This Is No Joke

From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matthew 4:17 NASB

Repent – April Fool’s Day. I wonder where that tradition began. Today I’m not playing a joke on you. Today I want to think seriously about something Harold Brown wrote.

While Buddhism and Islam are based primarily on the teaching of the Buddha and Mohammed, respectively, Christianity is based primarily on the person of Christ. Christianity is not belief in the teachings of Jesus, but what is taught about him . . .[1]

Brown notes that if Christianity took the same approach as the other great faiths, “The appeal . . . to believe as Jesus believed, rather than to believe in Jesus, [would be] a dramatic transformation of the fundamental nature of Christianity.”[2]

Why don’t we start with this? Why do we spend so much time debating who Yeshua is instead of appreciating what he taught? Is it because Christian faith is really not about how to live in the world, but rather about getting the right answers on the exam for admittance to heaven? (Yes, I know that Christians care a great deal about how to live in this world, and history proves this to be true. But we’re talking about the system, not the people.) Is it because the Church adopted Greek philosophy as its fundamental approach to understanding rather than Jewish ethics as a fundamental way of living? Is it because the West still believes that logos is a function of mind rather than body? You’ll have to decide those questions for yourself because today we will start examining Yeshua’s teachings as a way of life rather than elaborating more doctrines about his status.

We’ll start in Matthew. Let’s skip right to his first lesson. “Repent.” Now there’s a good action word. It has a long history in the Hebraic world. Many prophets before Yeshua gave the same instruction from YHVH. The word in Greek is metanoéō, usually rendered, “to change one’s mind.” This is one of a whole host of Greek terms derived from noús. All are somehow connected with mental operations. Behm notes:

(1) The noun, too, can mean “later knowledge” or “subsequent emendation.” (2) More commonly it denotes “change of noús,” whether in feelings, will, or thought. (3) It then means “remorse” or “regret” if there is dissatisfaction with the previous noús and the pain etc. it might have caused.^[3]

But further investigation reveals something important about the Greek versus the Hebrew view:

With further development both verb and noun then come to mean “change of mind,” “repentance,” in an emotional and volitional sense as well. The change of opinion or decision, the alteration in mood or feeling, which finds expression in the terms, is not in any sense ethical. It may be for the bad as well as the good. In the latter case, when μετάνοια denotes a change in moral judgment, regret for wrongs etc. which have been committed, the reference is always to an individual instance of change of judgment or remorse in respect of a specific act which is now no longer approved . . . For the Greeks μετάνοια never suggests an alteration in the total moral attitude, a profound change in life’s direction, a conversion which affects the whole of conduct.^[4]

Clearly Yeshua did not have this Greek idea in mind. Aside from the fact that he did not deliver the instruction in Greek, the whole Greek concept of change or regret without a shift in total moral outlook simply isn’t Hebraic. The Hebrew view of repentance is more ambiguous and, at the same time, more comprehensive.

There is in the OT no special [technical term] for “repentance” or “to repent.” But the concept is by no means absent. It is found in two forms. On the one side is the cultic and ritual form, where the religion of Israel makes use of elements found elsewhere. On the other side is the prophetic form, namely, the concept of conversion. This developed out of the prophetic view of the relation between God and man, which is peculiar to the OT and which is particularly significant inasmuch as it corresponds to and prepares the way for the μετανοεῖν of the NT.^[5]

In the Tanakh, repentance is connected to both ritual and internal penitence. It must be motivated by a deep, personal encounter with YHVH. It is important to note that “it does not lead, then, to a personal and existential relation between God and man.”^[6] In fact, it is the result of divine encounter, not the precursor to the encounter. The action demands “final seriousness and readiness for the practical consequences of relationship with God.”^[7] Consider Joel’s announcement, “Turn to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning” (Joel 2:12).

Accordingly, “it is not enough to be sorry for past sins and to pray for their remission or for the aversion of calamity, that what counts is a turning from the sinful nature as such.”^[8] You may ignore Behm’s reference to “sinful nature,” but you cannot ignore the impact on our usual view. We think of repentance as the first step, one which is accompanied by sorrow, regret and a plea for remission (if not avoidance). But this is not repentance. Repentance is total change in direction, purpose and action. It is the Hebrew idea of shuv, “to go back, to return,” implying that those who repent once knew the way and now must recover it. In other words, repentance is typically not conversion (there are cases where “return” does not seem appropriate, e.g., Ezekiel 33:18). Conversion is about seeing life differently, not recovering what was lost.

Now let’s consider what Yeshua taught. “Turn back with your entire commitment in as deep a way as possible to the way that you have known,” might be better than our contemporary idea of repent. He was speaking to an audience that knew exactly what he meant. There was only one way from the past that they could return to, namely, Torah. So Yeshua is not asking his listeners to convert. He is not asking them to feel sorry for their sins. He is asking them to go back to Moses and live accordingly. That’s what “Repent” meant.

Is that what it means for you?

Topical Index: repent, metanoéō, shuv, Matthew 4:17

[1] Kegan A. Chandler, The God of Jesus in Light of Christian Dogma, pp. 248-249, citing Harold Brown, Heresies, p. 13.

[2] Ibid.

^[3] J. Behm, noéō in Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (639). Vol IV, pp. 948-980.

^[4] J. Behm, noéō in Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (639). Vol IV, pp. 948-980.

^[5] Ibid.

^[6] Ibid.

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] Ibid.