11/09/2024
Question 15.
Jesus Restores: Our God is a Consuming Fire
Repent (It is not optional)
This is a long post on repentance. It should have been posted in the Articles part of this blog instead of Pages. But here it is. If you want to read my ideas on repentance in more ‘bite-sized’ chunks, skip this post and instead read “Repent (it is not optional) parts 1, 2, and 3. They contain the same material as this post, but broken up into 3 segments. Sorry about the length. There is so much to write about repentance. It is critical to our life with and in Christ. No repentance, no salvation!
So, here goes:
When I hear that word – Repent!!! – I think of the old-time preachers in the pulpit yelling at the congregation, running through a long list of sins, telling them to ‘repent’ of these sins, and scaring them to death with eventual hell-fire and damnation if they don’t. That type of preaching is out of style today, at least in the churches I am familiar with (and if that is all the preacher means by ‘repent’ it probably should be). In fact, in many churches I suspect the message is the opposite. “God loves you so much that you can do whatever makes you feel good, except don’t be a mean person”. Or at least “You deserve death, but out of His love for us and His grace you are saved if you believe”. The word ‘repent’ is never mentioned. But ‘repent’ is critical to our entire relationship with Jesus, even to our salvation. And no concept in our walk with Christ is more misunderstood, or overlooked. What follows is my attempt to make sense of repentance for my life. It is the concept that ties together for me the fear of God, godly sorrow, God’s love for me and my love for God, humility, value and acceptance, salvation, sin, the Kingdom, and holiness.
Before I dig into repentance, and there is a lot to this subject (my understanding is just scratching the surface), I have listed some of the highlights of what I have written below. So here they are:
1) The first command of Jesus in the Gospels is not praise, grace, or love; it is ‘repent’.
2) Jesus links repentance with the Kingdom of God as in “The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the Gospel”(Mark 1: 15) and “Repent, the Kingdom of Heaven is near” (Matthew 7: 17). So repentance and the Kingdom of God are related. And, as Jesus makes clear, ‘repent’ and ‘believe’ are two sides of the same coin. In fact, by understanding repentance we can better understand what Jesus means by belief or faith.
3) Repentance is deeper than just turning away from a particular sin. Repentance requires us to solemnly, seriously, and publicly (at least to a small group of trusted Christian friends) determine to no longer find our ultimate value, acceptance, and connection in the kingdom of self (aka the kingdom of the world, the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of death, etc) but in the Kingdom of God. We don’t just repent of what we do; more fundamentally we repent of who we are. We shouldn’t say “I repented”; rather, we should say “I am repentant”. We cannot do this in our power. We can only do this in the power of the Holy Spirit. Also, for many of us it necessitates some degree of healing, which can only be done by Jesus. Therefore, repentance is a gracious gift from God.
4) It is possible (even likely in the case of most Christians) to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior at some point in our life and still continue finding our ultimate value and acceptance in the kingdom of self. We cannot be citizens of two kingdoms; dual citizenship is not allowed. And there are only two kingdoms. You live right now in one or the other. If I have not repented (and continue to repent every day) I am a citizen of the kingdom of self, the world, darkness – whatever you want to call it. And like all kingdoms that kingdom has a ruler and it is not Jesus.
5) Without repentance we do not belong to Jesus. We have chosen self as the object of our worship. No matter how often we confess our sins or confess Jesus as Savior, without true repentance, the root of sin – that is, self – still dominates our lives. I can confess in Sunday morning worship (in the 30 seconds we are given) that I lied during the past week. But without repentance, I am still a liar.
Repentance is trusting Jesus for the ultimate value and acceptance that I need to live. In the famous passage on the requirements for salvation in Romans 10 (“if you confess with you mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved”) Paul goes on to say that “Anyone who trusts in Him will not be put to shame”. What are we trusting Jesus for? Life! He is the only source for our ultimate ‘life’. We must repent to believe this fact.
Without repentance there can be no humility. And without humility there can be no repentance. Pride is the worship of self (living in the kingdom of self); humility is the worship of Jesus (living in the Kingdom of God). Repentance is the turning from the former in order to embrace the latter.
