From Bob Hamp.

“Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”  So simple, yet so many ways we can misunderstand.  I think the key to understanding this phrase, is understanding who it is is that spoke it and how He might be thinking.

Men and women who have spent a lifetime, (or even a day) in church are so bent towards connecting Scripture with behavior control, otherwise known as “The Knowledge of Good and Evil”, that almost all our experience and perception comes through that lens.

Repentance is much more about the blind seeing, than it is about bad people trying to be good.

Jesus never really met a man who was not blind.  At least not in light of His way of seeing.  Jesus could see all things, including the hearts and minds of men, and the swirling activity of the spiritual realm around us.  Because He saw clearly, He could look at every man in every situation and see every aspect of both.  Motives, hidden thoughts, fear, and even the spiritual forces lurking within each exchange, all were as visible to him, as traffic signs are to us.  Such was the vista in the Kingdom to which He was accustomed.

Crippled as we are, we try to perceive reality through a singular set of “senses”. Sight, sound, touch, taste, fragrance.  All these are senses which apprehend a single realm; the physical.  Perhaps within this arena we could perceive clues, signs and symptoms of other arenas, but we could not see them.  Like seeing tree branches move, while not seeing the wind that moved them.

Walking through a dark room, we would trip over furniture and obstacles we could not see. Turn on the light, the natural result is a different set of responses. Step around the table, stop and turn when solid objects are in our path.

Repentance is about changing the way we see.  The natural result is a different set of responses.  Repentance is about using a set of senses beyond the physical.  Intuition, wisdom, revelation, faith (yeah, you remeber, the assurance of things NOT SEEN!) Operating by these senses, behavior change is a natural result of seeing clearly, as opposed to the application of will power.  When we try to produce behavior change without repentance (Seeing Differently; with different senses) this is called, “The Knowledge of Good and Evil”

Repent for the Kingdom of the Heavens is at arms reach.

After a deeper study of repentance in the original language, I think we’ve got it wrong.

I was reading today in Acts 2 and 3, and I was reading from some newer translations.  Two scriptures stood out:

Peter’s words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:37-38, emphasis mine)

Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away. (Acts 3:19, emphasis mine)

You hear this term quite often, “Repent of your sins,” implying that repentance of sins is a turning away from sins, to stop sinning. But, I don’t think that’s what the original language was implying.  If you search through a more accurate word-for-word translation (KJV or NKJV), I can’t find a single instance of Jesus saying, “Repent of your sins.” He never said that.  He said, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”

Look at the original Greek word for “repent” – metanoeo. It comes from two root words, meta and noeo.

Meta means an over-arching change.  As Bob Hamp points out, there’s a difference between “morphing”  and “meta-morphing”. Morphing is changing from within something similar.  Meta-morphing, on the other hand, is changing from a caterpillar to a butterfly. It’s an over-arching change–a broader, more high-level change.

Noeo is where we get the word Knowledge.  It means to think, to perceive, to understand.

So, combine the two meta-noeo, and you have a word that means “an over-arching change in how you understand or perceive”.

The message Jesus had for us was not “stop sinning so that you change your thinking” – his message was “change the way you think and you’ll stop sinning”.

What most people miss today is that our sins are dealt with, done, covered, taken care of.  Jesus died “once for all” (Hebrews 10:10) and provided “eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12). He no longer has to die for your sins. All your sins (past, present and future) were taken care of once and for all.

Now that are sins are gone, we need to repent.

From BobHamp.com

I pulled into the parking lot. What I saw with my eyes was the same thing I saw every day. But something was not right. I could not explain it but I could describe it. Something felt amiss, not right, out of place. A disturbance in the Force if you will. The cars were parked exactly as they should have been, the doors were locked as they should have been. But the more things appeared normal, the more the tension grew inside. What I was seeing with my eyes was not lining up with… with… what I… knew.

I opened the secure door to enter the detention facility and for the first time what I heard with my senses lined up with what I sensed with my… guts… inner man… intuition… okay, call it spirit. The noises coming down the hallway were chaotic and carried a sense of urgency. I moved quickly now to find my co-workers in a restraint situation, but it was more. The whole hallway, and both wings of locked rooms were a mess. Noise and clutter told me that this restraint was not a matter of one misbehaving resident, but a major incident involving the whole facility.

How did I know that something was going on that day at the Juvenile Detention Center? I can probably explain it better today, than I could at the time. It is this sense on which I want to elaborate. We have ways of knowing with which we must grow increasingly familiar.

My friend Alan Smith says that our ways of knowing are like contact lenses (or did I say that…? I forget) We look through them all the time but we seldom look at them. Yet it is these very lenses that either allow or disallow input into our awareness. Not only that but, different ways of knowing allow different types of input.

The way I know quantum physics is not the same way I know I am in love. The way I know about unseen danger, is different than the way I know how to make cheesecake. And the way I know God is different than the way I know good and evil.

If we try to know God in the same way we know good and evil, we are set up for multiple traps.

Knowing God takes place in our Spirit and flows into our soul and body
Knowing good and evil takes place in our soul and cannot access our spirit

Knowing God comes at His initiative and our receptivity and accesses His strength.
Knowing good and evil comes at our initiative and depends on the strength of our will.

Knowing God keeps us rightly aligned with reality and others
Knowing good and evil puts us on a comparison basis where we struggle with either pride or shame

Knowing God is like plugging into a power source outside of us
Knowing good and evil makes us the power source

We can study or even teach the same passage of scripture, even use the same outline, perhaps even use the same word choices, and have completely different impacts because of the above distinctions. God can produce effects that we cannot.

