repentance

76:5.1Not long af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of the sec­ond Eden, Adam and Eve were duly in­formed that their re­pen­tance was ac­cept­able, and that, while they were doomed to suf­fer the fate of the mor­tals of their world, they should cer­tainly be­come el­i­gi­ble for ad­mis­sion to the ranks of the sleep­ing sur­vivors of Uran­tia. They fully be­lieved this gospel of res­ur­rec­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion which the Mel­chiz­e­deks so touch­ingly pro­claimed to them. Their trans­gres­sion had been an er­ror of judg­ment and not the sin of con­scious and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion.

76:5.2Adam and Eve did not, as cit­i­zens of Je­ru­sem, have Thought Ad­justers, nor were they Ad­juster in­dwelt when they func­tioned on Uran­tia in the first gar­den. But shortly af­ter their re­duc­tion to mor­tal sta­tus they be­came con­scious of a new pres­ence within them and awak­ened to the re­al­iza­tion that hu­man sta­tus cou­pled with sin­cere re­pen­tance had made it pos­si­ble for Ad­justers to in­dwell them. It was this knowl­edge of be­ing Ad­juster in­dwelt that greatly heart­ened Adam and Eve through­out the re­main­der of their lives; they knew that they had failed as Ma­te­rial Sons of Sa­ta­nia, but they also knew that the Par­a­dise ca­reer was still open to them as as­cend­ing sons of the uni­verse.

76:2.8Cain’s life in Mes­o­po­ta­mia had not been ex­actly happy since he was in such a pe­cu­liar way sym­bolic of the de­fault. It was not that his as­so­ciates were un­kind to him, but he had not been un­aware of their sub­con­scious re­sent­ment of his pres­ence. But Cain knew that, since he bore no tribal mark, he would be killed by the first neigh­bor­ing tribes­men who might chance to meet him. Fear, and some re­morse, led him to re­pent. Cain had never been in­dwelt by an Ad­juster, had al­ways been de­fi­ant of the fam­ily dis­ci­pline and dis­dain­ful of his fa­ther’s re­li­gion. But he now went to Eve, his mother, and asked for spir­i­tual help and guid­ance, and when he hon­estly sought di­vine as­sis­tance, an Ad­juster in­dwelt him. And this Ad­juster, dwell­ing within and look­ing out, gave Cain a dis­tinct ad­van­tage of su­pe­ri­or­ity which classed him with the greatly feared tribe of Adam.

159:1.2“If a kind­hearted man has a hun­dred sheep and one of them goes astray, does he not im­me­di­ately leave the ninety and nine and go out in search of the one that has gone astray? And if he is a good shep­herd, will he not keep up his quest for the lost sheep un­til he finds it? And then, when the shep­herd has found his lost sheep, he lays it over his shoul­der and, go­ing home re­joic­ing, calls to his friends and neigh­bors, ‘Re­joice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ I de­clare that there is more joy in heaven over one sin­ner who re­pents than over ninety and nine righ­teous per­sons who need no re­pen­tance. Even so, it is not the will of my Fa­ther in heaven that one of these lit­tle ones should go astray, much less that they should per­ish. In your re­li­gion God may re­ceive re­pen­tant sin­ners; in the gospel of the king­dom the Fa­ther goes forth to find them even be­fore they have se­ri­ously thought of re­pen­tance.

169:1.3“You have been taught that di­vine ac­cep­tance comes af­ter your re­pen­tance and as a re­sult of all your works of sac­ri­fice and pen­i­tence, but I as­sure you that the Fa­ther ac­cepts you even be­fore you have re­pented and sends the Son and his as­so­ciates to find you and bring you, with re­joic­ing, back to the fold, the king­dom of son­ship and spir­i­tual prog­ress. You are all like sheep which have gone astray, and I have come to seek and to save those who are lost.