6) Therefore, without repentance there is no Kingdom life: no indwelling Holy Spirit, no transformation, no power, no authority, and no salvation. Many of us think of salvation as “when I die I am going to heaven and not hell”. But Jesus tells us that heaven is here, now. He calls it the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew. Salvation, rooted in the Greek word Sozo, means, among other things, to be healed and made whole. We attach to it the words ‘freedom’ and ‘life’, even the ‘abundant life’. That is the Kingdom life. It begins now, not in some distant future. If we have not chosen that life now, when it is freely offered, but instead chose the other kingdom, why should we expect to enter heaven (i.e. the Kingdom of God) when we die if, through lack of repentance, we have rejected Heaven while we were alive. Jesus tells us this in Luke 13: 22-30 and Matthew 7: 21-24. The ones He sent away are the Christians (or who thought they were – a not inconsiderable number of people in our churches today I am guessing) who went through all the motions but who never repented and entered His Kingdom, becoming His subjects, and therefore were never known by Him. These passages have always made me uncomfortable. “Surely they don’t apply to me” I thought. Now that I understand them better I appreciate what Paul tells us in Philippians 2 – “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”
7) The lack of preaching and teaching on repentance, upon which our entire Christian walk depends, is perhaps the primary reason why the Church in America is so anemic and why most Christians are indistinguishable in word and deed from the world around us.
There is much more to repentance. If you want to stop reading this post now, you will have gotten the bare bones of what I have written. If, after reading the rest of this post, you want to read more about repentance from a pastor who has studied repentance in the context of Scripture for over 60 years, check out the book ‘Repentance – the First Word of the Gospel’ by Richard Owen Roberts. You can order copies on Amazon. It rocked my world and helped me bring into sharper focus and integration ideas I have been wrestling with and teaching for several years.
Repent!!! – The Way to Restoration
The first command of Jesus’ public ministry was not praise, love, or grace, but “Repent”. (The first word of the gospel is “Kingdom”). In Mark Jesus says “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1: 15 NKJV). In Matthew, after Jesus returned from the temptation in the desert, we read the words that inaugurated His ministry: “From that time on Jesus began to preach – Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near” (Matthew 4: 17 NIV).
It is interesting to me that in both passages Jesus coupled “repent” with the Kingdom of God/heaven (Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew and the Kingdom of God in Mark, Luke, John and the Book of Acts. Matthew is making the point that the Kingdom, which is here now although not in its fulness, is heaven. We don’t have to die to enter heaven – we have the privilege of entering heaven now – “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth at it is in heaven”). And it is no coincidence that in Mark, Jesus ties the word ‘repent’ not only with the Kingdom of God but with ‘believe’. As I discovered, repent and believe (or faith) are two sides of the same coin. One cannot exist without the other. First, lets look at why Jesus tied ‘repent with ‘Kingdom’.
What is Jesus telling us by coupling these words – repent and the Kingdom? I think in these few passages and in many other places in Scripture (e.g “Seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness”), God is telling us what “to repent” really means. It means, I believe, to turn from finding my ultimate value, acceptance, comfort, connectedness in the kingdom of self in which I worship ‘me’ (and where Satan is the ruler) to the Kingdom of God, where I will find these things (constituting life and freedom) and worship the real King, Jesus. And what I take from the ministry of Jesus is that if I have not ‘repented’ in this sense, I do not belong to Jesus, even if at some point in my past I confessed Jesus as my savior.
This is almost exactly the opposite of the sermon I heard preached last Sunday, which is probably similar to many sermons preached all over America that day. “The Good News (the Gospel) is that Christ died for you, your sins are washed away, confess Him as your savior, and you will be saved” -- the gospel of sin management. Period. It is not an incorrect message, it just leaves out the first command of the Gospel of the Kingdom – “repent”.
We are all born into the kingdom of self; also known as the kingdom of the world, the kingdom of darkness, or the kingdom of death. Jesus provided an alternative: the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven; also known as the Kingdom of light, the Kingdom of life, the Kingdom of Righteousness. So there are two Kingdoms. I will call them the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of self. By the grace of God and the death and resurrection of Jesus, believers now have access to the Kingdom of God. But dual citizenship is not allowed. As Richard Owen Roberts points out “repentance is not the entry ticket into the Kingdom of God, but it is a condition of citizenship.” When we turn away from the kingdom of self and turn toward the Kingdom of God (this is why I think repentance is sometimes defined as ‘turning around’, doing a 180) we are saying to God “I no longer want to find my ultimate value and acceptance in the kingdom of self (in idols like s*x, power, money, prestige, knowledge, work, family, accomplishments, etc); I want to find my ultimate value and acceptance in Jesus – I want to submit and surrender to Him; I want to live in His Kingdom to serve, obey, and follow Him. This is true repentance.
