Repentance
Do you do it enough? I’m sure that I don’t. I am convinced that we simply do not understand the depths of our own perversion. The Bible says that God created everything good and that we then proceeded to muck the utopian paradise up. We initiated the descent of darkness and our foolish hearts were darkened. What we don’t understand so often is that we have messed things up more than we know.
We generally think that we are pretty good people and the chief of the apostles, Paul, admitted that in his flesh dwelt no good thing. But, somehow, we think that we are pretty good people. We need to agree with scripture that we are bad people and we do bad things. Romans 3:10-18 is such a vivid picture of what we are really like. Ultimately we are like snakes that have turned aside to run after the things that work for the destruction of others and ultimately ourselves. We reject God’s plan for us and wallow around in the filth of our own sinful dysfunctions. Do you get it, “you are bad”. You are very bad and I am very bad. Jeremiah 17:9 said that the heart is desperately wicked above all else and is even beyond our own comprehension. This means that you need to repent a lot. Every true believer should have a worn out spiritual path to the place of repentance. Even though we realize that our repentance does not make us more lovely to God or more acceptable in His sight, we must, as David did in Psalm 51, seek the continual cleansing that comes through confession. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I believe that Jesus cleansed us once and for all on the cross when He atoned for all of our sin. But there is a cleansing that 1 John 1:9 speaks of which is the acknowledgment of sin so that we can enjoy the fullness of relationship.
Most of you will remember times in your life when you really screwed up things with your parents. You were rebellious and through your disobedience you built a wall between yourself and your parents even though you knew that they still loved you. You did not cease to be their child. You had, though, lost the joy and intimacy of relationship with them because you stupidly went your own way to your own detriment. David prayed, “Lord, restore to me the joy of your salvation”. He had acknowledged His sin and chosen to live in the forgiveness that was purchased at the cross. If I am even remotely observant, many of you are living lonely lives because you are unwilling to make peace with your “badness” because it means a holistic admission of guilt and that is more than uncomfortable and it is detrimental to the store-bought self image that we have.
Some of you do not have a relationship with Jesus and so you cannot live in forgiveness. The penalty of your sin is still bearing down on you and you may be suffering under the delusion that you must perform well enough or God will not love you. You need to come to Jesus today. He will take your burden and replace it with His very own friendship. He delights to show you a better way. A way in which you can admit your sin without fear of condemnation because Jesus paid the debt that you owed. In fact, Colossians says that your debt, which is composed of all of your sin and failure, is canceled out if you come to Christ in faith. Come to Him. Do it now. Don’t pass up the beauty of relationship with Christ so that you can walk alone with the crushing weight of your inadequacy.
Others of you are Christians but you are trying to live your life according to some pathetic performance chart where good behavior translates into real spirituality. You are trying in some perverted way to show that you are deserving of salvation and you are tragically mistaken. You too need to come to terms with the enormity of your own sin. Not so that you can feel the weight of condemnation, but so that you can realize the amazing nature of Grace. You need to learn to repent because through repentance, (which is a gift of God) you exalt the gracious nature of God while confessing your own loathsomeness. the church reformers of the 16 century named the biblical discussion of human sinfulness, “worm theology”. A true understanding of our sinfulness is the exaltation of God’s compassion for sinners. Repentance feels good because we get to rest in the gracious nature of a loving God. If you are not doing it regularly, start, How about now? Don’t pass up the wonder of intimacy with your savior by clinging to your “self-esteem”.
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