MATTHEW 3:1-17
WHEN MY WIFE AND I lived in Hyde Park in Chicago, near the University of Chicago, a chemistry professor was part of our congregation. Every Sunday night he and his wife would invite college students and other young adults over for a nice informal dinner. When you walked through their front door there was a small, decorative sign that had one simple word written in large block letters: REPENT.
I have often thought about that sign, and I have been tempted from time to time to duplicate it, or maybe even expand upon it, in our home—perhaps to have in the entrance way, “REPENT,” and then in the living room “FROM THE WRATH TO COME,” and finally in the dining room, “I REALLY MEAN IT!” But I have not yet gained the courage to do so, for such a message is so at odds with our culture. I can’t think of a word—other than perhaps wrath — that has such a negative connotation. And I can’t think of a word, of all the ones we find often in our Bibles, that is so seldom found on our lips. Maybe this quiet and quirky chemistry professor, with his Ivy League education and his years of scientific study, was like most accomplished scientists, a bit mad. Or maybe we’re the ones who are off our rockers because we are afraid of what the world might think of us. We are afraid that if we were to have on our doorposts, walls, or lips the message of John the Baptist the world might call us crazy.
However, this message of repentance—turning from self and sin to God and grace—is what the world needs. And this is why each time the gospel is preached by the apostles (and here I’m thinking specifically of the sermons we find in Acts), the one application made in every message is “repent” (e.g., Acts 2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 8:22; 17:30; 26:20; cp. 11:18; 20:21). From Peter’s message to the Jews in Jerusalem to Paul’s before the Greeks in Athens, the message is the same: God “commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30).
This is the message the world needs, but it is also the message the Ecclesia needs. This is why we find this theme of repentance in all the letters of the New Testament. Christians who have repented must continue to live lives of repentance (e.g., 2 Corinthians 7:9, 10; 12:21; 2 Peter 3:9). Do you remember the seven letters to the seven Ecclesias in Revelation 2, 3? Each Ecclesia gets a unique message dealing with its specific issue, yet one message that is given to five of the seven is “repent” (2:5, 16, 21, 22; 3:3, 19). So, what John the Baptist says in verse 8, “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance,” and in verse 11, “I baptize you with water for repentance,” and verse 2, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” is a relevant message for the world and for the Ecclesia today.
So that’s what we will now study. With our Bibles open again to the third chapter of this great Gospel of Matthew we will talk about repentance. First, we'll explore our need for it. Isn’t it amazing that all these people came out to the desert to be washed in a dirty river by a man dressed in camel hair? If I dressed in my cleanest suit and handed out free vacation passes to Palm Springs where folks could take a nice bath in their own hotel room Jacuzzi, if only they would repent, I would be glad to get one taker. So, first our need: why should we repent? Second, the means: how should we repent?
Why Repent?
Why should we repent? Our text gives us two reasons. First, we should repent because God’s heavenly kingdom is about to arrive (“is at hand”). Look at verses 1-4.
In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’”
Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. We are reminded here, by his rigorist location, wardrobe, and diet, as well as by his rigorist message (“repent”), that John is cut from the same cloth (literally) as the Old Testament prophets, most notably Elijah (see 11:14; cp. 2 Kings 1:8; Malachi 4:5). I don’t know about you, but I like the prophets. I mean I truly enjoy reading them. But I'm not sure how comfortable I’d feel having them over for a cup of tea. Can you imagine Ezekiel, Hosea, and John coming in your living room, and you reaching across to them, offering them a nice cup of tea (for John with a touch of wild honey), asking, “Can I get you anything else?” John is a prophet, and as such he doesn’t fit (he’s not supposed to fit) perfectly into our living rooms or into our world.
But John is more than a prophet. He is, in Jesus’ own estimation, the greatest man to live under the old covenant. In 11:11 Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.” Part of John’s greatness comes from his humility. In 3:14, when Jesus comes to him for baptism, John says, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me”. In 3:11 when John speaks of Jesus he declares not only that Jesus is “mightier” than he, but that he (John) is not even “worthy to carry” Jesus’ dirty sandals. A slave would wash and carry a master’s sandals, John says in effect, “His sandals are too holy for my dirty hands.” Jeremiah called himself a slave of the Lord (Jeremiah 7:25; 29:19). John says in essence, “I’m not even good enough to be Jesus’ slave.” What humility—humility of attitude and speech, but also of action! Look at his lifestyle. Think of the sacrifices he had to make to live where and how he did. He modeled in the extreme his message of repentance—turning from self to the will of God. What sacrifice! What submission! What surrender! What great humility!
