Luke 24:44-47 - Preaching repentance

24:44

Jesus then reminds them that He had told them all about these while He was with them, but they had been completely blind. And these things were written about Him in the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms. This last bit is particularly important. We might sometimes think that in the case of the messianic psalms it is us reading things back into them, but Jesus tells us that the Psalms were pointing to Him as well as the prophets and the Law.

24:45

“Then He opened their minds”. We need Jesus to open our minds in order for us to see the truth of the gospel. Now this gets some people all upset for we see ourselves as fully autonomous, able to decide for ourselves to believe in Christ. And some see this as taking away human responsibility. But the truth is that we are completely dependent upon God. If He had not created us in the first place we would not even exist, so where does that leave our “human autonomy”? However, the Bible also tells us that we are responsible. Indeed, Jesus has said many things in the gospels that imply human responsibility. So our utter dependence upon God for everything, including our coming to see the truth of the gospel, and our continued growth in Christ, are true, but human responsibility is also true. Now we may not be able to work out how these things can both be true, but God doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, so neither should you or I.

24:46,47

Now this is so important. Jesus here is summarising what the Old Testament says. Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, and Psalm 16-8-11 are relevant here, but they are not the only ones. The “raised on the third day” part is more difficult, not the rising, but the third day part. Jonah would seem to be what Jesus is thinking of. Now look at what the message is that Jesus says will be preached, “repentance for forgiveness of sins will be preached in His Name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem”. The gospel message is a message of repentance and forgiveness, all too often we preach a message of forgiveness with no mention of repentance.