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Jesus as a Preacher of Repentance

Dr. Roy E. Ciampa, Associate Professor of New Testament,
Director of the Th.M. program in Biblical Studies, Chair of the
Division of Biblical Studies

In one of the most extensive and important studies of the “historical Jesus,” John Meier
makes a revealing comment regarding Jesus‟ statement about forgiveness in the Lord‟s
Prayer (Matt. 6:12; Luke 11:4):

It is most significant that Jesus makes the disciples‟ forgiveness of others in the
present the condition of God‟s definitive forgiveness of them at the last day…
Making God‟s final forgiveness of individual believers depend on their
forgiveness of others in the present moment may create problems for Christian
theology. But, since Jesus was not a Christian theologian, he seems sublimely
unconcerned about the problem.i

It is a shame that Meier does not give more attention to the place of repentance in the
message of Jesus (even doubting, it seems, that repentance played any significant
role)ii since that is probably the key to explaining why Jesus‟ statement was not a
problem for him or for the Christian gospel writers, and should not be a problem for any
other Christian theologian either. Recent research into the meaning and significance of
repentance for the Judaism of Jesus‟ day may shed important light on aspects of his
teaching that have caused Christians to scratch their heads from time to
time.iii

The Synoptic Gospels all agree that repentance was an important part of Jesus‟
message (see Matt. 4:17; 11:20-21; 12:41; Mark 1:15; 6:12; Luke 5:32; 10:13; 11:32;
13:3, 5; 15:7, 10; 16:30; 17:3-4; 24:47), as it was for John the Baptist (see Matt. 3:2, 8,
11; Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3, 8). The Old Testament background to the idea of repentance is
found, e.g., in Leviticus 26:40-42; Deuteronomy 4:29-31; 30:1-6; 1 Kings 8:46-50
(paralleled in 2 Chronicles 6:36-39); Joel 2:12-14; Jeremiah 29:10-14; and what is
known as the penitential prayer tradition, including the prayers of Ezra 9, Nehemiah 9,
Daniel 9 and several other prayers of the Second Temple Period.iv In these texts,
repentance is understood to be a prerequisite to forgiveness for the sins which led Israel
into captivity, and the ongoing state of oppression by foreign powers.

As for meaning, key terms or concepts that came to be associated with repentance, due
to their presence in the Old Testament texts listed above, include turning to God and/or
from sin, confession of sins and seeking God. Thus, repentance must be reflected in
changed living, just as new life reflects itself in those very same changes, and, if there is
no change of life, there is no real repentance (or new life). But that does not mean the
biblical teaching of repentance amounts to salvation by works or by moral effort or rigor.

In the context of a call for repentance, one‟s obedience to God and rejection of sin are
not understood as means of meriting, earning or being worthy of salvation. Rather, it is
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a reflection of one‟s understanding that God‟s righteous judgment stands over against
us and that we are utterly dependent upon God‟s grace and mercy if we are to survive
his coming judgment. The confession of sins and/or request for forgiveness, the turning
from sin and seeking after God may all be understood as interrelated manners of
expressing one‟s recognition of guilt. While a penitential prayer expresses one‟s
culpability and need for forgiveness verbally, “fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matt.
3:8; Luke 3:8) are non-verbal means of expressing the same ideas.

With this in mind, the Gospel of Matthew suggests that virtually all of Jesus‟ teaching
might be considered under the umbrella of the theme of repentance. Matthew 4:17 says
that “From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, „Repent, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand‟” (ESV). Both “from that time” and “began” suggest the message of
repentance was a continuous and/ or primary theme of Jesus‟ teaching from that point
on, despite the fact that the explicit language of repentance does not often appear in
the rest of the Gospel of Matthew, or in the other gospels, for that matter. Matthew
expects us to understand that virtually all of Jesus‟ teaching is to be understood within
that framework.

This is the framework within which we are to understand the Beatitudes, including, most
obviously, Jesus‟ references to being “poor in spirit” and “those who mourn,” and
the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.v The petition for the forgiveness of sins in the
middle of the Lord‟s Prayer may well relate it to the penitential prayer tradition.vi While it
does not contain a separate confession of sins, the very request that God would forgive
us “our sins/debts” entails an acknowledgement of sinfulness and need for forgiveness.
And that takes place in the midst of a prayer that is clearly focused on the coming of
God‟s eschatological kingdom. The reference to fruits by which God‟s people can be
recognized at the end of the Sermon (Matt. 7:16-20) is the first reference to fruit since
John the Baptist spoke of the need to produce fruit in keeping with repentance
(Matt. 3:8-10).

