Repentance and the near Kingdom

Recently I had a revelation. I don’t preach the same Gospel that Jesus, the Apostles and the Early Church did. I am being a little provocative, but I am serious. On one crucial point our gospel preaching differs from the apostolic call to repent and believe. This question may help clarify: “On what basis do we call people to repent and believe?”.

Let me come at this differently: the Gospels summarize the central message preached by Jesus in this way: “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”. This is the Gospel of the Kingdom, and I am not sure that is what I really preach. Do I truly preach the gospel of the Kingdom?

The Gospel of Personal Salvation

I think the gospel I’ve preached can be called “The Gospel of Personal Salvation”, which centers around the forgiveness of sins. Would you agree that we generally call people to repent on the basis of the fear of death (and its unpredictability) and the certainty judgment? This oft-repeated question (that I’ve used many times) summarizes the basis of our call to repentance: “If you were to die today and stand before God, do you know for sure that you would go to heaven?”.

Death, Judgment and Sin – Christ in the context of crisis

The key point of contemporary evangelism then, is bringing up the issue of death and judgment. Then, depending on the response of the hearers, we address the issue of our sin. We seek to bring people into the conviction of sin, presenting it as a barrier to our entrance into heaven when we die. There are variations in details and subtleties of presentation style and methods, but the essence of the presentation is the same.

Here is another variation: Often I have used (and even sometimes prayed for) a crisis in peoples lives to bring up the questions of meaning, purpose and satisfaction – pointing them to the promises of Jesus to fulfill and satisfy us even in the midst of trials and suffering.

Our message of personal salvation makes most sense IN THE CONTEXT of a personal crisis that has already opened people up to the nearness of death and the experience of loss. It is often only in a crisis that the world’s power to deceive and distract is broken and the deeper questions of the heart are evoked. Then, as they seek answers, the gospel appears attractive and filled with promise. So we are able to offer to them, through repentance and faith in Christ, a chance to live life with a new and lasting hope – the hope of eternal life. That precious window of opportunity is often very brief and may only happen once or twice in a lifetime.

But here is the crux: I do not, and have not heard anyone calling people to repentance (“turning our hearts and minds away from sin, towards God”) the way Jesus did it, with reference to the Kingdom.

Why Repent?

Jesus called people to repentance on the basis of the nearness and immediacy of the Kingdom of God (see Matt 4:17). This is in stark contrast to the general sense in which the gospel is preached today.

Can our presentation of the gospel, in any sense, be equated to the “Gospel of the Kingdom” as preached by Jesus and the early church? My guess is that we only address the Kingdom, the rule of God, in a limited, personal sense – in the issue of personal surrender (“Give your heart/life to Jesus, make him Lord/Leader of your life”).

By way of contrast, I think the message that Jesus preached sounded more like this: “God’s rule is breaking into the world right now, overpowering all evil… you better get rid of the junk in your life and align yourself to him, or you’re gonna miss it”. In this proclamation, the Kingdom is not the church, nor is it heaven, the millennial reign of Christ or the second coming of Christ. None of these were ‘at hand’ when Jesus made his declaration, and they don’t fit the context of his message.

It is clear that some Jews (including some of the apostles) misunderstood the Kingdom as a religio-political restoration of Israel to it’s glory days as under the rule of David. In their minds, the coming of the messiah meant judgment for the Gentile oppressors and blessing to the Israel. In this context, a call to repentance did make sense to them as a call to pure worship as a preparation for war. But certainly this is not what Jesus meant.

His urgent call to repentance did not reference death, or even eternal judgment, but the ‘near Kingdom’ – a kingdom not based on worldly power. Here then is the question I ask myself: “On what basis do I call my hearers to repent --to forsake old rebellious ways and embrace a new way of life?”. I think this is a key issue – and I am still wrestling with it, struggling for resolution.

I am not in any way suggesting that it is wrong to call people to repentance on the basis of death and eternal judgment. I am just pointing out that the apostolic way was somewhat different. 

So… what was Jesus really referring to when he said “the Kingdom of God is at hand, therefore repent!”?

The Kingdom, creating a crisis

Let me suggest a starting point from which to think through this. A central idea in my personal journey of re-orientation in regards to the Kingdom of God is that it has broken through into the ‘here and now’ of our lives today. This reality, I believe, is what Jesus referred to in his proclamation of the Gospel, his ‘good news’ of the Kingdom. Exposure to this in-breaking Kingdom was the context in which the repentance and faith took root in people’s lives.

I mentioned earlier that we hope for and utilize crisis experiences in people’s lives to speak of the redemption of Christ. Their personal crises become the fertile ground in which our gospel has great chance of taking root. I do not fault this in any way. But Jesus did not wait for people’s personal crisis to call them to repentance.

I believe Jesus CREATED crisis experiences wherever he went, as did the apostolic church. Our message waits on a crisis, while their message was one. I think the early church, by their lifestyle and proclamation, broke the power of the world’s system – the power to deceive – by displaying the immediacy and reality of the Kingdom of God, which then naturally led to the proclamation of the Gospel of the Kingdom.

So here are some questions I am asking: How do you create a crisis experience that displays the immediacy and reality of the Kingdom of God? What do the Scriptures say about this?

That will be the next post on my blog, God willing.