Repentance
At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus’ message was, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:14). Jesus was telling the people of Israel that God’s promises about the Messiah were being fulfilled and God’s kingdom of grace and mercy had come to them.
In order to understand this message, it was necessary for the people to “Repent, and believe the gospel.” This message was the same that John the Baptist proclaimed as he prepared the people for the coming of the Lord.
The word “repent” means to acknowledge our sinful condition to God. Now God knows our every transgression in word and thought. We work hard to hide our sins and deny their reality. By nature, we consider ourselves good and able to make up for our weaknesses.
So, the word “repent” calls on us to realize how much we fall short of God’s holiness, now much we have disobeyed God’s Law and failed to the good that God requires, and how much we have offended God even in our thoughts. We truly do not understand how corrupt we are before God nor how greatly our iniquities deserve God’s just punishment.
Repentance does not mean that we grovel before God in self-pity. It means that we recognize the spiritual sickness within us and our inability to please God by our works. With such an understanding, we are able to see our need for someone to come and rescue us from our sins and God’s eternal punishment.
To “believe the gospel” means that we see Jesus as our divine Savior. The good news is that God’s Son took on human flesh in order to keep God’s Law perfectly and to suffer death on the cross to pay the penalty for the sins of all people. Because Jesus is God, His perfect life and innocent death established the holiness that is necessary for sinners to enter heaven. This is the “good news” about God’s mercy and forgiveness that Jesus wants us to know and believe.
Repentance also speaks about our life as God’s children. If God has forgiven our sins through faith in Jesus, how can we willingly continue to do them? If we have been crucified with Christ at our baptism, therefore “our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin” (Romans 6:6). During Lent, we need to examine where we fail so that we put away sin and do what is pleasing to God—not to earn forgiveness; but to show our love to God for sending a Savior, to resist the devil’s attempts to turn us from the faith in Jesus, and to honor God in all that we do.
The more we repent of our transgressions during Lent, the more we can appreciate Jesus’ love, mercy, and His work of salvation for us.