to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has made you well” (Lk 18:42). After healing the man born blind, Jesus approached him and said, “Do you believe in the Son of man?” (Jn 9:35). Before raising Lazarus from the tomb, Jesus twice spoke to Martha about the necessity of faith. When she hesitated to believe that he could raise Lazarus, he again told her, “Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” (Jn 11:40).
Consider
Repentant Sinners
Jesus’ command to repent during his public ministry needs to be understood in light of the history of prophetic calls for Israel to turn from its sins. Jesus does not want the destruction of the sinner any more than the prophets wanted Israel destroyed, but rather he wants the sinner to turn away from evil and live a new life. Two women exemplify this in the Gospel of John.
In one case, after a Samaritan woman expresses a desire for the water that Jesus gives as “a spring of water welling up to eternal life,” he tells her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” She lies to his face and says, “I have no husband.” Instead of accusing her of boldfaced lying, Jesus says, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly” (Jn 4:14, 16, 17-18). At that point, she recognizes that Jesus is a prophet and eventually learns that he is the Christ. She then announces and preaches about him to her whole town, becoming the ideal repentant sinner who turns from her public sin to public profession of faith in Jesus Christ.
The second woman is caught in the act of adultery, and her accusers demand that Jesus condemn her to death. He turns their demand to a type of acceptance of the punishment, though with a twist: the qualification required of those executing her is that they be without sin first. One by one they leave, beginning with the oldest men there, and he, the Sinless One, is left alone with the woman. The one sinless man there tells her, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again” (Jn 8:11).
Forgiveness of sin is not acceptance of evil but rather a summons to become good.
Lack of Repentance
On the other hand, a number of men exemplify the lack of repentance. In one episode, Jesus refuses to answer the Pharisees’ question unless they first answer his question about whether John’s baptism is from God or men. They refuse to answer, not because of their commitment to any position but because they fear a trap, and they will not repent.
Stop here and read Matthew 21:23-32 in your own Bible.
Love of Truth Versus Love of Self
At the heart of this dialogue is the issue of a love of truth versus love of self. The chief priests and elders argue with no concern for the truth about John’s baptism for repentance from sin but for the way they will sound. Fear of the people and of loss of power or influence concerns these leaders more than does the need for repentance and the validity of John’s mission. Such disregard for the truth makes their own repentance or capacity to accept Jesus’ Gospel impossible. In that light, we see Jesus talk about true repentance and their need for it in connection with faith in the parable of the man, his two sons, and the vineyard.
The Final Days
“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress,” St. Paul writes. “For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people. For among them are those who make their way into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 3:1-7).
This passage and others predict that the final days of human history will be times of stress brought on by the sins of the people who reject repentance and faith. Rather than using this text to determine whether one is living in the end times, one may do better to use it as an examination of conscience for anyone who has difficulty accepting the truth of the faith. Prior to trying to prove the truth of various points of the content of our faith, everyone does well to examine those personal motivations that serve to promote self-centered and immoral behaviors or tendencies. Then, if any such are discovered, repent of those sins in anticipation of examining Jesus’ Gospel as to whether it is true and worthy of one’s act of faith.
Christians do well to note that just as St. John taught that in addition to the final Antichrist there will be many antichrists (“As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come” [1 Jn 2:18]), so also have many times of stress occurred during which these descriptions of human sin were appropriate.
Tax collectors were so hated that a pious Jew was not allowed to marry into a family that had a tax collector; prostitutes may have been used by various men, but they were rejected by society, perhaps because they knew too many secret sins of the men. Both groups were like the first son in the parable who refused to obey, and yet when John preached repentance they received his baptism so that they could turn their lives around from sin to virtue. They accepted the truth of their sinful background and turned back to God. The chief priests and elders were so focused on their own position that they could not accept the truth of their own sinfulness and repent. Note that here, as in Jesus’ opening sermon, repentance comes before faith: the ability to accept the truth of one’s own life and its moral failures is the precondition for faith in the truth of Jesus’ Gospel.
Investigate
Believing in Jesus’ Ministry
In addition to exhorting the individual to have faith, Jesus taught the necessity of believing in him throughout his ministry. Read the following passages and note which one is the most inspirational to you.
| PASSAGE | NOTES |
| John 3:36 | |
| John 6:27-29 | |
| John 6:35 | |
| John 12:36 | |
| John 12:44 |
Persecution of the Church
From its beginning and through the centuries, the Church has experienced persecution — about 75 million Christians have died for their faith in Jesus Christ. The Romans conducted ten official persecutions, the worst by far being the last, decreed by Diocletian from 303 to 313. There were the barbarian invasions from 375 to about 600; the attackers of the tenth through eleventh centuries were the Norsemen, the Magyars, and the Saracens; plus there were centuries of attacks by various Muslim invaders, such as the Seljuk Turks, the Fatimids and the Mamelukes of Egypt, Tamerlane, and the Ottoman Turks. The secularized and atheistic French Republic frequently persecuted the Church and killed many of its citizens for their Catholic faith. Thirty-five million martyrs died before 1900.
However, the twentieth century witnessed the greatest age of persecution, at the hands of National Socialism (Nazism), the nationalistic empire of Japan, and most especially at the hands of atheistic Communist governments. From the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 through 1999, more than 40 million Christians were martyred (see John L. Allen, Jr., The Global War on Christians [New York: Image Books], 2013). In contrast, as bad as they were, the wars of Christianity, including the Crusades (about 650,000 killed over 250 years) and the Inquisition (fewer than 10,000 killed over its 600 years), have been responsible for 2.65 million deaths over 2,000 years of Christianity (see research at www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html, and Steve Weidenkopf, The Glory of the Crusades [El Cajon, CA: Catholic