Repentance in Luke (A Weird Definition)

If I were to walk down the street, and see a person with a sign that says REPENT, I would think primarily about my relationship with God. The man would be telling me that I need to get right with God. Usually, the message would be coupled with some impending judgment of God. God is mad about all the evil things I have done. I need to be sorry and get right with him. He would include a message about believing in what he would call the Gospel. It would actually be one, important facet of the Gospel, the death of Jesus and the work it does in your life if you believe.

Luke, however, defines repentance radically differently in his Gospel. He does this through the character John the Baptist. This guy was a man that walked in the wilderness and ate locusts. He was a freak. He was that guy with a sign on the street. The people that were not in his closest circle would have been very annoyed by him. John the Baptist comes and tells people to be baptized and to repent.

So the scene is set. We have the man screaming, “REPENT!” in the wilderness. The way he defines repentance, however, is surprising. He tells people to “produce fruit that proves your repentance” (3:6). The word “produce” is the same word that is often translated “do.” If we were to give a super literal translation, it could say, “do stuff worthy of repentance.”

This is kind of important because Luke repeats the same word, “do” throughout the rest of the section. The crowds come and ask him, “What should we do?” After him telling the crowds to do repentance stuff, they ask him, "what should we do?" He has the opportunity to define repentance and he does it in a surprising way. He says “The person who has two tunics must share with the person who has none…” (10-11). The reason this is surprising is that it has less to do with our relationship with God than it has to do with our relationship with other people. Luke is saying, “Do you want to repent? Give your stuff to people that don’t have enough.” This continues with the tax collectors and the soldiers asking the same question, “What should we do?” Every response has to do with our relationships with other human beings.

Luke, then, defines repentance “fruit” as dealing with others with justice and mercy. This makes sense, because the work of the Christ that Luke is introducing in this narrative is going to be one that extends mercy, justice, forgiveness of sins, and the reversing of the damaging effects of the fall.

Repent, then, means something much more than believing right things about the Gospel. It means something much more than behaving ourselves so that God is not mad at us. Repentance, according to Luke, is joining with the Christ in his work of bringing of redemption to the entire world. The world is broken. God is fixing it. We have the opportunity and responsibility to participate with God in the work of redemption. This is how the people were to prepare for the coming of Christ. This is how we must continue in his work.