internal, repentance is also external as John the Baptist said: Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.[5]
In Matthew 12:41, Jesus confirmed that the people of Nineveh had repented. So, to understand what repentance is, it is useful to see what they did. According to Jonah 3:5-10 what they did were these:
And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.” When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
It can be seen that, first, they felt remorse and expressed it in that they fasted, put on sackcloth and cried mightily to God. Second, they changed their minds and decided to turn from their evil ways, and go back to God, and expressed it by actually doing them.
Hence, when one repents he feels remorse; realizing that he has been living your life away from God; and express it by praying to God and confessing his sins to God. He also changes his mind; deciding to turn away from the life he has been living and go back to God; and express it by actually doing them.
What Is Righteousness?
To be righteous is to refrain from committing sin or wickedness. Psalms 45:6-7 says: Your throne, O God, endures for ever and ever. Your royal sceptre is a sceptre of equity; you love righteousness and hate wickedness. Romans 6:13-22 says: No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.
Most religions assume that righteousness can be achieved by man on his own effort. The Bible professes the opposite; that righteousness is a free gift of God: If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.[6] To obtain it, you start with faith: For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. So also David speaks of the blessedness of those to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon sin.” [7] Hence, by saying that he wants man to have righteousness, Jesus is saying that he wants man to maintain the righteousness that has been given to him by God (as clearly taught in Romans 6:13-22 quoted above).
What’s Next?
Read on about another command of Jesus to enable man to choose whether to love God and be with him: Good Works – Why? How?
[1] Rom 5.17.
[2] Rom 4.3-8. Phil 3.8-9. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christand be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.
[3] Mt 3.8.
[4] Mt 5.20.
[5] Rev 21.8.
[6] Mt 4.17.
[7] Lk 13.3-5.