4:3.4God re­pents of noth­ing he has ever done, now does, or ever will do. He is all-wise as well as all-pow­er­ful. Man’s wis­dom grows out of the tri­als and er­rors of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence; God’s wis­dom con­sists in the un­qual­i­fied per­fec­tion of his in­fi­nite uni­verse in­sight, and this di­vine fore­knowl­edge ef­fec­tively di­rects the cre­ative free will.

4:3.5The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther never does any­thing that causes sub­se­quent sor­row or re­gret, but the will crea­tures of the plan­ning and mak­ing of his Cre­ator per­son­al­i­ties in the out­ly­ing uni­verses, by their un­for­tu­nate choos­ing, some­times oc­ca­sion emo­tions of di­vine sor­row in the per­son­al­i­ties of their Cre­ator par­ents. But though the Fa­ther nei­ther makes mis­takes, har­bors re­grets, nor ex­pe­ri­ences sor­rows, he is a be­ing with a fa­ther’s af­fec­tion, and his heart is un­doubt­edly grieved when his chil­dren fail to at­tain the spir­i­tual lev­els they are ca­pa­ble of reach­ing with the as­sis­tance which has been so freely pro­vided by the spir­i­tual-at­tain­ment plans and the mor­tal-as­cen­sion poli­cies of the uni­verses.

2:6.3The “rich­ness of the good­ness of God leads erring man to re­pen­tance.” “Ev­ery good gift and ev­ery per­fect gift comes down from the Fa­ther of lights.” “God is good; he is the eter­nal refuge of the souls of men.” “The Lord God is mer­ci­ful and gra­cious. He is long-suf­fer­ing and abun­dant in good­ness and truth.” “Taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who trusts him.” “The Lord is gra­cious and full of com­pas­sion. He is the God of sal­va­tion.” “He heals the bro­ken­hearted and binds up the wounds of the soul. He is man’s all-pow­er­ful bene­fac­tor.”

48:6.8Even on Uran­tia they coun­sel the hu­man teach­ers of truth and righ­teous­ness to ad­here to the preach­ing of “the good­ness of God, which leads to re­pen­tance,” to pro­claim “the love of God, which casts out all fear.” Even so have these truths been de­clared on your world:

131:10.4“The Fa­ther in heaven will not suf­fer a sin­gle child on earth to per­ish if that child has a de­sire to find the Fa­ther and truly longs to be like him. Our Fa­ther even loves the wicked and is al­ways kind to the un­grate­ful. If more hu­man be­ings could only know about the good­ness of God, they would cer­tainly be led to re­pent of their evil ways and for­sake all known sin. All good things come down from the Fa­ther of light, in whom there is no vari­able­ness nei­ther shadow of chang­ing. The spirit of the true God is in man’s heart. He in­tends that all men should be broth­ers. When men be­gin to feel af­ter God, that is ev­i­dence that God has found them, and that they are in quest of knowl­edge about him. We live in God and God dwells in us.

143:2.7“Your son­ship is grounded in faith, and you are to re­main un­moved by fear. Your joy is born of trust in the di­vine word, and you shall not there­fore be led to doubt the re­al­ity of the Fa­ther’s love and mercy. It is the very good­ness of God that leads men into true and gen­uine re­pen­tance. Your se­cret of the mas­tery of self is bound up with your faith in the in­dwelling spirit, which ever works by love. Even this sav­ing faith you have not of your­selves; it also is the gift of God. And if you are the chil­dren of this liv­ing faith, you are no longer the bond­slaves of self but rather the tri­umphant mas­ters of your­selves, the lib­er­ated sons of God.

149:6.4“In­tel­li­gent chil­dren do not fear their fa­ther in or­der that they may re­ceive good gifts from his hand; but hav­ing al­ready re­ceived the abun­dance of good things be­stowed by the dic­tates of the fa­ther’s af­fec­tion for his sons and daugh­ters, these much loved chil­dren are led to love their fa­ther in re­spon­sive rec­og­ni­tion and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of such mu­nif­i­cent benef­i­cence. The good­ness of God leads to re­pen­tance; the benef­i­cence of God leads to ser­vice; the mercy of God leads to sal­va­tion; while the love of God leads to in­tel­li­gent and free­hearted wor­ship.