Of course, when we hear the word ‘repent’ we immediately think of sin, and so we should. “Perhaps the most popular subject of all time is the subject of sin. It is not only frequently spoken of but regularly practiced by an overwhelming majority of the world’s people” (Richard Owen Roberts, ‘Repentance’). HaHa, that’s a good one.
So here I’ll add a few more words to the ‘most popular subject of all time’. As I see it, and as I think Paul sees it, the sin in our lives can be broken down into Sin (capitol ‘S’, singular) and sins (small ‘s’, plural). Paul lays this out for us in Romans 1. “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things (some translations say ‘worshiped and served the creature’) rather than the Creator, who is forever praised. Amen.” (Romans 1: 25). In other words, they worshiped idols, rooted in the worship of themselves. Theirs was a kingdom of self. Therefore, Paul is telling us that ‘self’ is the root of sin and evil (pride can be defined as putting ‘self’ on the throne of your life. Same thing). Throughout the Bible God makes it clear that the worship of idols is Sin. God hates Sin. In one of many, many places where Scripture speaks against idols, God tells Moses “if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and provoking Him to anger, I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess” (Deuteronomy 4: 25, 26).
Paul goes on to describe the consequences of Sin. “Because of this (‘this’ being the worship of the creature or created things – worship of self), God gave them over to shameful lusts…furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God…they have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil…they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (Romans 1: 26 – 31). In this passage Paul is comprehensively enumerating ‘sins’. As he points out, ‘sins’ are the manifestation or by-product of ‘Sin’, the worship of self. In other words, choosing to live in the kingdom of self. Self-worship, aka living in the kingdom of self, is the root (Sin) and the fruit of that root is all the other ‘sins’ and evil.
Repentance is a change of mind that results in a change in belief and behavior. The fruit of repentance is a more righteous life, a life in which we sin less. Sin and repentance are closely coupled.
Ok, that makes sense to me. But I can’t just wake up one morning and say, in my own power “I want to repent”. There is one more aspect of Sin that needs to be mentioned to understand repentance, as I see it. It is this: the basic, most fundamental human need that transcends and underlays every dimension of our humanity is the need for acceptance, value, and connection. God made us this way for Himself. We are created to find our needs met in Him. But as we read in Genesis 3, Adam rejected God, rejected self (shame), feared rejection, and rejected others. This spirit of rejection, including the fear of rejection, devaluing, and disconnection has driven the human race ever since. We turn to idols, counterfeit Gods as Tim Keller calls them, to find this acceptance and value that each human being so desperately needs to live. It is sad, but true (and certainly true in my life) that most people do not turn to God first to fulfill these needs; after all, we inherited this spirit of rejection, part of which is the rejection of God, and the notion of unregenerate human beings that “I can do it on my own” – pride. And so Sin is a part of our lives from the day we were born. We find our value in one or more of the almost infinite number of idols that the human race has created and release evil into the world. But we are so deceived, that even when it begins to become apparent that the idol is not going to provide fulfillment but death and destruction instead, we cling to that idol believing that if we commit to it a little bit more things will turn around and we will be ok.
Why are we so idolatrous? (I suppose Calvin and his followers would say “I told you – we are totally depraved”. True, but is that the whole story?. I don’t think so.) Most of us have been wounded: abused, devalued, dehumanized, rejected, abandoned, belittled, beat up, or deeply shamed at some point in our younger lives. Here are some actual examples: the woman whose father often threw her down the stairs when she was young. The 6-year old girl who was s*xually abused by a neighbor and never was allowed to talk about it. She suffered horrifying dreams well into her adult years. The boy who was beat up daily in the fourth grade on the school playground on his walk home from school because he was the new boy in the class. The 60-year old woman whose mother committed su***de by shooting herself in the abdomen when the woman was a little girl because she didn’t want to grow old. The 60-year old woman suffered intestinal bleeding her whole adult life. The woman whose husband s*xually abused their young daughter when the mom was out of the house, but who discovered the abuse when she got home and has lived with a crushing sense of shame and guilt for years. These are real situations. There are as many of these stories as there are grains of sand on the beach or stars in the sky. These wounds go deep; sometimes they have been buried in our hearts and we are no longer aware that they exist.
