Read Luke 3:10-20
Advice - Perhaps it would assist in comprehending what repentance means, if you tried to locate in the daily newspapers, or in books or on television programs or the like, reports of happenings which need to be repented, or examples of repentance, or evidence of the fruits of repentance. Be especially alert for items or episodes involving the life of society and the nation.
Comment -Those who heard John the Baptist preach "a baptism of repentance" evidently had some problems understanding his message. (Luke 3:3, 3:10). Yet the political authorities, represented as Herod the tetrarch, understood enough about the political scope of the Baptist's proclamation of the Judgment to imprison John, and, subsequently, subject him to terrible interrogation, torture, and, finally, decapitation. (Luke 3:16-20; Matthew 14:3-12; Mark 6:16-29) The fact that in such circumstances Jesus makes John's preaching his own, and instructs his disciples accordingly, foreshadows his own arrest, trial, humiliation and crucifixion at the behest of similar authorities, and, for that matter, portends the chronicle of the Acts of the Apostles. The passages which are being studied here manifest that it is not possible to apprehend either Advent except through the dialectic of both Advents. However much that may have been ignored or suppressed in the contemporary churches, the pioneer Christians, beleaguered as they were because of their insight, knew that the message of both Advents is political. That message is that in the coming of Jesus Christ, the nations, principalities, powers and rulers of the world are judged in the Word of God and are rendered accountable, under the Lordship of Christ, to human life and to all created life by virtue of the sovereignty of the Word of God in history.
Hence the response of John the Baptist, when he is pressed to show the consequence of the repentance he preaches, is "Bear fruits that befit repentance." (Luke 3:8). To state the same issue another way, the call for repentance, addressed to a nation, or similar principality, concerns forswearing blasphemy. Blasphemy occurs in the existence and conduct of a nation wherever there is such profound confusion as to the nation's character, place, capabilities and destiny that the vocation of the Word of God in history is preempted or usurped. Thus, the very presumption of righteousness of the cause of a nation is blasphemy. (See Revelation 13:1-10). How, then, can a nation repent of blasphemy? And what are the fruits of such repentance?
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