91:5.2But prayer need not al­ways be in­di­vid­ual. Group or con­gre­ga­tional pray­ing is very ef­fec­tive in that it is highly so­cial­iz­ing in its reper­cus­sions. When a group en­gages in com­mu­nity prayer for moral en­hance­ment and spir­i­tual up­lift, such de­vo­tions are re­ac­tive upon the in­di­vid­u­als com­pos­ing the group; they are all made bet­ter be­cause of par­tic­i­pa­tion. Even a whole city or an en­tire na­tion can be helped by such prayer de­vo­tions. Con­fes­sion, re­pen­tance, and prayer have led in­di­vid­u­als, cities, na­tions, and whole races to mighty ef­forts of re­form and coura­geous deeds of val­or­ous achieve­ment.

133:4.12To the con­demned crim­i­nal he said at the last hour: “My brother, you have fallen on evil times. You lost your way; you be­came en­tan­gled in the meshes of crime. From talk­ing to you, I well know you did not plan to do the thing which is about to cost you your tem­po­ral life. But you did do this evil, and your fel­lows have ad­judged you guilty; they have de­ter­mined that you shall die. You or I may not deny the state this right of self-de­fense in the man­ner of its own choos­ing. There seems to be no way of hu­manly es­cap­ing the penalty of your wrong­do­ing. Your fel­lows must judge you by what you did, but there is a Judge to whom you may ap­peal for for­give­ness, and who will judge you by your real mo­tives and bet­ter in­ten­tions. You need not fear to meet the judg­ment of God if your re­pen­tance is gen­uine and your faith sin­cere. The fact that your er­ror car­ries with it the death penalty im­posed by man does not prej­u­dice the chance of your soul to ob­tain jus­tice and en­joy mercy be­fore the heav­enly courts.”

138:8.2Je­sus taught them to preach the for­give­ness of sin through faith in God with­out pen­ance or sac­ri­fice, and that the Fa­ther in heaven loves all his chil­dren with the same eter­nal love. He en­joined his apos­tles to re­frain from dis­cussing:

138:8.8Je­sus made plain to his apos­tles the dif­fer­ence be­tween the re­pen­tance of so-called good works as taught by the Jews and the change of mind by faith—the new birth—which he re­quired as the price of ad­mis­sion to the king­dom. He taught his apos­tles that faith was the only req­ui­site to en­ter­ing the Fa­ther’s king­dom. John had taught them “re­pen­tance—to flee from the wrath to come.” Je­sus taught, “Faith is the open door for en­ter­ing into the pres­ent, per­fect, and eter­nal love of God.” Je­sus did not speak like a prophet, one who comes to de­clare the word of God. He seemed to speak of him­self as one hav­ing au­thor­ity. Je­sus sought to di­vert their minds from mir­a­cle seek­ing to the find­ing of a real and per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the sat­is­fac­tion and as­sur­ance of the in­dwelling of God’s spirit of love and sav­ing grace.

186:1.4From a dis­tance Ju­das saw them raise the cross piece with Je­sus nailed thereon, and upon sight of this he rushed back to the tem­ple and, forc­ing his way past the door­keeper, found him­self stand­ing in the pres­ence of the San­hedrin, which was still in ses­sion. The be­trayer was well-nigh breath­less and highly dis­traught, but he man­aged to stam­mer out these words: “I have sinned in that I have be­trayed in­no­cent blood. You have in­sulted me. You have of­fered me as a re­ward for my ser­vice, money—the price of a slave. I re­pent that I have done this; here is your money. I want to es­cape the guilt of this deed.”

