Preach Repentance Urgently as an Indispensable Part of the Gospel
David W Palmer
(Luke 24:34 NKJV) “The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!”
The news of Jesus’s resurrection never gets old. It is the basis of the gospel, and can be fresh manna from heaven every time we hear it. It means that our sin is gone, our sicknesses healed, our mind renewed (potentially), our fears allayed, and our relationship with God restored. Wow! “Jesus is alive” means I am alive in him, raised up with him, and sitting together in him at God’s right hand. It also means that you and I have been endorsed to speak the living Word of God in Jesus’s name, as if it is our own; this is the Blessing.
We now have the Holy Spirit in us, and with us; we can live in complete holiness through his power. And we have the awesome privilege of being involved in God’s creative process. Our part is in Jesus—the resurrected, anointed, living Word of God. We get to articulate on earth the words Jesus crafts, which describe perfectly what Father wants. And then, when our faith in them is tested and proven true, the Holy Spirit enacts them with his infinite power.
Wow! Our privilege in Christ is so so amazing!
“Thank you Jesus for dying in our place—for us and as us—and then using your own precious, innocent blood to balance the scales of justice in our favor. And you rose from the dead to prove the victory of your mission to free us. Praise the Lord forevermore.”
We have seen Jesus’s commission to his graduating class in Matthew and Mark. Now we look at the commission as recorded by Luke:
(Luke 24:46–48 NKJV) Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, {47} and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. {48} And you are witnesses of these things.”
Matthew says to teach all nations, Mark says to preach the gospel everywhere to everyone, and now we see that Luke records Jesus as saying that we should preach “repentance and remission (freedom, pardon, forgiveness) of sins” to all nations.
As we study the New Testament, we see that “repent” was the first recorded word preached by John the Baptist and Jesus:
(Matthew 3:2 NKJV) and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
(Matthew 4:17 NKJV) From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
When Jesus sent his apprentices out on their first supervised mission to preach under his direct command, we see that they also preached that everyone should repent:
(Mark 6:12 NKJV) So they went out and preached that people should repent.
Our repentance must be extremely important to God for it to be mentioned first like this in so many places, and by so many witnesses.
After graduating from Jesus’s apprenticeship program, receiving his commission, and being filled with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, Peter’s first two sermons also urged his listeners to repent:
(Acts 2:38 NKJV) Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
(Acts 3:19 NKJV) “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”
Jesus went as far as to say that if his listeners didn’t repent, they would perish:
(Luke 13:3 NKJV) “I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.
Preach Repentance Urgently as an Indispensable Part of the Gospel
David W Palmer
(Luke 24:34 NKJV) “The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!”
The news of Jesus’s resurrection never gets old. It is the basis of the gospel, and can be fresh manna from heaven every time we hear it. It means that our sin is gone, our sicknesses healed, our mind renewed (potentially), our fears allayed, and our
