Repentance and Faith

I mentioned in small group that one of the things that I really like about viewing faith and grace using the covenant structure we looked at last Sunday, is that it make grace and faith more concrete ideas.  Faith and grace have become theologically charged words that have become so abstracted that they have almost lost their meaning.  This is a problem because it makes it difficult for us to wrap our heads around these important concepts.

We have faith in Christ as the obedient Vassal and because Christ is obedient he merits the blessings of the Suzerain.  As the subjects of the Vassal, we receive the blessings of the Suzerain despite the fact that we have done nothing ourselves to earn the blessings.  Here faith and grace are not mere theological buzzwords.

One of the points I have been making is that God communicates His plan in the form of a story that takes place in history for a good reason.  God could have communicated to us in the form of a systematic theology and precisely defined faith and grace for us.  However, the terms become alive and real when we see them played out in history.

N.T. Wright made an interesting observation from one of the works of Josephus about the words repentance and faith that I find helpful in making those concepts more concrete.  Josephus was a Jew who lived in the first century A.D. and was born around the time of Paul's conversion.  In 66 B.C. he was in Galilee when a zealous Jewish revolutionary tried to assassinate him.  Josephus managed to evade the attempt on his life and subdue his assassin and then taking the man aside he says:

     that I was not ignorant of the plot which he had contrived against me... I would,
     nevertheless forgive his actions if he would show repentance and have
     faith in me.

The words Josephus uses for repentance and faith in the above quote are the same words that the Gospels use for repentance and faith.  As Josephus is writing at almost the same time as the Gospels were written, we can be reasonable sure that this tells us what the words meant at that time.

For Josephus, repentance means that the man should give up his ideas of revolutions.  Instead Josephus wants the revolutionary to have faith in his own ideas and show loyalty to him as a leader.  In the same way Jesus asks us to abandon our own agenda and our ideas.  Jesus wants us to see Him as a leader and to show loyalty to Him.

Applying this to the suzerain-vassal relationship, we should abandon our own ideas of how to please the Suzerain.  We should also abandon our loyalty to other vassals who cannot possibly earn the blessings of the Suzerain.  Instead we should have faith that Jesus' agenda is the correct one and that He can satisfy the demands of the Suzerain.