Now, I don’t think that God calls us to emulate John exactly, as the Deserters in the early church did or as some Franciscans and other monastic orders still do today. Asceticism for asceticism’s sake is not found in the Bible. In fact, it is rebuked (see Colossians 2:23).
John had a unique role. He was to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah, to be the “voice... crying in the wilderness,” preparing the way for Jesus (3:3). But with that said, he does, nevertheless, offer a corrective to our materialism, consumerism, and certainly our selfishness. Jesus said that if we want to follow him we must deny ourselves. No one better embodied such self-denial than John.
Some of us have been forced by the bad economy to give up certain luxuries. Maybe you can’t eat out as often as you used to or can’t afford the vacation you wanted to take or you’ve had to put off getting the Ferrari winterized. I don’t know what you’ve had to sacrifice. But such forcible reductions of certain luxuries may perhaps be God’s corrective providence, his spiritual surgery of sorts, removing what you don’t need or what is a hindrance to your spiritual growth. But why do we always wait for such providences? Why not do some corrective cutting out and cutting off of our own? Why wait for the economy to sour before you let the Spirit lead you into the desert of dependence on God and his provision? John chose wilderness living because he chose absolute reliance upon the Father in Heaven. In lesser but similar ways we must choose to do the same.
But enough said about the person of John. It is his message that provides us the first reason why we should repent. We should repent because “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (v. 2). We should repent, in other words, because the kingdom that has long been anticipated is about to arrive.
So too, the King! The first reason to repent is because the kingdom is at hand; the second reason (tied right to it) is because the King of that kingdom is also at hand. This is the focus of verses 13-17 (and also of verses 11, 12, where John first speaks of Jesus), and it is why I have included them here. Instead of dividing verses 1-12 and verses 13-17 as most commentators do, I put them together because I think they give a fuller picture of our need for repentance, a picture quite similar to Isaiah’s vision in Isaiah 6:1-5. What I mean is, to say the kingdom is at hand is like seeing the six winged seraphim who with two wings cover their feet and with two cover their faces and hearing them call to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” However, to say the King of the kingdom is at hand is to see, as Isaiah did, “the Lord sitting upon a throne.” To see just the kingdom, you would say, “Woe is me.” But to see the King of the kingdom, you would say, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips.”
Look with me at 3:13-17. I want you to see Jesus’ absolute holy-holy-holy-holiness, or as Jesus will phrase it, “righteousness” (v. 15). All the Gospels record the baptism of Jesus (for its importance to the early Ecclesia, see Acts 1:21,22), but only Matthew has the conversation recorded in verses 13-15. I’ll summarize it. Jesus comes to John for baptism (v. 13). John says in essence (v. 14), “No way. If one of us is to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins, it’s me!” How does Jesus respond to that? Does he say, “John, what are you talking about? I’m the sinful one. You are the great prophet. You have lived the holiest life in the history of the world.” No. Jesus says, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (v. 15).
What is going on here? A baptism of repentance (vv. 1-6) we can understand. But what’s this baptism of righteousness? In the Bible the word “righteousness” is used two different ways, and both are in use here. “Righteousness” can refer to an exterior and an interior quality of life. Exterior righteousness refers to how one behaves in society; interior righteousness refers to how one thinks and believes. One can have the former without the latter, but the latter has its natural outflow in the former. Consider, for example, the statement that Job was a righteous man. We would say, “So-and-so is a good man or a godly man." In God’s sight and our sight, he lives rightly. Now, it is one thing to say “Job is righteous” in this way, and another to say “Jesus is righteous.” This is because we know, even from this text as well as many others, about Jesus’ impeccable character (e.g., Hebrew 4:15; 9:14; 1 Peter 2:2). He was without sin.
Think of it this way: if righteous John the Baptist can and does say of him, “I’m not worthy to touch his sandals,” we know Jesus is very righteous. However, it is not just John’s word that we have. What does Heaven have to say? The Holy Spirit descends like a dove upon our Lord (v. 16), and the Father speaks directly to him: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (v. 17; cp. Colossians 1:10). Jesus has sufficient character- references—the greatest man on earth (John) and the Father and the Spirit.
