Produce Fruit in Keeping with Repentance

In Matthew 3:7f, John the Baptist, as he prepares the way for the ministry of Jesus, while John is baptizing in the wilderness, spots Sadducees and Pharisees among the people in the crowd. Those men, of course, were the religious elite among the Jews of that day.

The prominence of the Sadducees and Pharisees in organized Judaism didn't impress John. If anything, their elite status offended him. John picked the Jewish hierarchs out from among the people in the crowd, referring to them as a "brood of vipers" and offering them this challenge: "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance."

John's words, offered to them in the form of a command, challenge me every day. I believe those words apply to everyone who would follow Jesus.

Shortly after John confronted the religious elites of his day with that challenge, Jesus began His own ministry in which His core message was a similar challenge. But, Jesus presented the challenge to one and all: "...repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near." (Matt. 3:17)

Two central questions of my life are:

1. What must I repent of/from? And,
2. How is my repentance producing fruit?

These days of the Coronavirus crisis have changed the rules by which we all live.

For me, answering my two central questions had developed into a pattern in recent years and I knew how to answer them.

I didn't always like the honest answer to the questions. But the pattern was there.

These days, for me, what repentance is, and how repentance is put into action, is scrambled, compared to the past...and I'm still very uncertain. I'm still working it out.

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Being a prophet, walking in the Spirit and living in community, it's a part of my gift and calling to, well, be in the repentance business, not only for myself, but for others as well,...

...as John was,...

...as Jesus was.

I see this Coronavirus crisis as an historic  opportunity,...

...the sort of opportunity that doesn't come often to the people of God...

...more than that, I see it as a challenge...

...to the Western church, declining and decaying, dying?, as it unquestionably is, to turn from fallen, failing and unblessed ways.

But, as far as I can tell, the opportunity is being ignored.

So far, at least, the opportunity is being lost.

What I see is people struggling sincerely to preserve old ways that fail to bring God's blessing.

As of this moment, I see doom.

I suggested, in my still unpublished comment to the last eNews, that we must consider asking what Jesus is doing TO us, that is, how His promise that He rebukes and disciplines people He loves applies to us...

...because, when He rebukes and disciplines, He commands His people to, "be earnest and repent."

To repent is to change the way you think.

To produce fruit in keeping with repentance is to behave in a way that reflects new thinking.

Tell me, if you know that I am wrong, but I'm not seeing new thinking. I'm not seeing repentance. I'm not seeing fruit of repentance.

We must repent.