These wounds do two things to us: First, they are powerful drivers to find our value and acceptance in something outside of ourselves. We will be valued, we will be accepted, we will overcome the terrible pain and rejection, and we will do it in our own power. And so we enter the kingdom of self and begin to live a life of Sin. In my life I compensated for these wounds with scholastic and athletic performance and later with more destructive behaviors. Others turn to more dangerous ways of dealing with the pain, for example drugs or alcohol, other addictions like food; they can become angry, abusive, or violent.
Second, these wounds open a door for Satan to indwell our hearts. This demonic infiltration constantly fills us with shame, guilt, and a voice that repeats over and over in various versions of the same theme – “you are not good enough, you are unworthy”. And out of these choices – survival really for most of us – we harm ourselves, those we love and who love us, and release evil into the world. The idols that we turn to tell us “we will totally fulfill you, but you must totally surrender to me”. When we ‘totally surrender’ we worship the idol and self; not Jesus. The kingdom of self has a king – every Kingdom has a king. It just isn’t us, no matter how much we think it is. The king of the kingdom of self is Satan and we are enslaved to him. It makes no difference how often we have accepted or decided for Jesus, how often we attend church and confess our sins. If the root of Sin, which is self, is untouched, if we have not repented, we do not belong to Him. Are we totally depraved? Well, yes. But there is grace.
In the Kingdom of God there is healing. I don’t see how a wounded person (and who isn’t) is going to get to the point where they would say “OK, Jesus I will give all of these idols up to live with you” without these wounds being healed first, or at least for healing to begin. We all believe that these idols have kept us alive, even if we have been deceived. I believe that healing is an integral part of my choosing the kingdom, which is why Jesus made such a big deal about healing and deliverance.
And so, because of our basic Sin nature, the spirit of rejection inherited from Adam, and the woundedness that most of us have experienced, we Sin and we commit sins. We look for and find our value, acceptance, and connectedness to others in the world in idols. We are very good idolators, and for most of us, we can’t imagine life without our own particular idol or no matter how much we want to live life without that idol, we cannot. We are not free.
Jesus promises us healing. As we cry out to Jesus for the healing our our spiritual and emotional wounds, he promises to meet us. Something happens. We are given the grace to enter His Kingdom manifested in the confidence, the trust, the belief that we are on the right path, even if we are not fully healed in that moment. And as Scripture says “We are born again”. But does everyone who cries out and enters the Kingdom get this spiritual and emotional healing? Does everyone with depression, anger, unforgiveness, shame, etc. get healed? I am not wise enough to answer this question definitively. Who is, except Jesus? In the little time that I have been around healing prayer I have seen incredible spiritual and emotional healing. I have seen some healed (or who have claimed healing) immediately. I have seen some, touched by Jesus, begin to heal, and then continue to be healed over days, weeks, even years. But, I believe that when we truly repent and enter the Kingdom of God, we begin to heal in some fashion from these deep wounds. That healing can continue for the rest of our lives and beyond. But healing begins now, because ‘now’ we have entered heaven.
What about physical healing? Jesus promises physical healing in the Kingdom of God as well. I know (and you know) that not everyone who is physically sick gets healed. I have wrestled with this question in my mind for years – are all who enter the Kingdom of God, who truly repent, physically healed? Here is my imperfect answer. More would be healed if more of us truly repented. But we live in a fallen world. The Kingdom of God is here, but not perfectly. There is still the suffering, pain, anguish, and death associated with disease like cancer. Kingdom people and non-kingdom people alike suffer and die. But I have seen this: some Kingdom people do get physically healed and some of these healings are nothing short of miraculous. Some Kingdom people do not get physically healed in this world, but the presence of Christ in the midst of their suffering and the suffering of their families, is powerful. In His Kingdom, there is spiritual, emotional, and physical healing and wholeness. Period. It might not take the form I expect or want. It might not occur in the time framework I pray for. But it will occur. My job, as directed by the Holy Spirit, is to pray, expecting this physical healing. And for my prayers to be effective, for my prayers to be answered, I must be a repentant, Kingdom man because answered prayer is conditional: it is dependent upon my being known by Christ. He is the mediator. He will not know me in this way unless I am His subject, living in His Kingdom.