Beyond being righteous in character, Jesus is also righteous ontologically. The idea here is that Jesus, in his very being (ontology), became our representative, really and truly. This idea moves us beyond the obvious theme of a second exodus in Matthew 1—4 (i.e., just as Israel was brought out of Egypt through the Red Sea and into the desert, so Jesus is brought out of Egypt, baptized in the waters, and led into the desert). Unlike unrighteous Israel, Jesus as “true Israel” does fulfill all righteousness in this three-part act (out of Egypt, through the water, into the desert). However and moreover, through his baptism he takes his unrighteous but repentant people through the new, final, and ultimate exodus—out of the slavery of sin! Put plainly, Jesus was baptized not only for his sake but for ours (cp. Galatians 3:13; 2 Corinthians 5:21). I’ll explain.
When the voice of God says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (3:17), what we have is a fusion of two key Old Testament texts—Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 42:1. Psalm 2 is about the Son, the Davidic King of God’s eternal kingdom. Isaiah 42 is about the Suffering Servant who would be stricken for our transgressions and would make his soul an offering for sin, even though “he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth” (see Isaiah 53:4-9). Isaiah 53:11 is crucial here as it is in the passion narratives. In that verse the Father says of the Servant, “Out of anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant [Jesus], make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.” In sum, you might think of John the Baptist’s baptism of Jesus in this way: John has moved God’s people away from Jerusalem’s temple to grant the forgiveness of sins in Jesus!
Thus, ontologically-speaking, when we go down into the waters of baptism, it is a symbol of the cleansing of our sins — we are made clean in the sight of God. Jesus, the Son and the Servant, was baptized to “fulfill all righteousness”—to carry out God’s plan for sin. And if and when you and I understand that, we then should understand there is only one response to such a King and such a kingdom— repentance. As we look at Jesus’ holiness and yet his humility, our posture should be humility and holiness or what could be called (since we are naturally neither humble nor holy) repentance.
How to Repent?
That is why we should repent. But the next question is, how? You might say, “Okay, I see now the King and his kingdom, and I want to repent, but l don’t know where to begin.” Thankfully, as we look at what those who came to John did, we have a universal model for us. We center now on the center of this text (verses 5—12) where I’ve discovered what I’ll call the three steps of repentance.
Confess Our Sins
The first two steps we see modeled in verses 5, 6. “Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” Baptism and the confession of sins are the first two steps. While those steps are usually found together in the New Testament, I’ll separate them now for the sake of clarity. First, we’ll focus on the confession of sin.
Note that a corporate renewal is occurring here. Verse 5 doesn’t say, “And Tom and Tina and Bill and Betty—this individual and that individual—went out to see John,” but rather, “Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him.” Now, while we will see that most of Israel will not listen to the voice from Heaven about Jesus, they will, at least now, heed the voice of the one calling in the wilderness. They waited 400 years to hear from God. There had been no prophetic voice until John. So like Israel of old, they journey to the wilderness to listen and obey. This renewal of repentance or mass baptism is of a corporate nature. Yet, as it is with any baptism then and now, it is also individual, and certainly personal. The text tells us they didn’t confess the sins of others but “their sins” (v. 6). Each person personally confessed his or her sins.
In Psalm 32:5 David says to God, “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” In Proverbs 28:13 Solomon says, “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” In 1 John 1:8, 9 we read, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Jesus, whom John the Baptist calls “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), will take away our sins if we confess them to him.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son is an excellent illustration of this. The son asks his rich and generous father for his inheritance early. He takes the money and wastes it on “reckless living” (Luke 15:13), devouring the father’s "property with prostitutes” (Luke 15:30). He comes to the end of his money quickly and the beginning of his senses eventually. “What am I doing with my life?” he says as he now finds himself not only feeding pigs for a living (not the most kosher occupation for a good Jewish boy) but longing for the same food. An idea comes into his head. “I know,” he says in essence, “I'll return to Dad, and I’ll confess my sins.”
You know the story. On the journey home he rehearses his long confession (Luke 15:18, 19). Yet when he arrives he can only get out the first part of what he rehearsed: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son" (Luke 15:21). He can only get this out because his father is smothering him with compassion and interrupting him with a command to celebrate. The father beckons his servants, “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:22-24).
When I came to Christ as a nineteen-year-old, I came home from work, went down into my basement apartment, fell upon my knees, and confessed my sins. “Lord,” I said, “I know you are real. I have never doubted your existence. I have never doubted. But I have never asked you to forgive me. Will you please forgive me? Clean me up on the inside, for I am full of lust and pride.” Have you ever prayed like that? Have you prayed the sinner’s prayer? I’ve prayed it—once for my salvation and a thousand times for my perseverance in the faith. Stop reading and pray it now!