174:1.2Af­ter a short si­lence Je­sus looked sig­nif­i­cantly at all four and an­swered: “My breth­ren, you err in your opin­ions be­cause you do not com­pre­hend the na­ture of those in­ti­mate and lov­ing re­la­tions be­tween the crea­ture and the Cre­ator, be­tween man and God. You fail to grasp that un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy which the wise par­ent en­ter­tains for his im­ma­ture and some­times erring child. It is in­deed doubt­ful whether in­tel­li­gent and af­fec­tion­ate par­ents are ever called upon to for­give an av­er­age and nor­mal child. Un­der­stand­ing re­la­tion­ships as­so­ci­ated with at­ti­tudes of love ef­fec­tively pre­vent all those es­trange­ments which later ne­ces­si­tate the read­just­ment of re­pen­tance by the child with for­give­ness by the par­ent.

135:7.3In re­sponse to the ques­tions of his dis­ci­ples John con­tin­ued to ex­pand his teach­ings, from day to day adding more that was help­ful and com­fort­ing com­pared with his early and cryp­tic mes­sage: “Re­pent and be bap­tized.” By this time throngs were ar­riv­ing from Gal­i­lee and the De­capo­lis. Scores of earnest be­liev­ers lin­gered with their adored teacher day af­ter day.

136:0.2When John preached the com­ing king­dom, the bur­den of his mes­sage was: Re­pent! flee from the wrath to come. When Je­sus be­gan to preach, there re­mained the ex­hor­ta­tion to re­pen­tance, but such a mes­sage was al­ways fol­lowed by the gospel, the good tid­ings of the joy and lib­erty of the new king­dom.

136:1.5The ma­jor­ity of the Jews be­lieved that they con­tin­ued to lan­guish un­der Ro­man rule be­cause of their na­tional sins and be­cause of the half­heart­ed­ness of the gen­tile pros­e­lytes. The Jew­ish na­tion had not whole­heart­edly re­pented; there­fore did the Mes­siah de­lay his com­ing. There was much talk about re­pen­tance; where­fore the mighty and im­me­di­ate ap­peal of John’s preach­ing, “Re­pent and be bap­tized, for the king­dom of heaven is at hand.” And the king­dom of heaven could mean only one thing to any de­vout Jew: The com­ing of the Mes­siah.

144:6.9And then was it voted that, in case of John’s death, the apos­tles of Je­sus would be­gin to bap­tize with wa­ter as the em­blem of the bap­tism of the di­vine Spirit. As to whether or not re­pen­tance should be at­tached to the preach­ing of bap­tism was left op­tional; no de­ci­sion was made bind­ing upon the group. John’s apos­tles preached, “Re­pent and be bap­tized.” Je­sus’ apos­tles pro­claimed, “Be­lieve and be bap­tized.”

140:10.1That evening while teach­ing in the house, for it had be­gun to rain, Je­sus talked at great length, try­ing to show the twelve what they must be, not what they must do. They knew only a re­li­gion that im­posed the do­ing of cer­tain things as the means of at­tain­ing righ­teous­ness—sal­va­tion. But Je­sus would re­it­er­ate, “In the king­dom you must be righ­teous in or­der to do the work.” Many times did he re­peat, “Be you there­fore per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.” All the while was the Mas­ter ex­plain­ing to his be­wil­dered apos­tles that the sal­va­tion which he had come to bring to the world was to be had only by be­liev­ing, by sim­ple and sin­cere faith. Said Je­sus: “John preached a bap­tism of re­pen­tance, sor­row for the old way of liv­ing. You are to pro­claim the bap­tism of fel­low­ship with God. Preach re­pen­tance to those who stand in need of such teach­ing, but to those al­ready seek­ing sin­cere en­trance to the king­dom, open the doors wide and bid them en­ter into the joy­ous fel­low­ship of the sons of God.” But it was a dif­fi­cult task to per­suade these Galilean fish­er­men that, in the king­dom, be­ing righ­teous, by faith, must pre­cede do­ing righ­teous­ness in the daily life of the mor­tals of earth.

173:3.2And the peo­ple spoke with one ac­cord, say­ing, “The first son.” And then said Je­sus: “Even so; and now do I de­clare that the pub­li­cans and har­lots, even though they ap­pear to refuse the call to re­pen­tance, shall see the er­ror of their way and go on into the king­dom of God be­fore you, who make great pre­ten­sions of serv­ing the Fa­ther in heaven while you refuse to do the works of the Fa­ther. It was not you, the Phar­isees and scribes, who be­lieved John, but rather the pub­li­cans and sin­ners; nei­ther do you be­lieve my teach­ing, but the com­mon peo­ple hear my words gladly.”