Now we are ready to look at repentance again. When we hear the Good News preached, when the Holy Spirit touches us with Godly sorrow at how our Sin (sins) breaks God’s heart, and when we confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, we can be brought by God to a place where we are required to make a decision about which Kingdom we will live in. As I said, I think it is entirely possible to confess Jesus as Savior, but refuse to abandon my life in the kingdom of self. It is just too comfortable, too secure, too exciting, too addictive, or too much fun to give up. This then, is a life without repentance. And it is a life without Jesus.
We belong to Jesus when we have decided to live in the Kingdom of God. We enter that Kingdom by choice. Scripture is clear – we need to chose, we have responsibility. Jesus clearly tells us to store our treasure in Heaven, not in the world; to chose the right gate, the one that leads to life. Jesus tells us to first seek His Kingdom and His Righteousness; to ask, seek, and knock and the door (to the Kingdom will be opened). And Jesus tells us in Revelation 3 that He will knock but we must open the door. Implicit in His command to ‘repent’ is our role in this decision. This decision must be solemn, serious, and public. We must clearly understand what we are leaving behind – certain friends, behaviors, types of books and movies, po*******hy, drugs, ways of talking, and even ways of thinking. We have decided – these things must go. We have changed our mind about what is valuable in our life. But more importantly, we have changed our mind about where we will find our value and acceptance. We will look for, relentlessly seek, and cry out for righteousness and holiness in Jesus. He will be our value, our acceptance, and our connectedness to others. When we choose the Kingdom of God, we choose to place ourselves under the authority of the King. The Kingdom is not a democracy; we surrender and submit to Him joyfully and obediently.
However, as I said above, while we are required to make a decision, we cannot just decide. We are too messed up. Repentance is a gift from God and it is accompanied by the grace of God. Lets look at His grace and this gift as it applies to repentance.
First, Jesus is the door into the Kingdom of God. We enter through Him. Before Jesus lived, died, and rose again, people were dead in their sins and transgressions because there was no alternative to the kingdom of self. There was no other kingdom to turn to. They were stuck. The law just convicted the Jews of Sin and sins. It didn’t offer an alternative. The same is true for unbelievers today.
Second, we cannot earn entrance into the Kingdom. In our own power, we can never be good enough. And how can we enter the Kingdom of God if we are living in the kingdom of self (hence, the need for repentance)? But Jesus paid the price for our entry. When we believe in Jesus, and we do need to confess Him and Lord and Savior (while this confession is necessary, it is not sufficient for salvation), we receive the right and privilege to enter into the Kingdom through the door (Jesus) because of what He did on the cross alone – not because of anything I did or ever could do. Grace !!
Third, as I pointed out above, healing is essential for most of us to be able to turn from the kingdom of self to enter the Kingdom of God. For most of us, without the healing of those deep wounds, frequently coupled with deliverance, we will never be able to relinquish our grip on the kingdom of self. By the grace of God, Jesus heals us when we open our hearts and minds to Him. I cannot heal myself. I cannot bring myself back from that place of spiritual or emotio
Summary
The first word of the Gospel is repent. Repent is tied to Kingdom and belief. Most fundamentally we don’t repent, we are repentant. To repent means to turn away from finding our value, acceptance, and connection in the kingdom of self (where pride reigns) and finding these things instead in the Kingdom of God. Repentance is a gift from God, but we have to ‘repent’. Repentance is not the same as confessing Jesus as Lord and Savior. If after doing that we do not repent, we are not saved. I can confess Jesus as Lord, and not repent; I can confess my sins and not repent. For example, I can confess that I lied, but after the confession still be a liar. Repentance is not just about repenting from what I have done; it is repenting from who I am. To truly repent, I need the Holy Spirit. This is why Paul said “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose” (Philippians 2: 12, 13). For the majority of us, true repentance is not possible without emotional and spiritual healing. The church that downplays at least this type of healing is a church where true repentance is not preached and salvation is out of reach for most people.
Finally, what are some of the marks of repentance? The top two are humility and the unoffendable heart. In later blogs, not yet written, I will discuss how we repent and some marks of the truly repentant heart, including humility, without which repentance is not possible, and the unoffendable heart.
