<p>3:8<em> Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of repentance</em>-It seems likely that Paul went to hear John the Baptist preach; &quot;there went out to him all the land of Judea and they of Jerusalem&quot; (Mk. 1:5), and at this time Paul was living in Jerusalem. I believe Paul heard John and was convicted by him of Christ. John preached the need to &quot;bring forth fruits meet unto repentance&quot; (Mt. 3:8); and Paul made those his own watchwords in his world-wide preaching (Acts 26:20)- Paul describes his preaching in language which is directly alluding to how John preached. As John said that he was&nbsp;<em>sent</em>&nbsp;to baptize, but especially to witness of Christ (Jn. 1:33), so Paul felt that he too was&nbsp;<em>sent to baptize</em>, but his emphasis was more on the preaching of Christ than physically baptizing (1 Cor. 1:17).</p>
<p>&ldquo;Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of repentance&quot; must be connected with our Lord's description of the Gentile believers as &quot;a nation bringing forth the (vineyard) fruits&quot; of the Kingdom (Mt. 21:43). These are defined in Rom. 14:17: &quot;The Kingdom of God is... righteousness, and peace, and joy&quot;. Christ's parable of the vine in Jn. 15 explains that it is the word abiding in us which brings forth fruit. Bringing forth fruit is therefore a way of life (cp. Rom. 6:21,22). In each aspect in which we 'bear fruit', we have in a sense 'repented'. Our repentance and fruit-bearing is not something which we can set time limits on within this life. Christ would have been satisfied if Israel had borne at least some immature fruit (Lk. 13:7). Only when there is no fruit at all, in any aspect of spiritual life, will Christ reject us. Some will bear more fruit than others- some sixty, some an hundredfold. Mt. 3:8 connects repentance with fruit bearing. This shows that God may recognize&nbsp;<em>degrees</em>&nbsp;of repentance and response to His word, as He recognizes degrees of fruit bearing. It is far too simplistic for us to label some of our brethren as having repented and others as being totally unrepentant. In any case, the fruits of repentance are brought forth unto&nbsp;<em>God</em>, not necessarily to fellow believers (Rom. 7:4). There is a marked dearth of evidence to show that a believer must prove his repentance in outward terms before his brethren can accept him.&nbsp;The &ldquo;fruits&rdquo; John had in mind are made more explicit in Luke 3. In order to prepare the way of the Lord, to make a level passage for Him, the man with two coats should give to him who had none, and likewise share his food (Lk. 3:11). So the &lsquo;equality&rsquo; and levelling was to be one of practical care for others. We have to ask, how often we have shared our food, clothing or money with those who don&rsquo;t have&hellip; for this is all part of preparing for the Lord&rsquo;s coming. It could even be that when there is more of what Paul calls &ldquo;an equality&rdquo; amongst the community of believers, that then the way of the Lord will have been prepared. And He will then return.</p>
<p>And yet despite the demand for &ldquo;fruit&rdquo;, John the Baptist showed a spirit of concession to human weakness in his preaching. He told the publicans: &ldquo;Extort no more than that which is appointed you&rdquo; (Lk. 3:13 RV). He tacitly accepted that these men would be into extortion. But within limits, he let it go. Likewise he told soldiers to be content with their wages- not to quit the job. And seeing there were no Roman Legions in Judaea at his time [Josephus,&nbsp;<em>Antiquities</em>&nbsp;18.5.1], these were likely Jewish soldiers. He didn&rsquo;t tell them to quit their jobs, but to live with integrity within those jobs. He told the soldiers to be content with their wages- implying he expected them to not throw in their job. This is juxtaposed with the command for them to do no violence. But not grumbling about wages was as fundamental an issue for John as not doing physical violence to people. To have as Paul put it &ldquo;Godliness with contentment&rdquo; [another of his allusions to John&rsquo;s preaching?] is as important as not doing violence. And yet our tendency is to think that moaning about our wages is a perfectly normal and acceptable thing to do, whereas violence is of an altogether different order. It&rsquo;s like Paul hitting the Corinthians for their divisiveness, when if we&rsquo;d been writing to them we would likely have focused upon their immorality and false doctrine. John would have been far less demanding had he simply told the publicans and soldiers to quit their jobs. By asking them to continue, and yet to live out their lives within those jobs with Godly principles, He was being far more demanding. John places complaining about wages [a common human fault] in juxtaposition with doing violence to others (Lk. 3:14)- to show that in his serious call to a devout and holy life, there are no such things as little sins. Ez. 16:49,50 defines the sins of Sodom as including &ldquo;pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor&hellip; they were haughty, and committed abomination&rdquo;. The abomination of their sexual perversion is placed last in the list, as if to emphasize that all the other sins were just as much sin. Likewise Paul writes to the Corinthians about their failures, but he doesn&rsquo;t start where I would have started- with their drunkenness at the memorial meeting. Instead he starts off with their disunity. Those things which we may consider as lesser sins, the Bible continually lists together with those things we have been conditioned into thinking are the greater sins. Clearest of all is the way Paul lists schism and hatred in his lists of sins that will exclude from the Kingdom. The Anglo-Saxon worldview has taught that sexual sin is so infinitely far worse than a bit of argument within a church. But is this really right&hellip;?</p>