part 1 of 2
How Christ Repented of Sins
He Never Committed
Both the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy make it clear that Jesus Christ experienced repentance. This does not mean that He experienced sin, for never in thought, word, or deed did He yield to temptation. Peter says, “Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.” 1 Peter 2:22. When John the Baptist baptized Jesus, it was because Jesus asked for it, and insisted upon it. If John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance” (Acts 19:4), he must have baptized Jesus with the only baptism he was capable of administering—a baptism signifying on the part of the sinless Candidate an experience of repentance.
But how could Christ experience repentance if He had never sinned? This is a most important question, for multitudes of saints are ready to ask, “How can I repent of sins I have never committed?” We have assumed that only evil people need to repent, or can repent. It is shocking to think that good people can repent, and incomprehensible how a perfect Person could repent.
If Christ was “baptized with the baptism of repentance,” it is clear that He did experience it. But the only kind of repentance a sinless person could experience is corporate repentance. Thus, Jesus’ repentance is a model and example of what we ourselves should experience.
Jesus’ Baptism Unto Repentance
Jesus was genuinely sincere when He asked John to baptize Him. When He answered John’s objections at the Jordan, “Thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15), it is unthinkable that He was suggesting that He and John should together act out a play. Play-acting could never “fulfill all righteousness.” The essence of righteousness is sincerity and genuineness. Our divine Example could never condone the performance of such a rite without the appropriate experience of heart. For Christ to subject Himself to baptism without an experience appropriate to the deed would have been to give an example of hypocrisy. Shallow formalism or hypocrisy is the last thing Jesus wants from anyone!
It is easy for us to misunderstand Jesus’ baptism as merely a “deposit” of merit to be drawn on in a legalistic substitutionary way in certain emergencies when people cannot be baptized for physical reasons, such as the predicament of the thief on the cross. One must be baptized before he can enter Paradise; the poor thief is nailed to a cross and therefore cannot be immersed; Jesus’ baptism becomes to him like a credit in the “bank”, and the appropriate “deposit” is made to the account of the poor thief. We have supposed that the reason Jesus was baptized was to provide this “credit” balance of merit. The poor thief’s “account” is duly credited, and he is promised a place in Paradise.
Whatever elements of truth may lurk in this legalistic concept, the idea leaves us “cold”. Most Christians have had the physical opportunity to be immersed in baptism, and have complied. What does Jesus’ baptism mean to them? Merely a physical demonstration of the method of baptism? Merely that we have seen the “Teacher” act out the physical deed He asks us to do? Once the truth of corporate repentance is recognized, Jesus’ baptism takes on a meaningful significance. Hearts are touched and won by saving truth.
How Close Jesus Came to Us
Jesus indeed asked for baptism because He genuinely and sincerely identified Himself with sinners. He felt how the guilty sinner feels. He put Himself in our place. He put His arms around us and knelt down beside us on the banks of the Jordan, taking our sins upon Himself. His submission to baptism indicates that “the Lord … laid on Him the iniquity of us all” then and there. His baptism becomes an “injection” of healing repentance for sin into the “body” of the church. Peter says that His identity with our sins was deep, not superficial, for “His own self bare our sins in His own body.” Peter’s choice of words is significant. Christ did not bear our sins as a man carries a bag on his back. In His own “flesh,” in His nervous system, He bore the crushing weight of our guilt. So close did He come to us that He felt our sins were His own.
This perfect identity with us began long before Calvary. Ellen G. White offers this perceptive comment on the reality of Christ experiencing a deep heart repentance in our behalf:
After Christ had taken the necessary steps in repentance, conversion, and faith in behalf of the human race, He went to John to be baptized of him in Jordan. (General Conference Bulletin, 1901, page 36.)
John had heard of the sinless character and spotless purity of Christ. … John had also seen that He should be the example for every repenting sinner John could not understand why the only sinless one upon the earth should ask for an ordinance implying guilt, virtually confessing, by the symbol of baptism, pollution to be washed away. . . , Christ came not confessing His own sins; but guilt was imputed to him as sinner’s substitute. He came not to repent on His own account; but in behalf of the sinner. ... As their substitute, He takes upon Him their sins, numbering Himself with the transgressors, taking the steps the sinner is required to take; and doing the work the sinner must do. (Review and Herald, January 21, 1873.)
