Lesson 25 · Unit 5 · Roots of the Gospel
Repent and Believe
The gospel's first call — turn around, and trust.
Open
Twenty minutes past the toll booth, the navigation finally speaks up: "You have left the route. Recalculating." You had sensed it long before that — the road signs were getting less and less familiar, the sun was hanging on the wrong side. But you kept reassuring yourself: drive a little further, maybe there's a way to loop back. Until that voice said out loud what you had not dared to say: this road does not go where you are going.
Life has moments like that too: not one thing done wrong, but the whole direction wrong. The very first announcement the gospel made in this world was spoken to people driving the wrong way — the time is fulfilled, God's Kingdom is at hand, repent and believe the good news. Hold on to the one sentence this lesson most wants to give you: turning around is not a humiliation. For someone on the wrong road, a U-turn is the best news in the world.
Scripture
The first words Jesus said in public, and the first question asked by a crowd cut to the heart at Pentecost — two passages, one doorway. (WEB) Mark 1:14-15 —
14Now after John was taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Good News of God’s Kingdom,
15and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and God’s Kingdom is at hand! Repent, and believe in the Good News.”
36“Let all the house of Israel therefore know certainly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
37Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
38Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
39For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are far off, even as many as the Lord our God will call to himself.”
See
The announcement comes first, then the call
Notice the order in Mark 1:15. Jesus does not begin by shouting "Repent." He begins by announcing "The time is fulfilled, and God's Kingdom is at hand" — good news first, call second. The Kingdom came first, the door opened first, and only then were you invited in. You already know this order from Volume 1: grace comes before demand. Repentance is never how you buy a ticket; it is a response to a door that is already open. Like the father who ran out to meet his son before the boy had finished his confession.
Repentance: not a feeling, a U-turn
The Greek word behind "repent" is metanoia — a change of mind, meaning not a twinge in the chest but a whole person turning around. It is not the same as being sorry: Judas was sorry to the point of despair and never turned back; Peter wept just as bitterly and turned back to his Lord's face. Nor is it a matter of giving yourself a good scolding and calling it even. Repentance has three movements: admitting the direction is wrong, turning around, and walking toward God. At Pentecost, after the crowd was "cut to the heart," what they asked was, "What shall we do?" Real repentance never stops at a feeling; it always has to get on the road.
Faith: not a nod, a handing over
The believing in "believe the good news" is also more than agreeing that a set of facts is accurate. The demons "believe" that God exists — and shudder (James 2:19). The faith the Bible speaks of is like crossing a bridge: you can stand at the near end praising how solidly it is built, but only when you put your weight on it is it faith. To believe in Jesus is to hand over your sin, your future, your whole self to this Jesus whom God has made Lord and Christ. So repentance and faith are really two sides of one movement: the moment you turn away from the old road, you are necessarily turning toward some new direction. Turn from, and turn to him.
One U-turn, a lifelong direction
You may be remembering Volume 1, Lesson 14, "Confession and Repentance." The two lessons are not a repeat: that one was about the daily washing inside the house — confessing each day, being cleansed each day; this one is about the original move — off the road that ran away from God, back to the Father's house. The U-turn only needs to happen once, and every ordinary confession afterward is a correction on that same new heading. If you look back over your own road and cannot say which day you turned, do not panic: where the car is pointed now matters more than dating the corner.
Deeper
Repentance (metanoia)
a whole turning of mind and direction; not the emotion of self-reproach but the act of turning back (Mark 1:15).
Faith
more than acknowledging facts: a personal entrusting, handing yourself over to Christ (John 1:12; James 2:19).
Two sides of one turn
turning from sin and turning to God are a single movement, and Scripture regularly names them together (Acts 20:21).
Grace before the call
the announcement comes before the command; even the repentant heart itself is God's gift (Acts 11:18).
The start and the daily
the turn at the start sets the direction, once for life; daily confession is the cleansing along that same direction (1 John 1:9).
Story
In late-Qing Shanxi there was a Confucian scholar named Xi Zizhi who had failed the imperial examinations. He had worked as a legal pleader, smoked opium for nearly twenty years, and had a violent temper; behind his back the village called him "the Demon." In 1879, missionaries in Taiyuan offered prize money for essays on the gospel, and he picked up his brush for the money — which meant that, for the sake of writing the essay, he read the New Testament seriously for the first time in his life. Somewhere in the writing he discovered that this Jesus had his eye on him.
The first thing he did after believing was change his name: Xi Shengmo, "Conqueror of Demons" — announcing to the whole county that the direction had changed. The second thing was to quit opium. He smashed his pipe in public, knelt praying through whole nights when the craving came, and several times rolled on the brick bed in pain without turning back. Later he opened dozens of opium refuges, which he called Tianzhaoju, "halls summoned by Heaven," taking in the very people he had once been. When someone asked him what made him believe this foreign religion, he said: what turned a man like me around was not an argument, it was a living Lord.
(Historical figure: Xi Shengmo, 1835-1896, of Shanxi; his life is recorded in mission-history biographies, and there is a short profile of him in the Saints section of this site.)
Respond
Reflect — alone, or talk it through together
1Jesus announces "God's Kingdom is at hand" before he calls "Repent" — how is that order different from "clean yourself up and then come"?
2"Repentance is a U-turn, not a feeling" — has there been a real U-turn on your road? If not yet, what is holding you back?
3The crowd at Pentecost, cut to the heart, asked "What shall we do?" — if you were asking it today, what is your next step?
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Pray together
Lord who calls me to turn around: thank you that while I was still driving the wrong way, your Kingdom came first and the door opened first. I do not want to keep "driving a little further" anymore. Today I admit it: what is wrong is not only a few things, it is the direction. I turn, and I walk toward you; I hand over this person — past, present and future — to you. Receive this turning, and lead every day of the road after it. In the name of the Lord Jesus, amen.
Walk
This week's actionabout 15 min
Get quiet and write two short lists — "what I am turning from" and "what I am turning to," three items each, as specific as you can make them. Read them to God, then fold the paper and tuck it into your Bible: this is your record of the U-turn.
Mark it when it happens — this week, at your pace.
Spiritual practice
Every day this week, before you leave the house (or before you start the car), say one line to yourself: "Today my car is pointed toward God's Kingdom." When you notice you have drifted, make a small turn right there; don't wait for evening.
Memory verse · Mark 1:15
Thetimeisfulfilled,andGod'sKingdomisathand!Repent,andbelieveintheGoodNews.
Walk further
The scene where grace turned Zacchaeus around, a short life of Xi Shengmo, the theme of repentance, Billy Graham's 1957 New York sermon, and Volume 1's Lesson 14 — how the daily cleansing carries on the turn made at the start.