Big Idea: God requires repentance before it is too late, but people are more concerned with keeping the rules than with God’s agenda.

Understanding the Text

These are two separate pericopes, brought together here simply for the convenience of this commentary.

First, repentance has been at the heart of the message of both John (3:3, 8) and Jesus (5:32), and Jesus has rebuked his contemporaries for their failure to repent in response to his preaching (10:13–15; 11:32). In chapter 15 he will illustrate God’s deep desire for sinners to repent. Here the theme is developed, but with a warning that judgment is also a reality, and the opportunity for repentance may not last forever. The message is reinforced with a short parable.

Second, we have seen in 6:1–5, 6–11 how Jesus’s uninhibited appr…