131:8.5“The Great Su­preme is all-per­vad­ing; he is on the left hand and on the right; he sup­ports all cre­ation and in­dwells all true be­ings. You can­not find the Su­preme, nei­ther can you go to a place where he is not. If a man rec­og­nizes the evil of his ways and re­pents of sin from the heart, then may he seek for­give­ness; he may es­cape the penalty; he may change calamity into bless­ing. The Su­preme is the se­cure refuge for all cre­ation; he is the guard­ian and sav­ior of man­kind. If you seek for him daily, you shall find him. Since he can for­give sins, he is in­deed most pre­cious to all men. Al­ways re­mem­ber that God does not re­ward man for what he does but for what he is; there­fore should you ex­tend help to your fel­lows with­out the thought of re­wards. Do good with­out thought of ben­e­fit to the self.

167:5.2That night, in Jeri­cho, the un­friendly Phar­isees sought to en­trap the Mas­ter by in­duc­ing him to dis­cuss mar­riage and di­vorce, as did their fel­lows one time in Gal­i­lee, but Je­sus art­fully avoided their ef­forts to bring him into con­flict with their laws con­cern­ing di­vorce. As the pub­li­can and the Phar­isee il­lus­trated good and bad re­li­gion, their di­vorce prac­tices served to con­trast the bet­ter mar­riage laws of the Jew­ish code with the dis­grace­ful lax­ity of the Phar­i­saic in­ter­pre­ta­tions of these Mo­saic di­vorce statutes. The Phar­isee judged him­self by the low­est stan­dard; the pub­li­can squared him­self by the high­est ideal. De­vo­tion, to the Phar­isee, was a means of in­duc­ing self-righ­teous in­ac­tiv­ity and the as­sur­ance of false spir­i­tual se­cu­rity; de­vo­tion, to the pub­li­can, was a means of stir­ring up his soul to the re­al­iza­tion of the need for re­pen­tance, con­fes­sion, and the ac­cep­tance, by faith, of mer­ci­ful for­give­ness. The Phar­isee sought jus­tice; the pub­li­can sought mercy. The law of the uni­verse is: Ask and you shall re­ceive; seek and you shall find.

131:3.3“Un­righ­teous­ness is con­temptible; sin is de­spi­ca­ble. Evil is de­grad­ing, whether held in thought or wrought out in deeds. Pain and sor­row fol­low in the path of evil as the dust fol­lows the wind. Hap­pi­ness and peace of mind fol­low pure think­ing and vir­tu­ous liv­ing as the shadow fol­lows the sub­stance of ma­te­rial things. Evil is the fruit of wrongly di­rected think­ing. It is evil to see sin where there is no sin; to see no sin where there is sin. Evil is the path of false doc­trines. Those who avoid evil by see­ing things as they are gain joy by thus em­brac­ing the truth. Make an end of your mis­ery by loathing sin. When you look up to the No­ble One, turn away from sin with a whole heart. Make no apol­ogy for evil; make no ex­cuse for sin. By your ef­forts to make amends for past sins you ac­quire strength to re­sist fu­ture ten­den­cies thereto. Re­straint is born of re­pen­tance. Leave no fault un­con­fessed to the No­ble One.

187:4.1One of the brig­ands railed at Je­sus, say­ing, “If you are the Son of God, why do you not save your­self and us?” But when he had re­proached Je­sus, the other thief, who had many times heard the Mas­ter teach, said: “Do you have no fear even of God? Do you not see that we are suf­fer­ing justly for our deeds, but that this man suf­fers un­justly? Bet­ter that we should seek for­give­ness for our sins and sal­va­tion for our souls.” When Je­sus heard the thief say this, he turned his face to­ward him and smiled ap­prov­ingly. When the male­fac­tor saw the face of Je­sus turned to­ward him, he mus­tered up his cour­age, fanned the flick­er­ing flame of his faith, and said, “Lord, re­mem­ber me when you come into your king­dom.” And then Je­sus said, “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you to­day, you shall some­time be with me in Par­a­dise.”

