Matthew 11, the Meaning of Repentance and and Sin. Passing by Nehushtan
Matthew 11 and the Meaning of Repentance
Why are we deceiving ourselves? I’ll tell you why. Take this line in John 16:
“Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb.”
I’ll get to this later.
The sin of the church is touted as many: occultism, doctrinal heresy, adultery, drinking, gambling, or “sin” in general, however, you want to define it. There are tons. They are supposed to be the things that keep us from God and make us his enemy, that disqualify us for heaven. Others will simply put it as a lack of “repentance,” which means, again, that the great sin is in performing something God does not like, about not changing your behavior, or “turning” from it.
Repentance and its lack thereof are sure at the root of sin. These other things are surely apostate and sinful. Repentance and its lack are of course number one since without it there is no forgiveness. But what is repentance? And further, what are we to repent about?
“Well, you change, you turn from your sin, namely occultism, doctrinal heresy, adultery drinking, gambling, whatever.”
Well, “repentance” does not mean to change your behavior, it literally means “change of mind.” Naturally, your physical behavior is something that needs to be stopped, but the simple assumption of the ancients is that any genuine or fake reflection of what is inside you is sourced in this spirit. It is a change of mind, no matter what church leaders who want to tell us that it’s about what you do, is about a fundamental spiritual change of why. When we stick to this truth, this brings certain issues the table that easily missed on talk of only doing or not doing something. It forces us to address why, spiritually, which needs reform.
Since bodily motion is an imperfect reflection of the spirit, that organ of Truth processing and love, whatever this why of repentance is, since it’s original and not derivative or merely symbolic like the what, it can’t be conceived, like the body to the spirit, as a general, roundabout, flattened sort of what.
It’s not first about repentance about your adultery with the woman next door, New Age, a missed Holy Day of Obligation, desecrating the Host, being mean and making a mess. Those are but effects of this spiritual why of repentance, for which a change of mind is needed. Stopping them without stopping what is behind them is not repentance since you are only changing its possible reflection. We all believe this. But the spiritual why that must be changed also has its own reflective and not organically sinful expression. Here are a few:
“I now believe in God.”
“I now believe Jesus is the Son of God.”
“I now believe in Jesus, that he will save me from my sin.”
“I now believe that Jesus died and rose the third day and his blood cleanses from all sin.”
These are what. They are conclusory, mental objects, finished products of some process.
You don’t repent for selfishness, spiritual blindness, hypocrisy in a search for the truth, apathy about spiritual things, what have you, because, like the body to the spirit, these are catch-all containers for any specific spiritual reasons from some revealed Truth. Sin is not sinning against ideas or doctrinal statements. Its sin against a why in a what. It’s not against the “God” idea and its not against a creedal bullet “Jesus is Savior.” It against what is driving, animating spiritually, giving rise and power to false ideas. “What,” in this change of mind its certainly not about externals, displays, expressions, representations. It’s about why, about substances, essences, predicates not conclusions, of the Christian truth.
metanoia: change of mind, repentance
Original Word: μετάνοια, ας, ἡ
Part of Speech: Noun, Feminine
Transliteration: metanoia
Phonetic Spelling: (met-an’-oy-ah)
Definition: change of mind, repentance
Usage: repentance, a change of mind, change in the inner man.1
Repentance and what you show or do for repentance are two separate things:
Matthew 3:8 Bring forth therefore fruits meet (axioV, Strong: deserving, comparable or suitable (as if drawing praise):—due reward, meet, (un-)worthy.) for repentance.
Acts 26:20 But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.
It’s the why to the what of truth. The reason for faith, for a belief in transcendence, in God. The transcendent reason you are motivated to change your mind is central to the act of repentance, and it cant be an idea, a consequential means of signing an original, but only an original, sinful signifying truth. The revelation of this fundamental truth is what Jesus’ brought to the world as much as his bringing new ideas and a basis and meaning for life.
What motivates you, the reason behind it, is something that comes from a very private place. It’s the place where what you are is what you are, your spirit, not the place that is primarily concerned with what you do thereafter, how you do, or to what extent you do. Because what you do is merely a relatively superficial display of it. What you do with your body is not dead-on reliable in demonstrating the state of the spirit. It can easily be faked, and when they are a genuine representation these works may not have gotten there very fast.
The body resists because the body wants to do according to its priorities. But the spirit also has its priorities. The problem is it tries to emulate the body.
The first priority of the body is to stay alive and do all things which build up that sense of life: food, sex, work, houses, cars, your bank account, vacations. The more it gets the better it feels because it feeds into the sense of being bulwarked against the tides of death.
