Posted at my Charismatica blog.         *Top

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1. “What Jesus Demands from the World” -Demand #2: Repent
2. “What Jesus Demands from the World” -Demand #1: You Must Be Born Again

Jesus began his public ministry with the declaration: “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” (Matt. 4:17)  What is repentance? What does it mean, and more important, what did Jesus mean when he said- Repent?   

What is Repentance?

The Greek word behind our English word ‘repent’ is metanoeo, which means -an internal change of mind and heart.  Meta means -a change of movement, and noeo refers to the mind -including thoughts, purposes, and perceptions.

What did Jesus Teach about Repentance?

In Luke 13:5 Jesus said: “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”  The people of his day believed that God brought disaster only upon sinners.  Jesus is making the point here that all are sinners and all need to repent, and final judgment is going to overtake us all.  Jesus said: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the Gospel.” (Mark 1:15)  The Gospel is the ‘good news’ that we don’t have to all perish, but those who repent or change their mind, thinking and direction, can receive forgiveness and eternal life instead.

Jesus told his disciples after his resurrection to teach repentance and take the Gospel to every nation:  “Thus it is written,…that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:46-47)

Conclusion:

The demand of Jesus to repent is a universal demand for all the world and for every person of every generation.  As John Piper says in his closing remarks:

So the demand of Jesus to repent goes to all the nations.  It comes to us, whoever we are and wherever we are, and lays claim on us.  This is the demand of Jesus to every soul: Repent. Be changed within.  Replace all God-dishonoring, Christ-belittling perceptions and dispositions and purposes with God-treasuring, Christ-exalting ones.

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1. “What Jesus Demands from the World” -Demand #3: Come to Me
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Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” -John 3:3;  Jesus answered, …” Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ -John 3:5,7  

John 3 records a conversation between Jesus and a Pharisee named Nicodemus.  Nic starts by complimenting Jesus.  Then Jesus immediately begins to proclaim a teaching that emphasizes their differences.  The Pharisees believed that one could ’justify’ themselves and gain eternal life by knowing and following all of the Mosaic Law.  Jesus says, nope that won’t cut it, ‘you must be born again’.  Nic was a member of the Sanhedrin and an expert in the OT scriptures, and yet he did not understand what Jesus was talking about.  Jesus was actually reflecting on the words of Ezekiel:

“ I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” -Ezekiel 36:25-27

Jesus is teaching here that God himself will cleanse his people and give them a new Spirit, a spirit which will help to bring about a change of heart.  The scripture says that it will be the ‘Spirit of God’ that will be put within them, and that it will help in following his statutes and ways.  This is OT and Nic had no idea, nor did he know that this would soon be fulfilled.

Jesus continued the discussion by saying:  “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. ”

‘Flesh’ represents ordinary humanity, the natural human condition.  “We are not born spiritually alive with a heart that loves God.  We are born spiritually dead”1    Jesus teaches here that all humanity is divided into two camps: 

1.  Those who are born only once– born naturally, “Born of the flesh” and spiritually dead.

2.  Those who are  ’reborn’–”born again” by the Spirit of God, alive and changed by him.  Those who see and seek his kingdom.

What Jesus demands from Nicodemus, he demands from everyone in the world.  Nic was considered a ‘righteous’ leader among the Jewish folk, and yet he still was spiritually ‘dead’.  It doesn’t matter how good you are, or what race and ethnic group you belong to,  Dead is Dead.  There is nothing that you can do naturally by yourself to get into the Kingdom of God.  You must be ‘reborn’ by the Spirit of God.  It’s not one of those ‘self-help’ programs, it is a gift from God that activates a new ‘supernatural’ life.  John Piper finishes the chapter:

“Look away from yourself.  Seek from God what he alone can do for you.  Moral improvement of the old you is not what you need.  New life is what the whole world needs.  It is radical and supernatural.  It is ouside our control.  The dead do not give themselves new life.  We must be born again–”not…of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).  That is what Jesus demands from the world.” 2

1 John Piper,p. 38;   2 ,p. 39

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He points out that much of what passes for “the assured results of Biblical criticism” is nothing more than conjectures and the wishful thinking of the scholars themselves. The goal is to find the real Jesus who lived and taught before the gospels were written. In reality, ‘The Quest for the Historical Jesus’ brakes down because the earliest written records we have about Jesus, the Gospels themselves, are downplayed and fractured to support the currents attitudes and theories of the latest scholars and writers. Dr. Piper calls it all an academic game:

“First, no reliable or lasting portrait of Jesus has ever been reconstructed from going behind what the four Gospels portray. There is no reason to think this will change. The reason is at hand: When you abandon ‘das Vorhandenen’ (what exists at hand) for conjectures, you turn scholarship into an academic game.”

He concludes that the Gospels will always be the primary source for all that we know about Jesus, and the primary source for the church and most Christians:

“…,the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels of the New Testament is the only portrayal that has any chance of shaping the church and the world over the long haul. This is because it is the only one that people have access to. Whatever the Questers may construct, it will usually be read by only a handful of people.”

Finally, one of the major goals of the ‘Quest’ movement is to find the ‘radical’ Jesus behind the ‘Christ of faith’ or the ‘theological’ Jesus worshipped by the church. Dr. Piper concludes that the ‘real’ Jesus is the one recorded in the Gospels, and in reality is the most ‘radical’ of all. In his book, he actually plans to present all the radical ‘demands’ that Jesus made in the Gospels.

“What Jesus Demands from the World”, by John Piper (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 2006, 400 pgs.)p. 29-36.

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John Piper has some incredible thoughts in his newest book, on the teaching of Jesus.  I say incredible, because we are so use to preachers and teachers presenting and emphasizing only the barest minimum requirements for salvation as normative Christianity.  Dr. Piper goes way beyond that in this book, he actually presents all the demands that Jesus made of his followers.  Imagine that!  Demands?  Obviously he hasn’t been paying attention to the latest church growth strategies for going after the unchurched in suburbia.      

A recent popular slogan WWJD (what would Jesus do) sounds good, but is typically and severely limited by our modern inadequate perceptions about Jesus.  Pastor Piper presents to us the unvarnished truth in the form of what Jesus actually said.  There is a lot of demands here, a bunch of ‘do’s', and even some ‘don’ts’.  Some of it is the kind of stuff that many Christians want to discount as ‘Old Covenant’.    

Dr. Piper starts with ‘the great commission’ (Matt. 28:18-20):

 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

He points out that the ‘All authority’ includes us and really everyone else in the world.  So Jesus does have the authority to make demands (obviously).  We are supposed to go and make disciples in every nation.  What does it mean ‘make disciples’?  Obviously we are supposed to tell folk about Jesus, and when they believe, we are supposed to baptize them.  That’s about as far as many of us go.  But according to Piper and according to the words of Jesus, we are supposed to teach them to observe all the commands and demands of Jesus. 

How does one observe all the commands and teachings of Jesus?  Isn’t that rather impossible?  Yes it would seem to be:  “With man it is impossible, but not with God.  For all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27)   However, we are not alone.  He is with us all the way and he has given us his Spirit to dwell within.

The book contains 50 short chapters, each one exploring one of the demands of Jesus.  I hope to write short articles on each one.

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2. “What Jesus Demands from the World” -Demand #1: You Must Be Born Again