187:4.2The Mas­ter had time amidst the pangs of mor­tal death to lis­ten to the faith con­fes­sion of the be­liev­ing brig­and. When this thief reached out for sal­va­tion, he found de­liv­er­ance. Many times be­fore this he had been con­strained to be­lieve in Je­sus, but only in these last hours of con­scious­ness did he turn with a whole heart to­ward the Mas­ter’s teach­ing. When he saw the man­ner in which Je­sus faced death upon the cross, this thief could no longer re­sist the con­vic­tion that this Son of Man was in­deed the Son of God.

187:4.3Dur­ing this episode of the con­ver­sion and re­cep­tion of the thief into the king­dom by Je­sus, the Apos­tle John was ab­sent, hav­ing gone into the city to bring his mother and her friends to the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion. Luke sub­se­quently heard this story from the con­verted Ro­man cap­tain of the guard.

187:4.4The Apos­tle John told about the cru­ci­fix­ion as he re­mem­bered the event two thirds of a cen­tury af­ter its oc­cur­rence. The other rec­ords were based upon the recital of the Ro­man cen­tu­rion on duty who, be­cause of what he saw and heard, sub­se­quently be­lieved in Je­sus and en­tered into the full fel­low­ship of the king­dom of heaven on earth.

187:4.5This young man, the pen­i­tent brig­and, had been led into a life of vi­o­lence and wrong­do­ing by those who ex­tolled such a ca­reer of rob­bery as an ef­fec­tive pa­tri­otic protest against po­lit­i­cal op­pres­sion and so­cial in­jus­tice. And this sort of teach­ing, plus the urge for ad­ven­ture, led many oth­er­wise well-mean­ing youths to en­list in these dar­ing ex­pe­di­tions of rob­bery. This young man had looked upon Barab­bas as a hero. Now he saw that he had been mis­taken. Here on the cross be­side him he saw a re­ally great man, a true hero. Here was a hero who fired his zeal and in­spired his high­est ideas of moral self-re­spect and quick­ened all his ide­als of cour­age, man­hood, and brav­ery. In be­hold­ing Je­sus, there sprang up in his heart an over­whelm­ing sense of love, loy­alty, and gen­uine great­ness.

187:4.6And if any other per­son among the jeer­ing crowd had ex­pe­ri­enced the birth of faith within his soul and had ap­pealed to the mercy of Je­sus, he would have been re­ceived with the same lov­ing con­sid­er­a­tion that was dis­played to­ward the be­liev­ing brig­and.

187:4.7Just af­ter the re­pen­tant thief heard the Mas­ter’s prom­ise that they should some­time meet in Par­a­dise, John re­turned from the city, bring­ing with him his mother and a com­pany of al­most a dozen women be­liev­ers. John took up his po­si­tion near Mary the mother of Je­sus, sup­port­ing her. Her son Jude stood on the other side. As Je­sus looked down upon this scene, it was noon­tide, and he said to his mother, “Woman, be­hold your son!” And speak­ing to John, he said, “My son, be­hold your mother!” And then he ad­dressed them both, say­ing, “I de­sire that you de­part from this place.” And so John and Jude led Mary away from Gol­go­tha. John took the mother of Je­sus to the place where he tar­ried in Je­ru­sa­lem and then has­tened back to the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion. Af­ter the Pass­over Mary re­turned to Beth­saida, where she lived at John’s home for the rest of her nat­u­ral life. Mary did not live quite one year af­ter the death of Je­sus.

187:4.8Af­ter Mary left, the other women with­drew for a short dis­tance and re­mained in at­ten­dance upon Je­sus un­til he ex­pired on the cross, and they were yet stand­ing by when the body of the Mas­ter was taken down for burial.