14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
If someone hits our car, we have an insurance policy that will pay the repair bill. We seldom think about the policy document except when the bill to renew it arrives or something bad happens. That is how too many people view the salvation of Jesus Christ. They have a baptism certificate somewhere and a confirmation certificate somewhere else and never think about it until something bad happens and certainly have never lived according to those documents. John the Baptist came preaching repentance. Then Jesus himself, in these verses, did the same thing. He preached that you must repent and believe. Too many people put faith in faith, talking about their faith instead of the King, in whom their faith rests, Jesus Christ.
Faith is not a stand alone event that we can point to as the day we got saved unless something good happened, the change of mind and action that accompanies faith. I got saved in 1989 and I remember the day but the repentance was slow in following. I needed to read the gospel of Mark again. Then I would have seen that faith is hollow without the repentance to follow. Then we can say that, better than saying that we have faith in faith, we have faith in Jesus Christ and what follows is us. We become followers of Jesus Christ.
Dear Lord, thank you for the cross of Jesus Christ and that we can have faith in him and repent of our rebellion. Help us to have faith in Christ, not in faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Brad Boyer
Cape Community Church