Day 12

12 - JESUS' MESSAGE: REPENT AND BELIEVE

Later on, after John was arrested, Jesus went into Galilee, where he preached God’s Good News. “The time promised by God has come at last!” he announced. “The Kingdom of God is near! Repent of your sins and believe the Good News!”

Mark 1:14-15

I’d been caught! I was playing at my neighbor’s house, and he had a toy gun that I really liked. When he wasn’t looking, I put it in my pocket, snuck it out of his house and took it home with me. My depraved five year-old brain reasoned, “It’s just a little toy gun. He has lots of toys. He’ll never miss it.” Later that week, while playing with my newfound treasure, my dad asked me where I had gotten the toy gun. He knew he and my mom hadn’t bought the gun. They had not seen me play with the gun before. I think the conversation went something like this.

“Son, where did you get that gun?”

“I found it outside.”

“Oh, really? Show me where you found it outside."

At that point, I led my dad out the front door, around to the side of the house, and pointed toward a random patch of grass. “I found it there.”

My dad knew I was lying, and he knew the gun wasn’t mine. He knew I stole the gun from somewhere, and eventually I confessed. What followed my confession was punishment, a spanking, and then restitution, which was worse than the spanking. My dad walked me over to my neighbors house where I had to confess my thievery and return the shiny, cool toy gun.

This vivid memory reminds me of the words I heard often in Sunday School as a child that I thought my mom had penned herself. “Be sure your sins will find you out! Actually, you can find this verse in the Bible in Numbers 32:23.)

Sinning came naturally to me. Sinning was easy for me. I was a born sinner. In fact, we all were natural born sinners.

How does God want us to deal with our sin? This was the message Jesus came preaching. “Repent of your sins and believe the Good News!” What’s the Good News? God forgives sinners like you and me!

If God wants us to respond to our sin by repenting, what exactly is repentance? Is it feeling sorry for your sin? If so, then how do we know if we’ve been sorry enough for it to truly count as repentance? Is it turning from our sin? That sounds an awful lot like we have to clean up our act, stop sinning, and make ourselves presentable to God so that He will accept us. Is that true? Is that even possible?

The Biblical word for repentance is metanoia (μετάνοια), which literally means “to change your mind.” What do you think God wants us to change our mind about?

Read Romans 3:23.

• What does God want us to repent about, to change our mind about, in this verse?

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God wants us to change our mind about our SIN. He wants us to recognize our sin and see it as an offense to a holy God.

Read Romans 3:10.

• What does God want us to repent about, to change our mind about, in this verse?

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God wants us to change our mind about our SELF. He wants us to recognize that there is nothing we can do to fix our sin problem on our own. We can’t be good enough to get into heaven on our own.

Read Romans 5:6-11.

• What does God want us to repent about, to change our mind about, in these verses?

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God wants us to change our mind about the SAVIOR. He wants us to understand that He sent His one and only Son into this world to live a sinless life and die a horrible death to pay the penalty for our sin and make us right with God.

Jesus came with this message. “Repent of your sins and believe the Good News.” We know what repent means, but what does believe mean? Does it merely mean that we accept something as fact, that we believe it to be true?

The Biblical word for believe is pisteuo (πιστεύω), which means to have faith in or to put your trust in. What do you think God wants us to put our trust in?

Read Romans 10:9-10.

• What kind of belief is it that will rescue us from our sins?

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Saving faith is when we put the full weight of our trust in Christ alone, in His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead, to rescue us from our sin and make us right with God.

Apart From Him…

• Thank the Father for His forgiveness. It’s undeserved. It’s unearned. It’s unbelievable!

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Walking As Jesus…

• Have a conversation with someone today about the Biblical concepts of repent and believe.

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• My Personal Disciple-Making Plan: