Fully Devoted: JesusSample

The Invitation

“Repent.” This was the main point that came out of both Jesus’ and John’s mouths when they began their ministries. So it’s pretty significant! John was the first prophet from God in 400 years! And Jesus, well, He’s literally God in the flesh! Neither of them pull any punches in their opening messages. Here’s Jesus’ first sermon. Ready? 

“The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” Mark 1:15 NIV 

Yep, that’s it. What is so significant about this invitation to repentance? 

Both John and Jesus knew that if the Kingdom of Heaven was going to be realized on earth, some things were going to have to change. The people of Israel had misunderstood their identity for too long. They’d attached themselves to some faulty ideas about who God is, who they were, and what it meant to be His people. They got their definition of righteousness more from ceremonial cleansing rituals than their calling to emulate the God who is everything good, right, and true. The nation of Israel needed more than a fresh start. They needed a new heart. And it’s this kind of radical repentance that John, and ultimately Jesus, invite us to right up front. 

Will we embrace their challenge? Will we allow the reality of the Kingdom of God to confront our assumptions, reshape our convictions, and reform our identities? The beautiful thing is that when we do, we become the kind of people we were always meant to be. 

John the Baptist got this. He was Jesus’ cousin, and he fulfilled the role predicted by the prophet Isaiah—who ministered during another period of Israel's history when the people were in desperate need of hope. John’s message was pointed and confrontational. He called out the Jewish religious leaders and their practices. As continually evidenced throughout Jesus’ and John’s encounters with the Pharisees, the religious leaders had gotten to a place of entitlement. They presumed to be children of God because they were descendants of Abraham. By birthright this is who they were, and they savored their specialness. But through their behavior they had strayed far from the covenant relationship they were meant to have with God. The covenant people had abandoned the covenant promise—a continual partnership with the God who formed them. They traded the intimacy of a relationship that can only properly be compared to marriage or adoption for something so much less. 

But from the moment Jesus stepped onto the scene, and even before that, through John’s ministry, an invitation to redemption has been on the table. And redemption begins with repentance. We’ve got to detach ourselves from our faulty ideas about what this whole thing is supposed to look like, and fix our eyes on the Redeemer Himself. 

What does repentance really look like? It looks like turning from sin and turning to God. It’s choosing to accept God’s invitation to experience redemption. But it’s hard to receive something when you have your back turned to the person trying to give it to you. There’s a reorienting that has to occur. How do we reorient our lives to be able to experience redemption and receive grace from God? How do we get back to the relationship with Him that’s really a relationship? We take our cue from John and Jesus, and practice repentance. 

1. Admit you’ve messed up. 

Yes, this is hard and completely countercultural. But that, in and of itself, can be a clue you’re on the right track, because God’s Kingdom is so different from the kingdoms of the world. This world tells us to do whatever it takes to protect our own image. But we’re called by God to reflect His image—the image of a holy God who is full of grace and truth. There’s no room for cover-ups in His kingdom. When we mess up, we own it. That is step one of repentance.

2. Beg for forgiveness.

There’s something powerful about putting our apology to words. It takes humility. It brings the thing that has been festering in the dark into the light. And it allows us to experience grace in real, tangible ways. In Psalm 51, David begs for forgiveness after committing adultery and murder and finds this reassurance:

My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. Psalm 51:17 NIV 

Express your brokenness to God and your desire to return to Him. It’s in this place of vulnerability that our relationship is deepened and strengthened, and healing happens. 

3. Commit to making a change.

Repentance is an action. It’s turning from our sin, and turning to God. It’s more than thinking through something after the fact and feeling bad about it. It’s more than saying you’re sorry. Awareness and apologies are both great places to start, but don’t stop there! We’ve got to actually do something different. The beautiful thing about this is when we do the work of making a change, God’s grace meets us right there every single time. He will not get tired of bringing you home. He gets so much joy from bringing about redemption. It’s not just what He does, it’s who He is. 

So challenge yourself to make repentance a habit. Put the systems in place that will act as guardrails or rumble strips so you know when you’re drifting out of alignment with God. It will require commitment, vulnerability, and intentionality—but it’s worth it. When you experience the kind of relationship with God that repentance leads to, you’ll get why Jesus and John opened with this message. Because repentance is choosing to accept God’s invitation to experience redemption. 

Journaling Questions 

• What verse or passage stands out to you the most from today’s reading? Write it in your journal. 
• Have you attached yourself to any bad ideas about who God is, who you are, and what it means to be His? What’s one step you can take to allow Jesus to reform your identity today?  
• What part of practicing repentance is most difficult for you currently? Why?