 Jesus said, repent and believe the gospel and repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. When I tell people that nowhere in the Bible does it say, repent of your sins to be saved, they might point you to one of the earliest messages that Jesus preached actually, which is repent, so let's take a look. In Matthew 4.17 Jesus said, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. In Mark 1.15 he is documented as saying, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent ye and believe the gospel. Now Jesus quoting Matthew 4 is almost identical to what John the Baptist said in the previous chapter, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So it's fair to say that Jesus is carrying on the message of repentance that that John the Baptist started and most Christians would agree with that I think. Now I've already covered in previous videos what John the Baptist's message of repentance was about and we saw that he was pointing people to the Christ that was coming and telling them to believe on him. So we simply carry forward that message into Jesus' message of repentance. So the first and blatantly obvious thing about these two verses is the lack of mention of sins. In Matthew 4.17 it does say repent but it doesn't say repent of your sins. Likewise in Mark 1.15 it says repent but it doesn't say repent of your sins. Now people will say to me but that's what repentance means. Well we already saw in the previous videos that this is not true. Yes there are some verses where sin is the context of repentance but there are other verses where God repented and we know that God has no sin. Or sin is not the context of repentance and sometimes there are bad types of repentance. If we take away the religiously distorted definition of repentance the core word means a change of mind or a change of direction, a change of action or a change of course. It's synonymous with turning and it may include being sorrowful but not always. So with this in mind then we could substitute repentance with one of its synonymous terms to help us understand these verses a little clearer. So for example instead of saying repent to you and believe the gospel in Mark 1.15 we could say change your mind and believe the gospel or turn ye and believe the gospel or change direction ye and believe the gospel or change course ye and believe the gospel. So what does this mean then? Well compared with John the Baptist's message of repentance Jesus' message doesn't really give us a lot of context in the verses surrounding it. In Mark 1 Jesus starts preaching in verse 14 when John the Baptist is put in prison and in verse 16 he walks by the sea of Galilee and recruited his disciples. So verse 15 contextually is very isolated. In Matthew 4 verse 12 is when Jesus started preaching after John is put in prison. Verses 13 to 16 confirm that he was fulfilling prophecy from Isaiah and verse 18 is when he went to call his disciples. So again verse 17 is quite isolated in its context but at least we do have some context in Matthew about the scripture from Isaiah that was being fulfilled. It says in Matthew 4 16 the people which sat in darkness saw great light. When we looked at John the Baptist's message he was preparing the way of the Lord and pointing people to the Christ that was coming and that's who they needed to believe on and trust in. Well now Jesus is here. The crucial part of the message here is that the kingdom of God is at hand. This is the key part of Jesus' message and so what exactly does Jesus mean by this? What is this gospel? There are many passages we could turn to since Jesus talks about the kingdom a lot but for the purpose of this video let's make it simple. Let's pick something quite simplistic and we've got a basic answer to work with. In John chapter 3 Jesus told Nicodemus that except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Jesus goes on to say something synonymous in verse 5 but he says enter into the kingdom of God instead of sea. So we might assume that seeing the kingdom of God and entering the kingdom of God are interchangeable. Jesus then goes on to explain later in chapter 3 that the Son of Man must be lifted up, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. So the most basic simplistic definition of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven would be that it's synonymous with eternal life for salvation and so the reason was given in John 3 the Son of Man must be lifted up, that's Jesus and it's whosoever believes in him. Matthew confirms that Jesus is coming to fulfill scripture and people that were once in darkness are seeing a great light. So just as John the Baptist was pointing people towards the coming Christ the narrator of Matthew is pointing us again to Jesus as he preaches the kingdom. Likewise in John 3 Jesus is speaking of himself and what he must go and do. You could interpret him as being lifted up as either glorified, crucified or ascended but the end result is still the same. Jesus is doing the work needed to bring salvation on to men. The outcome of what Jesus will do is that those who believe in him will have eternal life which is synonymous with entering the kingdom and Jesus told us in Matthew that the kingdom the long awaited for Messiah has now come. The person to whom the prophets of the Old Testament prophesied about is now here and with that the gospel or the good news of the kingdom which is bringing everlasting life to those who will believe on this Messiah. The Jews will need to move away from their Old Testament mindset of animal sacrifices and circumcision to the New Testament mindset of Christ crucified and raised. Now ultimately we know that many of the Jews did not believe on the Messiah which was sent to them as it is written. He came on to his own and his own received him not and just as Matthew 4 tells us that Jesus was the great light the people were seeing John 1 also tells us that Jesus is the true light and just as he said in Mark 1 to believe the gospel so John 1 also confirms that those who receive him or believe on him they are the ones who are adopted as the children of God which goes hand in hand with getting saved and entering into everlasting life. The end goal then of saying repent for the kingdom of God is at hand or repent and believe the gospel is to tell people to turn towards Jesus who is the light and he's bringing the kingdom and this goes hand in hand with believing on him. Let's try to illustrate this to make it as clear as possible. You were wondering in the dark not really aware of or concerned with everlasting life. All of a sudden you see a great light and turn towards it. It's Jesus bringing the good news of the kingdom eternal life on to men. He is telling you to believe in him and his good news and if you do and you trust him you shall be saved and have everlasting life. So repent turn to him believe him call upon him while he is yet near. Remember that for the people at the time this was a rare and a once in a lifetime opportunity. You know most of us who exist on the earth will never get to meet Jesus in person at that time anyway and he would only be in certain places for limited amounts of time because he used to travel around. They were called to believe on him while he was yet near and the window of opportunity was still open as Jesus himself said. Yet a little while the light is with you walk while you have the light lest darkness come upon you. Just as the people had a limited time frame or window of time if you like in order to hear Jesus directly to see his miracles and to believe on him. So do we have a limited time as well to believe on this earth? Okay so a modern analogy would be like hearing the gospel when it's preached on to you okay so let's say a soul winner knocks on your door or you see a youtube video about how to be saved and get to heaven okay. Cease the opportunity while you have it all right. Today is the day of salvation don't waste this opportunity because you might forget to check youtube later about that video that you saw or it might be that there will never be another soul winner who's actually saved that knocks on your door ever again to explain the gospel to you. So in conclusion the meaning of repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand or repent and believe the gospel is to turn towards the Christ while the kingdom is near i.e the message of eternal life is still yet available for you to hear and believe on him and you shall have everlasting life. There is no evidence that this message of repentance has anything to do with sin because in Matthew 4 and Mark 1 accounts sin is not mentioned in Jesus dialogue nor the prophecies he was fulfilling. The closest thing we have that suggests sin has any relevance is that the people sat in darkness in Matthew 4 16 but the solution was that they saw great light. So the remedy to their darkness was not inwardly looking towards themselves to correct this darkness by turning their own lights on but actually looking towards Jesus who is the light that overcomes darkness. Now if you still insist that well I just think this message is about turning from sin well then you're not looking to Jesus for everlasting life and to walk in the light you're looking inwardly to yourself and you continue to stumble in darkness it's that simple. Repenting of sins will only make you a repentant sinner but a sinner all the same. You need to instead believe in the good news that Jesus takes away the sin of the world only by trusting in him can you be cleansed of your sins. This is no nonsense Christianity reminding you that nowhere in the Bible does it say repent of your sins to be saved.