John 3:16 is often referred to as the “Gospel in a nutshell.” Do a Google search on the words “Gospel in a nutshell” and you will get over 11 million matches. Even many non-Christians know those 25 words, and it probably won’t surprise you to learn that John 3:16 is the single most popularly-chosen verse of the entire Bible when young people are confirmed in the Lutheran Church. You know John 3:16 like the back of your hand.
Since many of us first learned those words in the King James Version, I’m going to say the King James Version right now, and I’d like to invite you to say them – or at least think them – along with me. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” That’s it – the “Gospel in a nutshell.” Those 25 words say it all.
But at the risk of going against everything you have ever heard or believed, I am going to suggest that Scripture gives us an equally powerful but much shorter “Gospel in a nutshell,” one that’s found not in the third chapter of John but rather in today’s Gospel lesson from Mark chapter 1. It includes not 25 words, but just six words of Jesus: “Repent and believe in the gospel.”
“Repent and believe in the gospel.” Those words sound so simple, don’t they? But they’re not nearly as simple as they seem. We’ve been looking at the subject of sin and confession and repentance in the Sunday morning Bible Class for these past couple of weeks, and we begin with the understanding that the world doesn’t like this whole topic. The world doesn’t want to talk about sin and confession and repentance. For many in our world and in our society, those words are basically meaningless. Repent is a word that seldom, if ever, passes the lips of most people. It is a word that seldom, if ever, is on their minds. In fact, I’d like to offer a challenge to each of you this morning. For the next seven days – from the time you leave Church today until you return for Church next Sunday morning – keep track of the number of times you hear someone use the word repent in a normal everyday conversation. I suspect you already know what your answer will be. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Outside of the Church – and sadly enough, even in far too many churches today – repent is a word that just doesn’t get said. You don’t hear it, and unless you are reading your Bible you probably won’t see it in print, either.
And yet, we are gathered here this morning to hear Jesus tell us to repent. Repent is derived from a Greek word that has two basic meanings. The first meaning is this: “to change one’s mind.” And this is the second and obviously related meaning: “to feel remorse.” You change your mind about your behavior because you feel remorse about what you’ve done. Repent also conveys the sense of making a complete turnaround, of stopping dead in your tracks and making a U-turn to change and reverse your behavior, to change your direction from the path of sin to the path of not sinning.
A little boy hits his sister and makes her cry. The parents tell the boy that is was wrong to hit his sister and he must now apologize to her, telling her that he is sorry. The boy looks at his sister and says, “I’m sorry I hit you.” Words of repentance, right? But is this boy truly repentant? Is he really sorry that he hit his sister, or is he really just sorry that he got caught and he doesn’t want to be punished? More importantly, is he so sorry about hitting her that he will never hit her again? Has he made a 180-degree U-turn from the behavior that led him to hit the sister – or will he hit her again the next time he gets mad at her?
As a pastor, as a parent and as a long-time-ago young boy who probably got in trouble any number of times for hitting my own sister, I think you know the answer to that question. That poor little girl is going to get hit again. The brother will be forced to say that he’s sorry once again. He may otherwise be the nicest little boy on earth, but sometimes he does what he shouldn’t do and hits his sister. That’s what kids do. That’s what we all do. That, my friends, is sin.
And that is why people don’t like the word repent. When you tell someone to repent, you are making a value judgment on something they have done. You are calling that person a sinner. And we don’t like that. Even when we know that we have sinned, we don’t want someone else to know it and often we don’t want to admit it even to ourselves. If we repent of something, then we are admitting that our behavior has been wrong, has been hurtful, has been sinful. It has violated one or more of God’s Commandments. We want to think of ourselves as basically good people, and we can’t think of ourselves as good people if we admit that we do bad things.
Even if we do admit our sins, repenting means that we will make that 180-degree U-turn and not do that sin again. But even though we know that we should make that U-turn – and even when we honestly try – deep down we also know that we’ll probably make another U-turn so that we’re headed right back to those same old sins. We will be sorry – we will be repentant – but we’ll still do it. We sinned yesterday, we sinned this morning, we will sin this afternoon and again tomorrow and every day of our lives. We continue to do things that anger our God.
