EVERY THOUGHT CAPTIVE: A Life of Repentance

A Life of Repentance

The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering these things about Him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest Him. Jesus then said, “I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to Him who sent Me. You will seek Me and you will not find Me. Where I am you cannot come.” The Jews said to one another, “Where does this Man intend to go that we will not find Him? Does He intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What does He mean by saying, ‘You will seek Me and you will not find Me,’ and, ‘Where I am you cannot come’?”

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this He said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” So there was a division among the people over Him. Some of them wanted to arrest Him, but no one laid hands on Him.

The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring Him?” The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this Man!” The Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in Him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.” Nicodemus, who had gone to Him before, and who was one of them, said to them, Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”

John 7:32-52

This is when Jesus gives the teaching in our passage: “I will be with you a little longer and then I am going to Him who sent Me. You will seek Me and you will not find Me. Where I am you cannot come” (John 7:33–34), and “if anyone thirsts, let Him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given” (John 7:37–38). Once again, the crowd is divided and even more people want Him arrested, but the officers do not lay hands on Him because they themselves believe Him.

What is so offensive about Jesus? We would be naive to think that He would be any less divisive if He were living in our day. Jesus tells us the reason for His offense: “because I testify about [the world] that its works are evil” (John 7:7), and because we do not do God’s will (John 7:17). We hate to have our sin exposed. In this passage, Jesus tells us about His future suffering and exaltation and calls everyone to come to Him for salvation, saying “whoever believes in Me” will receive the Holy Spirit. This is not the first time Jesus says things like this. He told Nicodemus, “you must be born again” by the Spirit of God (John 3:7). He told the woman at the well, “everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13–14), and He exposes her sin in no uncertain terms. In this passage He speaks to an open crowd at a Jewish festival. Everywhere He goes He is telling people to repent and claims that salvation is found in no one else but Him. We have entered the “I Am” section of John’s Gospel, and he will say many more such things. What is remarkable about Jesus is not just that He eats with tax collectors and sinners, but that He interacts with them in such a way that they are both drawn to Him and repent. In His first sermon, Jesus says, “repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). He is always testifying to us that our works are evil, and He is always calling, “come now, let us reason together: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18). No one is exempt from this call. As Martin Luther said, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said ‘Repent,’ He intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.”