This post was first published on ROOTSS on Saturday, 2nd June 2007
Mt Sinai teachings are those that make a person come under the Law, whereas Mt Zion teachings are those that reinforces the gospel of grace.
Today, I will blog about another pet Mt Sinai teaching -- that of repentence.
Under the Law (ie. Mt Sinai's teachings), repentence would refer to the action of a person beating his breast, or putting on sackcloth. Even to this very day, there are Orthodox Jews who stand next to the ruins of the walls of the temple in Jerusalem and wail (that's why it is called the Wailing Wall).
How about under Grace (ie. Mt Zion's teachings)?
The Greek word for repentence is metanoeo (Strong's G3340) which is derived from the words meta (Strong's G3326) which means "to change" and noeo (Strong's G3539) which means "the mind".
Let's say that we used to have this notion that our sicknesses or illnesses is from God in order to "keep us humble" or "to punish us because of our sin".
Then we discover that it is actually the devil who "kills, steals and destroys" our health (Jn 10:10a) and all punishment for our sin has already been meted on the body of our Lord, and by His stripes, we have been healed.
As a result of this revelation, our mental picture of God changes from one that is "out to get us" to one that is "for us and not against us".
This process of renewing of our mind to be in line with God's Word is effectively changing our mind or metanoeo. In other words, repentence!
As we progress along on our spiritual journey and learn more and more about our God, our opinion of Him changes for the better. We are undergoing repentence whenever that happens.
So am I an advocate of repentence? Most definitely! There are still parts of the old man that needs to replaced with the new man, and there are new truths about Him that remain to be undercovered each day.
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