Be Baptized
The first step of repentance is confession. The second step, which is directly and inseparably connected to it, is baptism.
Let me start by saying that the water baptism of Jesus was a onetime event. It was a unique baptism in the history of salvation. So also was the baptism by John the Baptist. Yet one sure way both baptisms relate to Christian baptism is the use of water (vv. 6,11, 16). The washing of water is symbolic, of course, of the washing away of our sins, which we have just confessed. Like the leprous Naaman, the commander of the Syrian army, who in 2 Kings 5:13, 14 followed Elisha’s instructions and “went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan... and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean,” so too the outward washing of water reminds us of the inward washing of the soul, God's cleansing us of our sins (see Acts 22:16). But confession and water baptism without repentance is like a lamp without oil. You might be able to light the wick once, but the flame won't last long.
It is important to understand that the early Ecclesia saw no disconnect, as we so often do, with water baptism and the forgiveness of sins. In this same scene in Mark’s Gospel, Mark adds, “John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (1:4; cp. 16:16), and the Apostle Peter, in a very clear reference to water baptism, speaks of “baptism, which... now saves you” (1 Peter 3:21). The idea here is that faith/repentance/baptism/forgiveness can be thought of as one continuous act of God’s saving grace.
The Fruit of Repentance
Water baptism is important. Baptism should lead to the final step of genuine repentance—fruit.
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.” (vv. 7, 8)
Here John is talking about the necessity of fruit, what Paul will term the fruit of the Spirit.
Step One: The Spirit convicts us of our sins, which we must confess.
Step Two: We are baptized in the Spirit.
Step Three: The Spirit abides in us so that we bear fruit.
Our confession and conversion leads to the fruits of repentance—“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22, 23a).
We think presumptuously, If I just half-heartedly did the first step of repentance, if I once in my life, maybe at some summer camp or Billy Graham Crusade, confessed my sins, then think I'm okay. I'm going to Heaven, even if I live like hell. I am deluded.
Some religious leaders thought presumptuously. They thought they could live like hell because their father, Abraham, sat at the gates of Gehenna turning “back any Israelite who might by chance have been consigned to its terrors.”' They believed that Abraham, by his goodness and favor with God, built up a “treasury of merit” for all his blood descendants, the Jews. So if you couldn’t merit Heaven on your own, don’t worry—good old Abe has enough merit for you to inherit eternal life. His goodness will get you in (cp. John 8:33).
Look at what John has to say to such scoundrels. After he calls them a “brood of vipers” in verse 7 (cp. Jesus’ use of this phrase in 12:34 and 23:33)— not the offspring of a saint but a snake — he next states in verse 9 that the dead stones have a better chance of being God’s children than they do. John says to them there, “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.” Then he returns to the fruit analogy in verse 10: “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
If you see fruit on a tree, you know the tree is alive; if you see good fruit, you know it is alive and well. Repentant people, who have truly heard and understood the gospel, bear fruit (13:23; cp. 21:43); that is, they love God and love others and show this love by how they live (see Luke 3:10-14; Acts 26:20). And in so doing and not doing, such people prove (cp. John 15:8) to be Jesus’ disciples; they prove that the Holy Spirit Word resides within. They prove that they have touched their feet upon the third step—Spirit-wrought conviction and confession, Spirit baptism, and spiritual fruit.
Read and Heed the Sign
Above, around, and within us, whether we acknowledge it or not, God has placed his sign. It reads “REPENT.” Creation points to this sign; it is as if it hangs around the sun’s head and is daily carried to us upon its beams. Our own consciences point to this sign; it is as if it hangs around our heads, and each time we sin, it pricks us in the side. And then, of course, we have the Word of God, which teaches us specifically about repentance—why and how we should repent.
I trust that God’s Word has done its work on you, helping you to understand afresh why you and I should repent. We should repent because we are in the presence of a holy King—Jesus, who has fulfilled all righteousness—and so we say, “Woe is me! My lips are unclean. My heart is unclean. My hands are unclean!” The kingdom of God is at hand, and so my hands need some spiritual scrubbing—they need to get cleaned up. I also trust that God’s Word has helped you better understand how to repent, how to walk Jacob’s ladder up to God—confessing your sins, being baptized in water but also by the Word, and producing fruit by living a life of repentance.
Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is very much still at hand.
(R. Kent Hughes. and Douglas Sean O'Donnell., 2013)