John the Baptist: A Meditation on Luke 3, for the Second Sunday in Advent

 

…the word of God came unto John the son of

Zacharias in the wilderness. And he came into all the

country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance

for the remission of sins;

Many pastors have found throughout history that the least popular thing they must do as they serve God is to call people to repentance.  As the life and martyrdom of St. John the Baptist demonstrated, calling people to repentance can end up putting one’s head on a plate—which was what the wicked household of King Herod had done to him.  Preaching love and grace and peace and acceptance is usually either well received or generally ignored by society at large; but the preaching of repentance gets a lot of hostile attention very quickly.  As we enter into the Advent preparations for Christmas, it is worth meditating on why people get so angry when they are called to repent.

Of course, considering repentance in the abstract isn’t going to get the same visceral reaction as studying it in concrete particulars.  The general call to repentance might generate a general irritation among folks, or perhaps even a smugness that others may need to repent but not ourselves.  The pointed call to repentance actually addresses individuals, and names particular sins which must be put away lest the judgment of God fall upon them.  For example, telling people in general to avoid adultery may gain the irritation of a general public which wallows in debased sexual sins, or a holier than thou attitude by people who think they’ve never committed adultery despite their lustful hearts; but telling a specific person to repent of his fornication with his girlfriend, or a specific woman to repent of her adulterous affair with her neighbor’s husband, will get a potentially violent or evasive reaction.  This is true, because way down deep inside ourselves, we love our sin.  We love our pride, our lust, and our covetousness.  We love to think of ourselves as our own sovereign gods, and that no one has the right to judge us.  We even come up with bland but pious sounding platitudes to dismiss such calls to repentance, declaring everyone a sinner in general, so as to take the heat off of us personally.  If that doesn’t work, we’ll attack the preacher of repentance until he either shuts up, goes away, or we eradicate his witness from off the face of the earth.

In reality, my neighbor’s sin is not a license for my sin.  Attacking the messenger does not remove the call to repentance.  The truth of God is revealed against us all, and we will all bear the weight and the guilt of our own sins.  Our lack of love for God and our neighbor, our murderous ambition, sexual deviance, oppression of the weak and poor, destruction of nature and the natural order, and every other vice we’ve absolved ourselves from, cries out for our judgment.  Sin and evil, no matter how we may want to whitewash or popularize it, is damnable.  Not just sin in general, but my sin and your sin—my evil and your evil—call out to the Judge of the Universe for us to be consigned to death and hell for all eternity.  My sin is what damns me, not the Judge who passes righteous judgment upon me; just as the call to repentance shows me my sin and my need for a Savior, not the preacher who calls me to repent.  I cannot hide from my sin by denying the Judge, anymore than I can hide from the call to repentance by ignoring or abusing the preacher.  This Law of God is inescapable, and even if we were to silence every preacher, the universe itself and the witness of God written in our own body and soul declares it to us.  We are without excuse:  the works of our own hands, the words of our own mouths, and the thoughts of our own minds, declare our righteous condemnation.

Though absolutely necessary and foundational, the preaching of repentance alone is not the fullness of God’s Word to mankind.  As John the Baptist demonstrated, and as Christ Himself later sent His Apostles to preach, the Law of repentance must be paired with the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins.  While the preaching of the Law and the call to repentance from our own personal sins creates in us a holy terror, a sadness, or even an anger of rebellion against God, it does not give us what we need to be saved from our just judgment.  The Law is holy and good and pure, but we are found unholy, evil, and corrupt.  The call to repentance is hopelessness and despair for a sinner who cannot change his own nature, or root out of himself the twisted vices which impel him to never ending acts of evil.  While eternal and inescapable, the Law of repentance alone cannot save us, because we alone are not able to meet its perfect demand.

But the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake alone, does what the Law cannot do—it washes the believer in the Blood of the Lamb of God, and absolves our sins.  The debt we could not pay with an eternity in hell, Jesus pays once and for all upon His Holy Cross, suffering in His own body and soul the condemnation we have earned.  There in the Cross of Christ our sins are paid for, and the Law is satisfied.  This is the forgiveness of sins which is brought to the repentant sinner, because only the sinner who believes in the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake can turn from their evil toward the grace and holiness of God.  The unbelieving sinner remains trapped in his sins and the judgment sure to come upon him, but the believing sinner turns from his sins toward the Cross of Christ, by living faith receiving the gift of grace which only Jesus could earn for him.

This new life of faith and repentance is not easy.  It is marked with humility and a broken heart for one’s own sins, together with a constant desire to be called out of the darkness we so naturally fall back into.  This godly sorrow for our sins, coupled with the faith which clings to Jesus alone for our forgiveness, life, and salvation, inspires us by the Holy Spirit to rise up in a new life marked by the goodness and purity of God.  We do not live into the Law for salvation, but rather because we are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, we bring forth the fruits of faith which befit a life honest repentance.  A life without repentance nor its fruits, is also a life without saving faith or saving grace.

May we remember the inseparable link between repentance and the forgiveness of sin, between the Law and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that we may also do the hard and dangerous work of bearing witness in a dark and dying world.  Preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins may result in our martyrdom, but it is the eternal truth which the world needs—which we all need—for eternal life.  May we also always give thanks for the preachers of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in every age, who came to us in the spirit of Christ like John the Baptist, through whom the Word of God has been made known unto the salvation of all who will repent and believe the Gospel.  Amen.