The priority of the Spirit should be for its own self-preservation too, but it rarely is. But this is not for lack of trying. We carry a sense of our spiritual death inside us like that of physical death. But because the spirit does not carry the minute to minute threat of annihilation as the body does, its a sense which naturally is not as strong. Because it’s not as strong, it needs an inducement that is as strong as the physical world and its forces which always threaten to break physical life down and threaten it, and it needs a positive counter-force pulling in the opposite direction.
We tend to design and take on these counter-forces against spiritual death and for spiritual salvation like we do symbols in the outside, physical world. There, a house is the goal against the wind and the rain. The spirit does not have these concrete constructions, these objects, so we build spiritual ones. Its “Jesus,” “God,” propositions, statements, doctrines. The problem is these are in the spirit are not reflective of its field of influence as objects are in the outside world. The only thing in the spirit that stands as this field of influence and which would be where to go in preventing spiritual entropy and death is in a revelation that comes outside the world entirely. Since the spirit is the closest field to a transcendent state, if such a state existed, whatever is going to save it has to be transcendent as well.
The sin of us all and the church is not about any things pertaining primarily to behavior. The sin is not in violation of a badly conceived and anti-biblical notion of repentance either. Our sin is in our hearts, and our heart sin is about our Truth motivations for believing what we say we do. No matter how much the church denies it, obfuscates it through rhetorical tricks, or ignores it, our sin is not knowing, not being motivated by, nor regarding, or being impressed too much by and believing the only demonstratively transcendent truth we have, messianic prophecy, as our basis for faith and our whole reason for calling ourselves Christians. All the crappy things you do or have done can’t be forgiven unless you change your mind about that. It is the only kind of repentance that is needed and, ironically, the only kind of repentance that is refused as sufficient by our so-called “Christian” (meaning follower of the “Messiah”) church.
Now, you say, “I, of course, believe he fulfilled the prophets.” Great! Do you know them? When you first heard them did those facts alone start your faith fire inside you? Did that truth begin your faith and now overarchingly rules your faith? Does that inform all of your theology? Is that revelation your main point of contact with all of Scripture? Is it your main evangelistic truth? Do you tell people “believe like me in Jesus and you will have peace and go to heaven,” or tell them about Isaiah 53? This is how we can know what is really behind our faith, and what needs repentance. No slogans, religious notions, traditions and pleasant ideas or anything you are doing.
Matthew 11:6 And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.
The response above is about John the Baptist’s seeming lack of confidence in Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus sent a reply to him in the assurance that he is performing the miracles prophesied for the Messiah. Jesus is proving that he is that Messiah, and this is all that matters…not one’s momentary gut feeling. The implication is that John accepted this, and repented of that failure. Our question is of what John repented, categorically and exactly. His being offended only of Jesus’ person or offended at something much more fundamental about Jesus.
It’s clear that being offended at someone is only a mental thing, not a physical one. But if spiritual, what kind of offense? That Jesus is not acting kingly? He’s not putting the boot to the Romans? Maybe that was on John’s mind. We don’t know. But this much we do. This use of the doubt of John is an example given by Jesus of what it takes to believe in him and what it means not to.
The difference between John’s offense and, that perhaps he should “look for another,” is not quite like our sin. John knew the prophets and he was a prophet. Our sin is one not to be corrected by opening the scriptures and convincing from there because we were not first convinced to worship Jesus from there. He was. Our sin, unlike John, is an offense left un-diagnosed and hidden in this incident. Its because we are not even able to form a decent thought about Jesus and who he really was from the outset because our relation to him is only through theological tradition and religious feeling. Jesus uses a prophet and the cure for his doubt by relaying that he is fulfilling the prophets, and blessed is he who whose faith is not offended (σκανδαλίζω skandalízō), or tripped up, made difficulty, stopped, like a stumblingblock, by the implications for religion of the greatest truth even known of the transcendent: that of Jesus of Nazareth fulfilling prophecies uttered hundreds of years and millennia before by God’s forthtellers. The great spiritual savior, the great outside spiritual force to finally come intl that private and abstract place of man to serve forever as its own sure means of its salvation from death has come.
To the church, our relation to Jesus by faith is always put as a relation to the person of Jesus, and so it is. Jesus is however not only a person in this context, but he is, more importantly, a revelation, he’s the Word of God. Your deepest offense at Jesus, known or unknown, intentional or unintentional, if you have one, could never primarily be about him being an insufficient personal idea that is not worthy of your attention and devotion. If you are consciously or unconsciously offended by Jesus, your offended at being asked to put his revelational, informational entity as your only reason for faith in him.
