Tag Archive - Repentance

Gospel Lessons from a Humiliating Experience Last Week

August 19, 2012 in Evangelism, Personal Commentary with 10 Comments

Thursdays are normally my day off, and due the crazy week that it had been so far, I was particularly look forward to a little break from the grind. However, things did not go according to plan. Sick children, doctors appointments, and some urgent ministerial demands quickly made it another stressful day. By lunch time, I was ready to take a nap!

My toddler boys usually nap in mid-afternoon, which gives me time to relax or run a few errands. In this case, I decided to visit the local pizza shop as part of my weekly routine. I have come to know the owner quite well, and he has a habit of asking about my wife and kids. It doesn’t hurt that the pizza is quite good, too.

After a lonely, quiet lunch, I made spurious decision to get a haircut. I go to one of those places where you never know who will cut your hair or what kind of haircut you will get. I’ve been going there for sometime and have come to know many of the folks who work there, except that the turnover seems excessively high (which usually does not bode well of the business). I walked into a fairly empty joint. I looked forward to a quick and easy cut so I could get back to family duties back home. The lady got my name and number and told me it would be just a few minutes.

Fifteen minutes later she came back to the front, having forgotten she registered me already. I began to get frustrated by what appeared to be obvious customer service failure. I gave her my name and number, and to my disappointment, she said she would be cutting my hair. Not exactly how I was wanting things to go.

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Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done = Repent and Believe

December 13, 2011 in Gospel, Repentance with 2 Comments

At the very heart of the Lord’s Prayer is the petition, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Like so many other familiar passages of Scripture, I fear that there are myriads of truths that fail to be apprehended due to our contemptible satisfaction of superficial understanding.  Such has been the case for me regarding these petitions of our Lord.

One of the remarkable things I’ve been learning lately is how the gospel interconnects kingdom come and the Father’s will being done on earth.  The gospel intertwines this petition precisely because the response these realties demand are that of repentance and faith.

Whenever Jesus preaches about the kingdom, the action invariable associated with it is to repent.  The arrival of His kingdom means the removal of your kingdom.  The arrival of His reign means the surrender of your rights.  His position on the throne of your life necessitates the crushing of all idols and rivals to Him as Lord and King.  With the inauguration of the kingdom in the life of a believer, there is a corresponding denunciation of the kingdom we had built with ourselves at the center.   Simply put, when the King is present, our rights are absent.  We repent. We look away from ourselves.  We turn from our rebellious, treasonous ways. We renounce all our self-righteous deeds.  We gladly submit and surrender our lives to His sweet sovereignty as the one who alone has the right to govern our lives.

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Atmospheric Repentance

August 17, 2011 in Excerpts, Gospel, Repentance with 2 Comments

That’s a new term I learned from Dr. David Powlison after watching the video below.  Atmospheric repentance is based on the initial cry of the Reformation as articulated by Martin Luther in the first of his 95 Thesis:

When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said “Repent”, He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

The point is that the expectation of every follower of Christ is to experience Godward change and transformation that begins with the heart.  The means by which we become more and more like Christ is through repentance and faith as the gospel mode of operation.  Christians are commonly called “believers” because of faith in Jesus Christ.  Christians should also commonly be called “repenters” because we are daily turning from sin and self-reign to glad submission to the reign and rule of Christ as King.  Our response to Christ is simultaneously a repenting faith or believing repentance, and when that characterizes the predisposition of a follower of Christ, it is atmospheric.

Those “not far from the kingdom” may be farther than you think

November 22, 2010 in Gospel, Personal Commentary with 2 Comments

Reflecting on the Pharisee in Luke 18:9-14 makes me think about the temptation to legislate morality by arbitrarily judging which sinners we think are most “savable.”  If the Temple that day were a typical Sunday morning, I presume most churches would cater to the man with moral superiority.  He shows interest in religion and shows a genuine desire to “get right” with God. We cater because he is most like us, over against the other scandalous men like adulterers, extortioners, and tax collectors.  After all, they don’t come across all that “receptive” in the seeker kind of way.  No, this latter group classifies people less savable, so we think, because their lives are really jacked up.  They are far from the kingdom while the moral man like us is “not far from the kingdom.”

Perhaps because we feel encouraged by the moral man’s sincere attempts of being good, we tend to ease off on the gospel.  After all, he is not as bad a sinner as the rest of the guys who really need a healthy preaching of the gospel, right?  I would submit to you just the opposite is true.  Those we think are “not far from the kingdom” are really farther than we think because they have convinced themselves they are not as bad as they really are, and therefore the good news for sinners is substituted for good advice for those who simply need a little self-help.

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No one needs the gospel more than me.

March 11, 2010 in Gospel, Idolatry, Jesus, Personal Commentary, Renewal with 7 Comments

This morning, I enjoyed another meeting with two young men of Grace (my A-team) at Panera talking about being faithful to apply the gospel to our own heart.  If I truly know myself, we will be quick to confess that the worst sinner in the room at any given time is me.  Therefore, there is no one who needs the gospel more than me.  This may sound really selfish, but faithfully preaching the gospel to myself is actually what enables me to share it faithfully to others.  When my heart is renewed in the gospel and utterly satisfied with all that God is for me in Jesus Christ, then the joyful overflow of the gospel’s work will enlarge my affections for the lost and loose my tongue to share of the amazing mercies found in Him.

The gospel should never be like that computer file stuck in your hard drive that has not been accessed in over a year so that it is impossible to find.  Instead, when the gospel is retrieved time and again on a regular basis, it be readily accessed to share and for others to “download” for themselves.  If we believe that the gospel is “the power of God unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16) we cannot limit that transforming work to a brief period at the beginning of a Christian life.  For those who are being saved, it is the power of God unto salvation in an ongoing basis as we see more of God’s excellencies, expose our sinful depravity, and increasingly exult in the glories of Jesus Christ who is for us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

Let me give you a personal example from this morning . . .

