Page 447 … to preach the Gospel
You then cite Luke 24:47 to claim that “Jesus COMMANDED us to preach the gospel of repentance of sin … And that repentance and release from bondage of sins should be preached in his name among all nations.”
At the risk of sounding fully despondent, I sigh-out-loud once again, for once again I have already explained Biblical “repentance” to you in this very thread on a number of occasions – and once again you have quite obviously ignored those offers of clarity – and yet I offer that same clarity to you once again here nonetheless …
First of all, Jesus did not command us to preach the “gospel of repentance of sin” in the way you are implying. That was Paul who did so, my dear – Paul, a man who never once heard Jesus teach, a man who never once even saw Jesus in the flesh, a man who obviously had a very different belief system than Jesus about God (& about salvation, & about even Jesus himself), and a man who preached a completely different “gospel” than the one Jesus shared …
Jesus’ Gospel was indeed based upon “repentance”, and yet not the verbal, self-critical, original-& ever-sinning repentance that you & Paul espouse. Rather, Jesus preached metanoia – a “repentance” that meant “a complete reorientation of mind that led to a complete change in behavior”; a radical shift from selfishness to selflessness; a radical shift from hoarding to giving; a radical shift from judging others to loving them; a radical shift from condemning others to actively caring for them …
And as such, the “Gospel” of Christ – the Good News that we are thus to share with “all the nations” – is his Gospel – Jesus’ Gospel; a Gospel that made it very clear A) that Heaven was already “at hand” – right here & right now; in every moment of our lives (see Matthew 10:7 + Luke 17:20-21) … and B) that all that was required to enter this particular Kingdom of Heaven was for us to “repent” – namely, to make our lives about giving to others as opposed to about obtaining for ourselves; to make our lives about caring for others instead of judging them or attacking them or criticizing them or condemning them (see Matthew 24:12-14).
Amen to that!
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