The four Gospels tell us relatively little about what Jesus did and said between His resurrection and His ascension, and I think that’s a good thing, because it focuses our attention on each item of information we are given, making us study them like detectives if we’re serious followers of Christ, praying that He’ll lead us into a right understanding of each little bit. Now the Book of Acts, which was also written by the author of the Gospel of Luke, tells us that the resurrected Christ was seen by the disciples over forty days (Acts 1:3), though in the Gospel of Luke itself the story of the resurrected Christ seems telescoped down into just one day and the evening following (Luke 24:13-51).1
In the last chapter of Luke’s gospel we’re told that, on the seven-mile road to Emmaus, He gives Cleopas and Simon a summary of all the scriptural prophecies about the promised Messiah, with an explanation of how Jesus of Nazareth has fulfilled them all. The moment they recognize their mysterious teacher as Jesus, He vanishes. They then hurry back to Jerusalem, where other disciples are gathered, and as soon as they tell of Jesus’ miraculous appearance to them, Jesus Himself appears in the room. Showing the nail-holes in His hands and feet, He eats some broiled fish to demonstrate that He’s not a ghost, then teaches that “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:47), admonishing them to stay in Jerusalem until they “are clothed with power from on high,” and leads them out to Bethany, a mile and a half distant. At Bethany He raises His hands in blessing and is carried away from this world. This “clothing with power” He has foretold will come on Pentecost, which is forty-nine days after Passover. If He rose from the dead on the second day of Passover and walked among His disciples for forty days, this implies that about eight days passed between the Ascension and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that occurred at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4), or forty-eight days if the Ascension happened on the evening after the Resurrection. Whichever it was, there were long days of waiting in suspense.
Let’s look more closely at what He told them: “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations,” as the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible has it. He was speaking in Aramaic, of course, but the oldest records we have of the story are in Greek. The original Greek of Luke 24:47 reads, literally, “repentance into putting away of sins” is to be proclaimed in His name to all nations. Not “the goodness of God” is to be proclaimed in His name, not “the importance of right behavior” or “correct theology” is to be proclaimed in His name, not even “feeling sorry about our sins” is to be proclaimed in His name, but some one thing called repentance into putting away of sins. Imagine that we are His only disciples, charged with bringing His message to “all nations.” We’ve seen Him risen from the dead, but He’s just vanished, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost hasn’t happened yet. What did He mean by repentance into putting away of sins? We must understand this concept if we’re to make all nations understand it!
First of all, the Greek word translated “repentance,” metánoia, means a change of consciousness. It’s not something we can do by ourselves, any more than we can wake up from a dream by willing it from within the dream, or will ourselves sober if we are drunk. It comes only as a gift from God. In the New Testament, God commands and urges people to repent (Acts 17:30, Rev 3:19), and wills or wishes that everyone might repent (2 Pet 3:9), and provides for “godly sorrow” to cause “repentance into salvation” (2 Cor 7:10), but ultimately it is God who grants repentance. The founders of Alcoholics Anonymous understood that there were a lot of alcoholics who wished that they might stop drinking, but could not do it without the gift of sobriety, which had to come from God. The Church leaders in Jerusalem
marvel when God gives “repentance into life” to non-Jews (Acts 11:18). Paul explains how servants of the Lord must hope that God will give their opponents “repentance into the acknowledging of the truth” (2 Tim 2:25). Sometimes the word “repentance” is used to mean a simple change of mind or attitude, as in Jesus’ parable about the disobedient son who “repented” (Matt 21:29), but in the cases we’re talking about it means a complete change in one’s understanding of who God is, and who and what I am. If I know, in my heart, that under sufficient temptation I may commit adultery and lie to hide it, cheat someone out of their money if it’s the easy thing to do, or take a job making weapons to kill the innocent or advertising to seduce the gullible, then I may loathe myself and wish to repent, and I may try to repent, but I haven’t yet repented in the way Christ is talking about. I remain, in Paul’s words, a slave of sin, and must still “die” to sin in order to be freed from it (Rom 6:16 ff).
Oswald Chambers writes about this: “Repentance does not bring a sense of sin, but a sense of unutterable unworthiness. When I repent, I realize that I am utterly helpless. I know all through me that I am not worthy even to bear His shoes. Have I repented like that? Or is there a lingering suggestion of standing up for myself? The reason God cannot come into my life is because I am not through into repentance” (My Utmost for His Highest, entry for August 22). But once one has let oneself be as nothing in God’s hand, one “dies” to what one was before, and one’s understanding of who and what one is undergoes metamorphosis. One’s character also changes.
A second point about the original Greek language: “repentance” is described as repentance into something, and it’s always something wonderful: “repentance into life” (Acts 11:18), “repentance into God” (Acts 21-20), “repentance into the acknowledging of the truth” (2 Tim 2:25), or “repentance into salvation” (2 Cor 7:10): all these use eis, the Greek word that means “into.” Here in Luke 24:47, the resurrected Jesus tells the disciples that they must proclaim “repentance into the putting away of sins.”
A third point: most translations speak of “the forgiveness of sins,” but the Greek word áphesis means “putting away.” There’s a big difference. I may forgive a betrayal but remember it, and if you were the betrayer, you may always worry that if you provoke me, I’ll shame you again about it. I have that power because your sin still sticks to you. God will not do that. Once you are washed clean of sin in God’s eyes, your past sins no longer stick to you. They are put away. God wants you to feel the difference.
There’s a fourth and final point about these instructions Jesus gave before disappearing: first was proclaim repentance. Second was repentance into some glorious new state, and third was that this new state was the putting away of our sins, Fourth is that this proclamation is to be in the name of Jesus. This is important! A psychotherapist or hypnotist might persuade us that we can detach from past sins and forgive ourselves for them, but without really pulling the sins out by the root, as we might do if we’d died to them and then risen from the dead. One who died for us and rose from the dead, in whom we live and who lives in us, has this power. One who did not, no matter how saintly and well-wishing, cannot have this power.
“The bedrock of Christianity is repentance,” wrote Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest, entry for December 7). It’s clear from Luke 24:47 that Jesus meant it to be. But do we need repentance? Paul thought so; he told the Athenians that God “now… commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). 2 Peter 3:9 describes the Lord as “not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” The repentance that comes from God allows us to live in that part of us that enjoys eternal life, anchored in the imperishable even though we all must one day lay this perishable flesh down. But non-repentance keeps our center in the mortal part which, attached to perishable things, dies with them. “Unless you repent,” Jesus told a crowd horrified by unexpected deaths, “you will all perish as they did” (Luke 13:3, 5).
May God grant repentance to each of us, so that, abiding in eternal life, we may be at peace with whatever death comes to our mortal part. This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
John Jeremiah Edminster (M. Div., Earlham School of Religion, 2019) lives in Richmond, Indiana with his wife Elizabeth, where they host a midweek Christ-centered Quaker meeting for worship in their home. He pastors a small congregation in a residence for low-income seniors and persons with disabilities, and contributes to the building of the Quaker Bible Index (esr.earlham.edu/qbi/).
1 504 words. Biblical quotations, except where modified by the preposition “into,” are from the New Revised Standard Version. Quotations from Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, are copyright 1935 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc. Copyright renewed1963 by Oswald Chambers Publications Association, Ltd.