The Fruits of Repentance

God’s coming to deliver the Jews out of exile was at hand when John the Baptist went out preaching in the wilderness of Judea (Luke 3:1–6; see Isa. 40:1–5). Yet since only holy people can meet the Lord unafraid, repentance was a key theme of John’s ministry, and he called for the Jews to turn from their sin lest they be destroyed when God arrived. Repentance is a change of mind regarding our sin that bears fruit in a desire to obey the Lord, though we will never serve Him perfectly before we are glorified in heaven. Of course, we cannot serve our Creator at all if we do not know His will, and truly repenting causes us to want to know His law. John Calvin comments, “A true feeling of repentance produces in the mind of the poor sinner an eager desire to know what is the will or command of God.”

Thus, we are not surprised to see the people who responded to John’s call for repentance ask him what they had to do (Luke 3:10). John told them to “bear fruits in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:8), so they were really questioning him regarding what the fruits of repentance look like. In answering them, John speaks to three different kinds of people who could be found in the crowds who came out to be baptized. First, John responds to those whom we might call the “ordinary folk,” everyday people who held no special role in society. He tells them to share their extra tunic and food with those who had none (Luke 3:11). The tunic was the most basic piece of clothing that Jews owned in the first century, a garment that they wore under all other clothing. If one did not own even one tunic, one would have been so poor that he owned nothing else to wear. John was telling all the crowd, not just the wealthy, to be generous and meet the basic needs of other people in dire straits. He was calling them to show compassion. Dr. R.C. Sproul writes in his commentary that “the fruit of conversion is a heart that loves people—our neighbors—whether they’re believers or unbelievers” (see also James 2:14–26).

The two other groups that John addressed were tax collectors and soldiers. In the first century, tax collectors often collected more for the Roman government than they were supposed to, and soldiers often intimidated people into paying them off to avoid false charges that could result in imprisonment. The fruits of repentance for these two groups meant that they had to stop engaging in that kind of abusive behavior (Luke 3:12–14).