Repent!! part 1

Some words in the Bible speak of 3-part ideas. Baptize means to use a medium (fire, water, the Holy Spirit) as a means through which to take someone or something out of something into something else. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10 that Israel was baptized into Moses, for example. From here to there, through that.

Sanctify means “set apart.” “Set apart to Yahweh” means something good. “Set apart as a temple prostitute” means something bad. Being set apart is being made holy to that. You were this, now you have been set apart to that.

Repent is a word that means you thought one way, then something happened, and now you think a different way. It comes from two Greek words that together mean changed knowledge (meta-noeo). Oddly, it doesn’t mean changed behavior. That error is classically presented as truth by all the major evangelical publishing houses, though. 180 degree change in your behavior.

John told some people (Luke 3:8) that they needed to bear fruit that proved they had repented. Clearly, that means that he did not equate repentance with changed behavior, but demanded that it was a change of mind that should produce changed behavior.