Have you ever had someone who was angry at you, utilize words that portray that they are not angry? Yet their posture, their gritted teeth, the tension of their jaw, and countless other signs tell you that their words and the energy in their soul simply do not match.

This is what happens when we try to use God’s words, but operate from the knowledge of good and evil.

Repentance is the act of shifting from knowing good and evil to knowing God. Change your lenses. You can look again at what you have seen all of your life, and it appears brand new. Change your lenses.

Or as Jesus would say, “if you will have eyes that see”. I am pretty sure He was encouraging us to Think Differently.

It’s a good thing that Cherubim was there with that sword.

Form BobHamp.com

When Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, I am certain that the Garden was also kicked out of them. Life in the Garden was filled with unique attributes. Life outside… well, let’s look.

After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. Genesis 3:24

From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Matthew 4:17

We first must understand that all of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. It has been translated through the generations to give us the English Bibles we have today. Translation is a tricky process, as you cannot take the translator out of the process. Translators have their own perceptions that affect the process. Kind of like human communication in every arena. Teaching in other nations, when my own interpreter does not understand the concept I am conveying, they cannot accurately convey the meanings embedded in a teaching.

Let’s look at the verse above through different eyes. Anytime our eyes view God as mean, or rigid, we must assume we are viewing Him incorrectly. I fear verses like those above could lend us to viewing God incorrectly.

First, the story. Adam and Eve have just sinned, and God has come to describe what comes next after their mess-up. They took into themselves the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This changed everything, and God began to adjust some things to go with this new circumstance. His last adjustment is described in the verse above.

He set a cherubim with a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life. Darn that cherubim. Stupid sword… we should be able to get to the tree of life. Shouldn’t we?

What if the english here is not an accurate picture of what God set in motion. We picture a vigilant guard, standing in protection mode to prevent access.

The “Flaming” sword does not imply flames for intimidation or destruction, rather the Hebrew word here, lahat means “enwrappping” or magic, covertness, and is sometimes translated as enchantment. The word implies then, that whatever is happening with this sword has an effect on perception. Add to this the word haphak which we translate “flashing back and forth” and is more accurately understood as changing or distorting, and we see that this cherubim is using his sword to disguise or hide the WAY through distorting or disrupting our perception.

Now, what is he guarding through this method of disguise, the tree? No, even the English says he is guarding, or distorting the way to the tree. So our mind pictures him blocking a path. But the Hebrew word is derek, which can mean a literal path, but more strongly indicates a mode of living , or a course of life. I might say a way of thinking.

Put it all together and we see that God has placed this angelic creature here with a mechanism which will confuse our perceptions, so that the way we might try to locate the Tree of life will not actually locate it. In other words, we cannot access the Tree of Life through our way of perceiving, through the knowledge of good and evil. Trying to access the Tree of Life through our knowledge of good and evil is a bit like trying to know love through quantum physics.

There is a way to get to the tree. Humans knowing good stuff and bad stuff is not that way.

Not only did we leave the Garden, but the way we perceived reality in the Garden left us. It had to.

So how do we access the Tree?

The second verse listed above is the answer to this question.

Jesus tells us, “repent, for the Kingdomof Heaven is near”.

Because we have tried to access the Tree of Life through the Knowledge of Good and Evil we read that verse like this, “Straighten up, God is coming soon.”

But the word “REPENT” is not at all what we think. This word is all about perceptions. Specifically it is about changing our mode of perceptions. Sound familiar? The word repent means “think differently”. Not just different. Differently. Change the way you take in the world around you. Becuase the Kingdom of God, the reality of His Spirit, the Source of Life… is NEAR.

You cannot access it by doing good, and avoiding bad, you must change the frequency on which you are receiving. Apparently I will have to write more about this in the days ahead…for now, begin to think differently. Could the Tree be near right now, but hidden from your eyes?

From Alan Smith’s Blog

Adam and Eve just had one rule to follow. It was a simple rule. Easy to understand. I think it’s good things were so simple because they weren’t designed to live by rules anyway. The only rule was – don’t live by rules.

Humans were designed to live by God’s life and presence, directed moment by moment out of a place of relationship and surrender. We were designed to have God as our source. We were designed to love God and to be loved by God.

Love, in order to be love, must be freely chosen. Love that is not freely chosen is not love. Love that is compelled is not love. Love that is forced is not love. Love that is taken is not love. Love, in its very essence, requires freedom: the freedom to choose love.

If there is a genuine freedom to choose love, there must be a genuine freedom to NOT choose love. There must be an option. There must be an alternative. There must be a way to freely exercise the will to choose that which love is not. If humans are to genuinely have the freedom to choose to live by God’s life and presence in moment by moment surrender with God as their source, there must be the possibility of choosing a different source.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was necessary in the Garden of Eden for this reason.  This tree is a different source: the knowledge of good and evil. At its worst this kind of living gravitates towards the experience of all things evil. At its best this kind of living strives to avoid evil and do good in an effort to perform correctly and merit God’s favor. The trap of religion is that often it simply entices us to move from an evil branch to a good branch within the same tree. We give up sinful behaviors and adopt new “good” behaviors. Those that do this poorly feel a great deal of condemnation and a deep compulsion to try harder. Those that do this well feel a great sense of superiority and smugness. They are self-righteous.

In either case, this is no way to live. What’s your source?

Genuine repentance doesn’t just change from evil branches to good within the Tree of Knowledge. Genuine repentance switches trees entirely. Genuine repentance gives up all reliance upon self: my knowledge, my understanding, my effort, my performance. Genuine repentance chooses to live by a new source: God’s life and presence.