Furthermore, in the Beatitudes, Jesus promises that the merciful will receive mercy
(Matt. 5:7). This presumably presupposes the idea that the merciful are those who, in a
repentant spirit, already recognized their own need for divine mercy and who extend
similar mercy to others as a reflection of their own repentant attitude. This brings us
back to the suggestion that “Jesus makes the disciples‟ forgiveness of others in the
present the condition of God‟s definitive forgiveness of them at the last day.”
Understood in the context of a theology of repentance, this hardly means people will
gain forgiveness through their own merit or that they will be thought deserving of it
because they happen to extend forgiveness to others. Rather, it means the person has
come to realize their own culpability before God and their desperate need for his mercy
and forgiveness, and has thus begun to live a life consistent with such a repentant
attitude.

The Old Testament indicates that the change in the lives of God‟s people will come as a
result of the heart surgery he will do in the eschatological time of salvation.
Deuteronomy 30:6 says God will circumcise the hearts of his people so that they will
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love him. Jeremiah 31:33-34 says God will write his law on the hearts of his people so
that they will all know him. Ezekiel 36:26-27 says God will give his people a new heart
and put his Spirit within them so that they will obey him. So, the changed life of the
repentant believer is not a human achievement but a divine work. It is the work that God
himself has begun and that he will bring to completion (Phil. 1:6). The Gospel of Luke
makes it clear that repentance is something granted by God to both Jews and Gentiles
(cf. Acts 11:18).

In summary, it is important that we not “explain away” Jesus‟ teaching about the
necessity of forgiving others (e.g., Matt. 6:12, 14-15), showing mercy (Matt. 5:7), etc., in
order to make him say what we wish he had said. However, it is also important to
understand how it fits into a broader biblical-theological framework (in this case, the
framework relating to repentance granted by God at the threshold of eschatological
judgment) which helps explain its coherence with the rest of biblical teaching about
salvation.
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i
John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Volume 2: Mentor, Message, and Miracles (New York:
Doubleday, 1994), p. 301.
ii
While admitting that the imperative “Repent!” is “hardly impossible in the mouth of
Jesus,” he agrees with other scholars that “sayings that mention repentance and that
can be seriously attributed to Jesus are relatively few, if any” (A Marginal Jew: Volume
2, p. 431). In a footnote, he suggests that E. P. Sanders “may be too skeptical about the
matter” (p. 485 n. 152, see Sanders, Jesus and Judaism [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985],
pp. 106-13). For more optimistic appraisals and fuller discussion of this topic, see, e.g.,
Joachim Gnilka, Jesus of Nazareth: Message and History (Trans. Siegfried S.
Schatzmann; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1997), pp. 204-8; N. T. Wright, Jesus and
the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, 2; Minneapolis, Minn.:
Fortress, 1996), pp. 246-58; Steven M. Bryan, Jesus and Israel’s Traditions of
Judgement and Restoration (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp.
68-72.
iii
See “repentance” in the subject indexes of Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney
A. Werline, eds., Seeking the Favor of God: Volume 1: The Origins of Penitential Prayer
in Second Temple Judaism (Early Judaism and its literature, 21; Atlanta: Society of
Biblical Literature, 2006) and idem, Seeking the Favor of God: Volume 2: The
Development of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism (Early Judaism and its
literature, 22; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), especially Boda‟s discussion
of the theology of repentance on pp. 27-34 of the first volume. See also Bryan, Jesus
and Israel’s Traditions of Judgment and Restoration, pp. 57-72.
IV
See the texts discussed in the volumes edited by Boda, Falk and Werline.
V
See Gnilka, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 207.
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vi
“Penitential prayer is a direct address to God in which an individual, group, or an
individual on behalf of a group confesses sins and petitions for forgiveness as an act of
repentance” (Rodney A. Werline, “Reflections on Penitential Prayer: Definition and
Form,” in Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney A. Werline, eds., Seeking
the Favor of God: Volume 2: The Development of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple
Judaism [Early Judaism and its literature, 22; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature,
2007], p. 209).