If you conceive of an offense in Jesus that is not in respect to messianic prophecy as much as Jesus the person, you may like Jesus as a religious object of worship but you separate Jesus from his credentials, which is another way of saying that you are offended at him illegally at the point of the original ground of his identity, driven by a truly corrupt motivation. This is what we have become in the church, while still calling ourselves followers of Jesus.
We know deep inside that the reason we only want to talk about our relation of Jesus’ person is because if he is a fusion of a particular kind of Word and a person you have to take all of him, which means you have to know this Word, keep it as the most important body of evidence in existence, be desirous of only it to show the truth, to depend upon it for the most important things in view of your religious perception, when it just doesn’t turn us on that much as religion does. Corrupt religion is an obsession with objects, persons, things. Real religion is a focus on their transcendent demonstration. In Christianity, that demonstration is the divine oracles and their fulfillment.
You can’t separate the word “offense” in your mind from the only scriptural means of producing such an offense, and there is no way to conceive of being offended in Jesus for any other reason than what comes from his alignment or misalignment of him to the oracles.
You’re not offended by his person? You do well. If you want to say you love and are not offended by Jesus for any other reason while not putting those oracles first in the apprehension of his person, you are essentially offended and offending and are treated as an offender, since you claim imputed righteousness while striping Jesus of the importance of his biblical mantle which authorizes it and gives it.
Matthew 11:7 And as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind?
Matthew 11:8 But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? behold, they that wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses.
Matthew 11:9 But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet.
Matthew 11:10 For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.
Matthew 11:11 Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
Matthew 11:12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.
Matthew 11:13 For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.
Matthew 11:14 And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.
Matthew 11:15 He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
What did you go out to see? A man in soft clothing? No, a Prophet.
Of course, John’s expression of doubt does not imply that John was not the real deal. This was for John only a momentary lapse, obviously confused as to why his Jesus’s prophetic herald was in prison while Jesus was not using his supernatural power to release him and kick out Rome. It is possible that he thought that the Messiah was going to bring in the Kingdom now and deliver Israel from her enemies. Momentary doubt is not a disqualifier, but some doubt keeps us honest…that we might be wrong, which pushes us along to look for more proof. John is an honest doubter because his doubt came from a place that can be re-addressed and fixed. Our’s cant.
But who was John the Baptist? Do you think its purely inconsequential to the issue of offense, righteousness, and salvation that Jesus defends the weakness of John as insubstantial because Jesus is the fulfiller of prophecy (Isaiah 40:3, Mal 3:1) and a prophet himself? That he speaks of John’s faith only in terms of the prophets pertaining to the Messiah? Do you believe that he was in prison for any other reason than being part of the world that hates the messianic prophecies which have visited upon the prophets violence, abuse, and death? Just think with me here and see if that greatest, most important truth in 1900 years has not been abused and relegated, and that this is not the truth that Jesus wants us to pick up on in saying “he that hath ears to hear, let him hear“?
Matthew 11:16 ¶ But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows,
Matthew 11:17 And saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.
Matthew 11:18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil.
Matthew 11:19 The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.
What kind of generation are we instead? All the reasons that they give us for being excited about Jesus, or missing Him and sinning against him, are anything but what he requires. For the positive reasons, its about Billy Graham, Thomas Aquinas, its the Westminster Confession, or tradition, or your feelings, or the Ontological Argument, or a need for confidence that what will happen when you die will be good, the trust that the bread of the Eucharist is the body of Christ, that the Church is right…whatever.
Matthew 11:20 Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not:
Matthew 11:21 Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
Matthew 11:22 But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.
Matthew 11:23 And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
Matthew 11:24 But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.
What is the reason for this judgment? Why should they repent? Of what should they repent?
Matthew 11:25-30 At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Hid what things?
The “things” are the truth of the Messiah from the Old Testament. The “things” are the reason why God executes judgment, which is no more complicated than that man refuses the prophetic Truth by omission and commission. The “things” are those on which Christ places a supreme priority. The “things” are the reason why Christ died, to “finish the work”, the prophetic work, commanded him by the Father. The wise and prudent of the Church cannot see it.
So, what about “Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb?” The truth is free, but it’s not without a cover and a consequence. It all comes down to what we love the most.
Don’t be surprised when, after you die, you find that, yes, you were offended in Him all along because of a sin you never knew and certainly never repented of it.
Acts 10: What Cornelius Knew: Passing by Nehushtan.
When I Survey the Wondrous Nace, part 1: Passing by Nehushtan
