Third Sunday After Epiphany (Year B)

In today's lesson we will focus on the nation of Nineveh’s dramatic turning around, metanoia, and repentance, after they heard and responded appropriately to God’s message about their wickedness and His planned destruction from the prophet Jonah. Let's keep in mind that repentance involves more than feeling sorry for one's actions. Repentance really means changing one's whole outlook, approaches, relationships and actions. In the gospel of Christ repentance is living life in the mind of the spirit, after having lived one’s life in the mind of the flesh.

The conversion and radical transformation of the Assyrians suggests that their rulers and people must have experienced a radical healing from spiritual blindness and resurrection spiritual death. They realized an awesome spiritual awakening and obvious Christ-centered spiritual growth, and spiritual maturity. Because of their true repentance and living their lives in the mind of the spirit, they experienced the glorious and marvelous compassion and redeeming works of God in their daily lives and affairs.

God’s immediate loving, compassionate and forgiving response to their true repentance, resulted in the radical turn around in their whole outlook and lives. This Christ-centered, Holy Spirit-based human potential for true repentance, forever resides in the spiritual body of all human beings. Repentance can be experienced in the hearts, minds, relationships and lives of those having the most sinful, lost and pagan attitudes, relationships and lifestyles.

God’s response to the people of Nineveh repentance reassures people in all traditions, religions, cultures, ethnic and secular groups, that our universal Father, the Godhead, never deals erratically or unjustly with human beings and his creation. God's actions and reactions are based on our heart-based response to the mystery, presence and call from the indwelling Christ, the Logos within the spiritual body of Jesus Christ and every person, individually and collectively, throughout our planet earth (Genesis 1:26-27, 1 Samuel 16:7).

The bible declare that in the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ the Image and Likeness of the Godhead, became incarnate in Jesus Christ's heart, mind, body and affairs, through his spiritual body (John 1:1-5, Colossians 2:9). After his baptism by John the Baptist, and beginning with his temptations in the wilderness; through faith, humility and obedience, Jesus Christ as Messiah, demonstrated that he crossed out and gave no place to Satan, the mind of the flesh in his life (Luke 4:1-13). Throughout his life and ministry Jesus Christ discerned, listened to and fully obeyed the voice, call and word of the indwelling, incarnate and omnipresent Godhead (John 5:19, 30, 6:38). Jesus lived his life in the mind of the spirit (Romans 8:12-14)

Jesus Christ admonished apostles, disciples and believers, in all traditions, religions, cultures, ethnic and secular groups, who choose to follow him in living the Paschal Mystery of kingdom living here on earth, to practice self-denial and crossing out the mind of the flesh (Luke 9:23). It is also interesting that in Luke 9:21-22, Jesus sternly warned his disciples to tell absolutely no man that he was Christ, (Logos, ADOMAI, JEHOVAH). Jesus Christ like the apostle Paul recognized that he had an invisible spiritual body, that was eternally one with God and a natural or physical body that was the visible temple of the Godhead (Acts 17:28, 1 Corinthians 15:42-52).

When a person repents in surrender to Logos, ADONAI and JEHOVAH, the indwelling Christ and the Holy Spirit, through their spiritual bodies, removes the blocks and barriers, which previously prevented their resurrection from spiritual death. When spiritually awake, transformed persons in the mind of the spirit will discern that God’s grace, forgiveness and steadfast love have always been fully present and available to all people, through the indwelling Christ, within their spiritual bodies. Spiritually awake believers in all traditions, religions, cultures, ethnic and secular groups therefore discern, seek, worship and serve Christ as Lord within Jesus Christ, within themselves and within the spiritually body of all people.

This initial realization of the Paschal Mystery, through one's own spiritual body is truly startling. Christ-centered spiritually awake human beings will never again have the same outlook and attitude towards God and other human beings and God’s creation as those who live their lives in the mind of the flesh. In the story about Jonah and the Nineties, the Man of Lawlessness, the mind of the flesh, has been revealed (2 Thessalonians 2:1-10). After resurrection from spiritual death, spiritually awake persons will encounter Logos, as the glorified Christ, in their spiritual body (Acts 9:4-7, Colossians 1:26-27). This mysterious personal encounter and experience of transformation by the Holy Spirit and Logos as a result of true repentance, is very difficult to put in words.

It is very significant that in Matthew 12:38-42, Jesus used this story of people of Nineveh’s great turn around to illustrate his assessment of the attitudes and behavior of the religious teachers and leaders in his religion, who rejected him, his message and ministry. Many remained hard-hearted and amazingly unrepentant in their erroneous thoughts, teachings and practices. Did not Jesus Christ as Messiah, direct all believers to God’s presence as Christ, the Logos, in his spiritual body and in the spiritual body of every person [Genesis 1:26-27, John 1:1-13, 17:20-26; Colossians 1:26-27]?

Do you think the people of Nineveh were willfully evil and wicked? Repent and believe the Good News remains the dominant themes in the story of the people of Nineveh and the Gospel of Christ, as revealed in Jesus Christ (Jonah 3:3-5, Mark 1:15). Let us like the Ninevites, repent by turning from the mind of the flesh and live our lives in the mind of the spirit. God’s compassion, forgiveness, grace, truth and glory are fully available to all who truly repent and turn to Christ.

Angel of the week: ‘Reverence’

Prayer of the Week: 'I am in tune with Christ, the wellspring of Life'

Modified from ‘How To Change Your Life’ by Dr. Ernest Holmes