A Journey Through the Bible: Mark 6

Mark 6:12—“So they went out and preached that people should repent.” Jesus sent His apostles out two by two to gain some experience. I find it interesting that their message wasn’t the love and/or grace of God, but “repent.” I suspect they probably mentioned God’s mercy, but there is much more to the plan of salvation than that. People need to understand that God’s blessings—including salvation—are conditional, and they always have been. Read Leviticus 26 for just one example among the hundreds that could be brought forth. “Repent” is not as pleasing a message as “love,” which is why a lot of preachers preach much of the latter and not much of the former. But, folks, Jesus wasn’t crucified because He preached “love;” He was killed because He told people what they had to do to be right with God and they didn’t like it. Nobody likes to be told to “repent.” The very concept of “repentance” implies that we are doing something wrong and must change, and if we are doing what we want to do, we don’t want to change. It is much easier—or at least, more palatable for us—to shut the messenger up than it is to reform our lives to put them in harmony with the strict teachings of the Bible. But, after teaching God’s part in the scheme of redemption—His love and grace—we must teach man his responsibilities and duties, which can be summed up in the word “repentance.” The word “repentance” is a translation of the Greek word metanoia, which literally means “change of mind.” That “change of mind” implicitly requires a reformation of life; one doesn’t truly change their mind unless there is a concomitant change of life. But again, that’s the message that gets preachers in trouble—convicting sinners of sin which unreservedly means making amendments to one’s behavior. And it was that message Jesus sent His apostles out to preach.

It is also the message Jesus preached. Mark’s first recording of Jesus preaching has the Master saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Indeed, the Bible never once records Jesus using the word “grace.”