Repent!!! (It is not optional) – Part 1
For several weeks I have been wrestling with repentance (both as in “I need to repent” and “what is repentance, really”). Through prayer, conversations with God, scripture, the book ‘Repentance’ by Richard Owen Roberts, and conversations with brothers in Christ, my understanding of repentance and the centrality of it in our Christian walk – for us and the Church – has grown deeper. I have been compelled to put these ideas down in this blog. I have not heard some of these ideas preached. Some of these ideas are controversial and my Reformed friends might discount them all together. If you read these posts, ask God what He thinks and then listen to what He tells you. I think we have given too little credence to Jesus’ command to repent and too much emphasis on ‘confess and you will be saved’. The two go together. Bottom line: I think Jesus says there is no salvation apart from repentance, which requires belief.
As usual the post became way too long. Almost 7000 words. So here is what I did – I split the long post into three shorter posts called parts 1, 2 and 3. I have also taken the single, long post and posted it on the blog as a page. Click on ‘pages’ and you will find the complete post in it’s entirety if you want to read it that way. It is titled ‘Repent!!! (It is not optional)’.
This post is part 1 – kind of a summary of my thoughts. The shortest of the three Posts!
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 certainly to our ability to defeat the power of Satan. And no concept in our walk with Christ is more misunderstood, or overlooked in my opinion. What follows is my attempt to make sense of repentance. 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, power and authority, 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 in Posts 2 and 3. So here they are:
1) The first word 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.) – in work, sex, money, power, accomplishments, relevance, position, 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 should not 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 king 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.” It is not enough to confess Jesus and Lord and Savior. Without repentance, I am not saved.
And it is not just about my salvation or your salvation. It is also about accomplishing God’s eternal purpose which He has entrusted to us: releasing the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world, pushing back the darkness, taking back the territory. Without repentance we do not live in the Kingdom of God. Without Kingdom life there is no Kingdom power, no authority, no indwelling Holy Spirit, no Spiritual gifts. If we live in the kingdom of self, we (collectively and individually) are powerless in the face of the demonic; we are impotent. Repentance is not just important for salvation; it is critical for victory in our lives.
7) The lack of preaching and teaching on repentance, and consequently our individual and collective lack of 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 just read Part 1, you will have gotten the bare bones of what I have written. If, after reading the rest of these posts (Posts 2 and 3), 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 is also available digitally. It rocked my world and helped me bring into sharper focus and integration ideas I have been wrestling with and teaching for several years.