The Call To Repentance
THE CALL TO REPENTANCE
LUKE 3:10-20
Why do we sometimes water down the truth to avoid offending others?
Verses 10-14. The call to repentance which was the point and appeal of John’s preaching was no abstract doctrine. Boldly and simply John showed that religion had a form and shape in the conduct of every man, and in each day’s living. Each mode of life has its peculiar temptations. Some are more prone to, and more exposed to, the temptations of the flesh; others to the faults of the spirit. Each personality, each trade or profession, has its own pitfalls. A genuine desire to have done with sin—and repentance is nothing else than this—finds its first expression in the immediate environment, in the first and nearest confrontation with the enemy of good. It is for society to adapt itself to the requirements of the gospel, not for the gospel to adapt itself to society. That is what those who journeyed to the west bank of the Jordan to hear John found.
3:15-20. The response of those who heard the desert preacher was as it has always been. There were those who saw the hand of God, and heard the accents of the Holy Spirit. They questioned, indeed, whether the great event of God’s ultimate revelation might not have come. For them John had a clear and unequivocal word. Christ was another, and Christ was coming, and Christ would, by his very presence, reveal the worthless and the worthy, and separate the evil from the good. But others reacted as men still do. Fearlessly John had rebuked sin in high places. Herod had with him, in illicit union, the ambitious, scheming woman who had been married to Philip (a brother to be distinguished from Philip the tetrarch, who lived quietly in Rome). When Herod was in Rome, Herodias trapped him, and fled with him. She was to ruin his life. Her story is worth reading for its warning. It would have been better had Herod listened and repented.
Note 3:11: the injunction to charity had its place in the fiery prophet’s preaching. There is a world of difference between due severity in the preaching of the gospel, and that bitterness which only engenders hardness of heart. Not all who renounce the world do so with sound motives, and where these are twisted the condemnation of sin becomes an exercise in hostility.