{"id":62,"date":"2025-07-17T02:44:51","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T02:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/truththatfrees.com\/?p=62"},"modified":"2025-08-22T00:11:37","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T00:11:37","slug":"christianity-and-repentance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/truththatfrees.com\/?p=62","title":{"rendered":"Christ and Repentance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The fundamental difference between Christianity and other religious systems, lies in two key areas: <strong>how they address sin and how they approach the sinner.<\/strong> This distinction highlights the unique nature of Christ&#8217;s work and the foundational concept underlying all religions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From a subjective\/personal perspective, these differences concern sin and the individual sinner. Objectively, they focus on the <strong>forgiveness of sin<\/strong> and the <strong>acceptance of the sinner.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other systems, even modern humanitarianism (if they even acknowledge sin), can only abstractly point to God for the forgiveness of sin. What remains an abstract concept in these systems becomes a <strong>concrete reality in Christ.<\/strong> He offers forgiveness directly because he embodies it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Regarding the second concept, the sinner, other systems typically require individuals to first cease being a sinner and become penitent through some internal or external process before they are welcomed. They aim to make someone penitent <em>before<\/em> welcoming them to God. <strong>Christ, however, first welcomes the sinner to God, and in doing so, prompts their repentance.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In essence, other systems demand righteousness, while Christ imparts life. This is why Christ is often referred to as the &#8220;Physician&#8221; \u2014 healthy individuals don&#8217;t need a doctor, but the sick do. Christ came not to call the righteous, but <strong>sinners<\/strong> \u2014 not just to repentance, but to himself and to the Kingdom, which is where true repentance begins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paraphrased from <em>The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah<\/em>; Edersheim, Alfred; Oxford University Press; From the chapter The Call of Matthew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The fundamental difference between Christianity and other religious systems, lies in two key areas: how they address sin and how they approach the sinner. This distinction highlights the unique nature&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-devotional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/truththatfrees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/truththatfrees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/truththatfrees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truththatfrees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truththatfrees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/truththatfrees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81,"href":"https:\/\/truththatfrees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions\/81"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truththatfrees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/truththatfrees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truththatfrees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truththatfrees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}