Warning: the following will mess you up. Allow Holy
Spirit to lead and guide you into all the truth concerning ‘repentance’. This is
critical to The Message being the Gospel
of Grace!
"The guilt and shame that is always associated with repentance causes
this great gift to be, almost universally, thought of in a negative light and
resisted rather than embraced as it should be and will be when seen correctly.
" (Clark Whitten) Pure Grace - page 98).
“Repentance is
the most mis-translated word in the New Testament" (Broudus). It means
to change one's mind in light of new truthful information. This is the process
by which Believers have our minds transformed. When the truth of the finished
work of Christ challenges religious mindsets, repentance allows one to embrace
the new and discard the old.
By this process we grow up into the fullness of
Christ. The mixture gospel taught by the vast majority of evangelicals reduces
the glorious gift of repentance to a tool of behavior modification. Truth
embraced will always produce freedom and correct Jesus-like thinking! The
truth is--Believers are the righteousness of God (In Christ) or we are not
righteous at all. Jesus' work was
finished completely or not finished at all!” (Whitten)
“Consider the word metanoia, consisting of two
components, Meta, together with, and nous, mind, suggesting a radical mind
shift. This word has been translated regularly as “repentance,” which is an old
English word borrowed from the Latin, which means penance. Then they added the
“re” to get even more mileage out of sin consciousness. Re-penance. This gross
deception led to the perverted doctrines of indulgences, where naive, ignorant
people were led to believe that they needed to purchase favor from an angry
god. Most cathedrals as well as many ministries were funded with this guilt
money.
English translations do little to help us understand
what repentance truly is. Until Jerome’s Latin Vulgate translation, the word
metanoia was commonly used. For instance, Tertullian wrote in 198
A.D., “In Greek, metanoia is not a confession of sins but a change of mind.”
But despite this the Latin fathers begin to translate the word as “do penance” following the
Roman Catholic teaching on doing penance in order to win (or curry) God’s
favor. In 1430, Lorenzo Valla, a Catholic theologian, began a critical
study of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate and Valla pointed out many mistakes that Jerome
had made.
Sadly, the “Vulgate-Only” crowd of Valla’s day forced
him to renounce many of the changes that he noted needed changing in the
Vulgate including the poor translation of metanoia. The business of religion desperately needs paying and returning
customers. Jesus was crucified for this reason; the entire system of keeping
people dependent on their hierarchy was challenged and condemned by him.
Isaiah 55:8-11 gives
meaning to metanoia: “your thoughts were distanced from God’s thoughts as
the heavens are higher than the earth, but just like the rain and the snow
would cancel that distance and saturate the soil to awaken its seed, so shall
my word be that proceeds from my mouth.”
The Greek preposition ‘Meta’, (meaning) ‘together with’,
implies another influence. This is where
the gospel becomes so powerful since it appeals to our conscience to reason
together with our original design ... the authentic thought; the mind of God is
realized again. The distance caused by Adam’s fall, compared to the distance
between heaven and earth, is cancelled in the incarnation.”
Following is the bottom Line of what is so incredible about
authentic and pure change of mind and life direction (What we have been duped by
religion to mistakenly refer to as “repentance” or “do penance”).
Metanoia suggests a co-knowing with God! It is an intertwining
of thought; it is to agree with God about me.
Your belief in God does not define him;
his faith in what he knows to be true about you defines you. In Mark 11:22,
Jesus says, “Have the faith of God.” Unfortunately, most translations say,
“Have faith in God.” That is a difference. God’s belief in you gives substance
to your faith. Jesus is what God believes about you.
Toit, Francois Du (2012-07-02). Mirror Bible (Kindle
Locations 362-368). Mirror Word Publishing, Kindle Edition.
Enjoy agreeing What God thinks and declares about you!
Ron Ross
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