“Repent. For the Kingdom of God Is at Hand.”

I bet you were thinking John the Baptist. It’s actually a direct quote from Jesus at the beginning of His ministry. It’s such a succinct, but powerful, phrase. Authoritative in nature, instructive, condemning, pleading, warning, frightening … hopeful. The God of all creation, the One to Whom every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that He is Lord, the One to Whom all people of every tribe and nation will give an account of every thought and word uttered, the One Who has promised coming eternal judgment to those who sin against His law, The Holy One Who cannot look upon sin, Who disciplines those who engage in it, and will crush the one who promotes it. This One gives us a way of escape. A way to shed the chains that bind us and enslave us. He gives us hope for the future, strength for today, times of refreshing in difficult situations, peace where there is discord, unity where there is division, and most of all salvation from eternal separation from His presence … Hallelujah! This hope is found in the One Who gave His life for us, His Son, Jesus Christ. And He’s been given to us as a gift. Our acceptance of Him comes through faith and repentance. There really are, as a famous theologian once put it, two concepts that ride on the same side of the coin. Some like to debate which one comes first, others are content with the fact that both are present in a believer’s life. I’ll flip you for it.

From the beginning of time, man has resisted God’s law. Whether simple in form, such as, “Do not eat of the tree,” or complex in nature, through the various regulations in the Old Testament, man has been unable to resist the temptation to violate what God has established. Some do better than others, no one perfectly, except Jesus Christ. All of us are left condemned. All of us. But God plants hope in the garden in the form of a promised One [Gen. 3:15]. And, from that day forward, sends a message to all who walk this earth, “Repent, turn from sin, turn to Him.” This concept, repentance, is multi-faceted. A simple definition from our familiar friend, Webster, leaves us with as many questions as we had before we started flipping through the r’s. It’s what he says, and a whole lot more. The truth is, as someone before me put it so eloquently, you can’t hold onto your sin and the cross at the same time. Repentance is a letting go, a turning away or around, a rejection of all that is not of God. Wherever you are in your walk today with God, one thing is quite sure, repentance plays a key role. I urge you today to embrace it, and follow the Apostle Paul’s exhortation to, "Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” [Acts 3:19].