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Forgiveness – is it unconditional or conditional?

December 12, 2009 in Forgiveness, Gospel with 34 Comments

A couple of days ago, I pitched this question to folks on Twitter and Facebook.  The disagreements on the issue of forgiveness is not one that is divided between conservatives and liberals but between conservatives and conservatives.  Since forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian faith and that we are to forgive as God has forgiven us in Christ (Eph. 4:32), then it is important that understand why and how we should forgive one another.

The Issues

The fundamental issue is whether forgiveness is unconditional (not dependent upon the repentance of the offender) or conditional (granted only when the offender has repented and asked for it).  Both camps would argue that repentance is necessary for reconciliation between the offender and offended parties, but those in the unconditional camp would argue that repentance is not required for forgiveness.  In order, then, it would look something like this:

Sin/Offense –> Forgiveness –>Repentance –> Reconciliation (Unconditional)
Sin/Offense –> Repentance –> Forgiveness –> Reconciliation (Conditional)

As you can see, the key issue is the role that repentance plays in differentiating granting forgiveness and actual reconciliation between two people. Let me attempt to provide the case for each position, as best I can understand them.

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Heaven – Home of Gospel-Embracing Repenters

October 13, 2009 in Gospel, Heaven, Jesus, Repentance with 0 Comments

Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people. Because heaven is a prepared place, our Christian lives should be characterized by rejoicing and anticipating being with the Lord.  Because heaven is for a prepared people our Christian lives should be characterized by repentance and turning away from ourselves.  Therefore, the Christian life is both one of rejoicing and repentance, at the same time.  In fact, it could be said that, though we mourn over and hate our sin, our repentance should be joyful knowing that God has promised bring to fulfillment that which he began in us, namely the glorification of His Son in us.  There is no genuine joy without thorough repentance, and genuine repentance ought to bring about increasing joy as sin is displaced and we draw nearer to Jesus.

We often call Christians “believers”.  “We are a gathering of believers . . .” but Christians are also “repenters,” so why don’t refer to a gathering of repenters?  Our response to the gospel at conversion is both – a repenting faith or believing repentance, and our response to the gospel from that moment on is the same.  The more we behold Jesus by faith as seen in the gospel, the more we are transformed into His image from one degree of glory to another.  If there are no degrees of glory being experienced on earth, then what, pray tell, would such a professing Christian claim to experience in heaven?  The very degrees of glory we experience in the daily transformation of our lives through repentance and faith are meant to be a foretaste of the fullness of glory to be seen when we are “taken up into glory.”  To miss it here is to forfeit it there.

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Repentance must keep pace

October 10, 2009 in Quotes, Repentance with 0 Comments

“With every increase of mercy you receive from God there will be an accompanying increase of responsibility. . . . As you grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and receive more and more of His mercies with each passing day, your repentance must keep pace.  Any failure here is an open demonstration of a lack of love and appreciation for the boundless mercies of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Tragic is the case of any individual whose repentance does not increase with the gifts and graces of God he daily receives.”

- Richard Owen Roberts, Repentance: The First Word of the Gospel, 297.

Repentance is perpetual

October 9, 2009 in Excerpts, Repentance with 0 Comments

“[Repentance] is perpetual. . . . The Christian is a new person in Christ, but he is imperfectly renewed.  He has died to sin and has been raised to new life.  But this mortification and vivification continue throughout the whole course of his life on earth.  We are no longer what we once were, but we are not yet what God calls us to become; and as long as that is the case we are called to an ongoing battle for holiness.

[ . . .] Repentance does not merely begin the Christian life.  According to Scripture, the Christian life is repentance from beginning to end!  So long as the believer is simul justus et peccator (at the same time righteous and yet a sinner), it can be no other way.

[ . . .] True repentance can never be reduced to a single act only found at the beginning of the Christian life.  It arises in the context of our union with Jesus Christ; and since its goal is our restoration into the image of Christ, it involves the ongoing practical outworking of our union with Christ in his death and resurrection–what Calvin calls mortification and vivification–that is, being conformed to Christ crucified and risen.”

- Sinclair Ferguson, The Grace of Repentance, 20, 28, 30.

We are not antinomians . . . we have something to do – repent.

October 8, 2009 in Puritan Persuasion, Repentance with 1 Comment

“Repentance is necessary for God’s own people, who have a real work of grace.  They must offer up a daily sacrifice of tears.  The Antinomians hold that when any come to be believers, they have a writ of ease, and there remains nothing for them now to do but to rejoice.  Yes, they have something else to do, and that is to repent.  Repentance is a continuous act.  The issue of godly sorrow must not be quite stopped till death.  Jerome, writing in an epistle to Laeta, tells her that her life must be a life of repentance.  Repentance is called crucifying the flesh (Gal. 5:24), which is not done on a sudden, but leisurely; it will be doing all our life.

Search with the candle of the word into your hearts and see if you can find no matter for repentance there:

1.  Repent of your rash censuring.
2.  Repent of your vain thoughts.
3.  Repent of your vain fashions.
4.  Repent of your decays of grace.
5.  Repent of your non-improvements of talents.
6.  Repent of your forgetfulness of sacred vows.
7.  Repent of your unanswerableness to blessings received.
8.  Repent of your worldliness.
9.  Repent of your divisions.
10. Repent for the iniquity of your holy things.

Behold here repenting work cut out for the best.  And that which may make the tide of grief swell higher is to think that the sins of God’s people do more provoke God than do the sins of others.  The sins of the wicked pierce Christ’s side.  The sins of the godly go to his heart.”

- Thomas Watson, The Doctrine of Repentance, 69-72.

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