Let us take a second look at the important points in these statements:
- Though Christ was utterly sinless, He did in His own soul experience repentance.
- His baptism indicated that He felt in His own sinless heart the burden of guilt that oppresses the heart of the sinner. In other words, He knows exactly how the sinner feels, including “every repenting sinner”. In our self-righteousness we cannot feel such sympathy with “every repenting sinner” because only a Perfect Man can experience a perfect and complete repentance such as that.
- Not in pantomime, but in verity, Jesus took “the steps the sinner is required to take,” and did “the work the sinner must do.” This implies a reality of identity with us. We cannot in truth “behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” without appreciating how close our Lord has come to us in His human experience. This is why it is so important to “behold” Jesus, to “see” Him. Lukewarm impenitence is due either to not seeing Him clearly revealed, or to rejecting Him. Let us take a closer look at “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” and understand what our sin is that needs to be “taken away,” so that it indeed can be taken away.
Why did Jesus, in His ministry, have such phenomenal power to win the hearts of sinners? Because in this pre-baptism experience of “repentance, conversion, and faith in behalf of the human race,” Jesus learned to know what was “in man,” for “Me needed not that any should testify of man” (John 2:25). Only through such an experience could He learn to speak as “never man spake” (John 7:46). Only thus could He break the spell of the world’s enchantment as He would say to whom He would, “Follow me,” passing by no human being as worthless, inspiring with hope the “roughest and most unpromising.” “To such a one, discouraged, sick, tempted, fallen, Jesus would speak words of tenderest pity, words that were needed and could be understood.” (Ministry of Healing, page 26.) It may be getting ahead of ourselves to take notice of this point right now, but it begins to be apparent that we ourselves will be able to achieve such empathy with sinners only when we have experienced the kind of repentance that Christ experienced in our behalf.
The “How” of Jesus’ Power to Reach Hearts
Jesus’ perfect compassion for every human soul is, as Son of God, a direct result of His perfect repentance in behalf of every human soul. He becomes the “second Adam,” partaking of the “body,” becoming one with us, accepting us as His “brethren” without shame, “in all things … made like unto His brethren.”
We freely recognize our desperate need of this genuine, deep, unfailing Christ-like love for sinners. We can preach about it for a thousand years, but we will never get it except through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And such faith is a heartfelt appreciation of His character. A union with Christ that goes beyond mere theory is our desperate need.
But trying to come close to Christ without coming close to sinners is impossible, for through union with Christ by faith we become part of the corporate body of humanity in Him. “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). Although He did not personally participate in our sin, He became a part of us, bearing the guilt of the human race. It is the purest selfishness to want to appropriate Christ, yet refuse to receive His love for sinners!
In fact, we have infinitely more reason to feel a kinship with sinners than did our sinless Lord, for we ourselves are sinners; but we find that our natural human pride too easily holds us back from the warm empathy that Christ felt for them. How to learn to experience this kinship is our need.
There is no better way to begin than by learning to recognize the truth of our corporate involvement in the sin of the whole world. Although we were not physically present at the events of Calvary two thousand years ago, “in Adam” the whole human race was there. As surely as we are by nature “in Adam,” so surely are we in Adam’s sin.
How can this be so?
Let any of us be left without redemption to develop to the full the evil latent in his own soul, let him be left to be tempted to the full as others have been tempted, and he will duplicate the sin of others if given enough time and opportunity. None of us dares to say, “1 could never do that!”
If Abraham’s great-grandson “yet in the loins” of Abraham “when Melchisedeck met him” paid tithes “in Abraham,” it is easy to see how every one of us partakes together of the corporate body of humanity. If Levi paid tithes “in Abraham,” so do we, for we are Abraham’s spiritual descendants as much as Levi was. (See. Hebrews 7:9, 10).
In the same way, we partake of the corporate sin of humanity in the crucifixion of Christ at Calvary. The sin of sins that underlies all sin, and of which we are all alike guilty in a corporate sense, is the murder of the Son of God.