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Matthew 4:17 is the seventeenth verse of the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. In the previous verses Jesus returned to Galilee after hearing of the arrest of John the Baptist and then left Nazareth for Capernaum. This verse reports that once in Capernaum, Jesus began to preach.
Nature of Repentance: The passage emphasizes the importance of repentance as a response to divine revelation. Jesus expected that His miracles would lead to a change of heart and behavior. Divine Judgment: Jesus' words affirm a future day of judgment, with degrees of punishment based on the opportunities given and rejected.
In the Reformed tradition, John Calvin wrote that repentance "may be justly defined to be a true conversion of our life to God, proceeding from a serious fear of God, and consisting in the mortification of the flesh and of the old man, and in the vivification of the Spirit." He further said that "it will be useful to amplify and explain the ...
In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads: But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. The New International Version translates the passage as: But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'
In Repentance: A Cosmic Shift of Mind and Heart, Edward J.Anton observes that in most dictionaries and in the minds of most Christians the primary meaning of "repent" is to look back on past behavior with sorrow, self-reproach, or contrition, sometimes with an amendment of life. But neither Jesus nor John the Baptist says to look back in sorrow.
For when Jesus died for man's sin, it was enough to purchase man's salvation and man cannot add anything to it. Yet, the atonement involves more than just sacrifice. The process of redemption, the restoration of man's broken relationship to at-one-ment with God, was not completed at the cross, else there would be no more sin or suffering.
William Holman Hunt's 19th century The Light of the World is an allegory of Jesus knocking on the door of the sinner's heart.. The Sinner's prayer (also called the Consecration prayer and Salvation prayer) is a Christian evangelical term referring to any prayer of repentance, prayed by individuals who feel sin in their lives and have the desire to form or renew a personal relationship.
The response of man is to be reparation through adoration, prayer, and sacrifice. In Roman Catholic tradition, an act of reparation is a prayer or devotion with the intent to expiate the "sins of others", e.g. for the repair of the sin of blasphemy, the sufferings of Jesus Christ or as Acts of Reparation to the Virgin Mary.