NOTES for Mat 3:8

How do we evaluate our life before God, our spiritual state, our relations with the people around us? If we think that everything is fine with us, "no worse than others," and are satisfied with what is, then we need nothing else, and God as well. There is no repentance in this, not even its beginning. Repentance begins with the realization that not everything is in order, that all our efforts do not allow us to reach a life truly worthy of the human person, that we need God and His saving grace. That is, the first movement of repentance is the rejection of oneself as one is, refusal to agree to one's own sin, renunciation of it. The second step of repentance is turning to God, acknowledging the need for His presence, bringing Him our failure, and waiting from Him for our cleansing, healing, and filling with life.

But repentance also has a third component: the fruit of which John reminds us. Our expectation of change is meaningless if we do not show our readiness to change. We show it not by "mood," not by word, but by deed. We must begin to live as righteously as if we had already received everything from God. Then He will receive freedom to give us strength to accomplish this righteousness, to fill our actions with inner content: love. This will be the saving grace with which God answers our repentance.