We continue to do those things because of a uniquely Christian concept known as original sin, a concept that the world and society really don’t want to accept or admit. Even non-Christians, even those who won’t use the word sin, admit that we all do bad things. But the idea that the guilt of Adam’s sin is imputed to us and that our human nature represents a total corruption of body and soul – that is a deal-breaker as far as many people are concerned. The idea that we are sinners not just in actions but also in the very essence of our bodies and souls is something that is just too hard to accept unless you have faith. Unless you believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
We joined together at the beginning of today’s service to confess our sins. These are the words we said: “Almighty God, have mercy upon us, forgive us our sins, and lead us to everlasting life.” Luther wrote that to repent “means to feel the wrath of God in earnest because of one’s sin, so that the sinner experiences anguish of heart and is filled with a painful longing for the salvation and the mercy of God.” Words like everlasting life and salvation and mercy of God all move our focus from Law to Gospel. From repenting – to believing in the Gospel. Just as Jesus says in today’s Gospel lesson.
But if you think repenting is hard for people who don’t want to repent, the fact of the matter that believing in the Gospel is even harder. In fact, humanly speaking, it is flat-out impossible. Our rational minds tell us that things like a virgin birth and miracles of healing and rising from the dead just can’t happen. Our rational minds tell us that no one can be true God and true man. Our rational minds tell us that even if we do accept the concept of sin – actual sins and original sin – the death of one man 2,000 years ago means absolutely nothing to us. Our rational minds tell us that there are many paths to “a god,” and that we should not try to impose our beliefs on someone else. Our rational minds tell us to just believe – or don’t believe – whatever we want to believe or not believe.
When Jesus first told us to believe, a better translation of the specific word He used is trust. Change your mind, change your direction, and trust in the Gospel. But once again, you can’t trust something unless you believe it. And if you can’t believe it?
That’s when we put it in God’s hands. In John chapter 6, Jesus says: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” Luther describes this “work of God” in his explanation to the Third Article of the Apostles Creed, words that many of us learned decades ago in a Confirmation Class: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”
Jesus tells us to believe – to trust – even when He knows full well that we cannot, on our own, believe or trust in Him. Be we are not on our own. As St. Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” When Jesus tells us to “believe in the Gospel,” He knows full well that He will send His Holy Spirit to bring us to that belief. To that trust. To that faith. So no matter what the world tells us, those words of Jesus from our Gospel lesson really aren’t impossible or even difficult at all. “Repent and believe in the gospel,” Jesus says. And by the grace of God, we do.
Soon after the revelations in late 2009 that Tiger Woods had been involved in extramarital sexual affairs with many women over a period of years, leading to the end of his marriage and the virtual collapse of his golf career, Fox News journalist Brit Hume made one of the most remarkable statements I’ve ever heard on a network news broadcast. Hume, speaking on live TV to an audience of millions, was asked how Tiger could recover from all of his troubles. Hume answered that Woods should become a Christian, because Jesus – and not Tiger’s self-professed Buddhist faith – offers forgiveness and redemption.
The response to what Hume said was just about what you might expect in today’s world. Some voices spoke up in support of him. But mostly, the responses were brutal and hateful. Every type of obscenity was hurled at him and at the God that he confessed. He was repeatedly and very publicly mocked. He was accused of being intolerant, of belittling other religions, of being insensitive to the very popular – but very wrong – idea that no single religion is any better than another. Brit Hume became the bad guy because he did nothing more – and nothing less – than express the God-given truth of his Christian faith. What he said was really no different than the words of Jesus from our Gospel lesson: “Repent and believe in the gospel.”
A few minutes ago I suggested that those six words from Mark 1:15 are a shorter but equally true “Gospel in a nutshell” as the longer version we know so very well from John 3:16. In closing, I’d like to suggest yet another and very much shorter “Gospel in a nutshell.” It occurs exactly 966 times in the 27 books of the New Testament, and it consists of just one word: Jesus. For those of us who have been called to faith … for those of us who repent and believe in the Gospel … it is the only word we need to know because it tells us everything we need to know about our salvation, about the eternal life that awaits us and about the God who loves us.
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