Monday 6 January 2025
1 John 3:22-4:6. I will give you all the nations for your heritage – Psalm 2:7-8, 10-11. Matthew 4:12-17, 23-25.
Jesus’ message of repentance
The repentance that is at the forefront of Jesus’ message is a reorientation, a change of disposition. Certainly, it includes remorse and recompense for one’s sins. Repentance, however, neither begins nor ends there. Rather, repentance begins with an apprehension of the Kingdom that Jesus proclaims and is sustained by a deepening relationship with him.
Jesus turns our heads and will hold our attention. In the light of this relationship, we begin to recognise what is right and wrong.
Our relationship with Jesus is something that seeps into all of life and ideally leaves nothing unchanged. As the inheritors of modernity, we can be sceptical of the healing ministry presented in this Gospel passage. Yet, the early Christians were on fire with the ways that Jesus could change their lives, and not just abstractly. Jesus gets right into the midst of their reality, and so he will in ours if we repent.
Email this Print This Page
