In this course we’re feeding on 6 key themes of our faith. I pray this will bless us – and maybe also be helpful (rewritten to suit your personality) in teaching these themes in, say, a youth group or homegroup…?
STARTER: In the first post we fed on what God says is the heart of Christian belief: `Christ, crucified` (1 Cor 1:23). On the cross Jesus died for us, paid for our sins, delivered us triumphantly from Satan, removed the barrier and opened the way back to our loving Father God! OK: that’s the objective side; so on our side — how would you summarize how God wants us to respond to this?
Well: I remember as a student we were set the exercise of going through Acts and summarizing the ways the gospel is expressed. It’s rich, so they’re diverse! But perhaps the best summary is Paul’s in (read it!) Acts 20:21: `I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.` Which matches what Jesus says, read Mark 1:15: `The kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe [that is, set your whole life’s trust on] the good news!`
So then: no religious rituals, no good deeds earn our salvation (though actually these inevitably follow, as we’ll see): just a heart of repentance and faith. That’s all – what we can call the `double doors` into eternal life with God! And in fact everything in our this-worldly spiritual lives will come from growing in these; repentance, that is, an ever increasing commitment to the lordship of Christ in my life; and ever-increasing faith in Him…
We thought in the first post about this faith. Now for the other half: repentance from all known sin and independence, taking Christ as our Lord so that we commit to live His way and not our own, is equally vital. And this helps us understand something some friends may find puzzling. As one of my Muslim friends said: So, Jesus has paid for all your sins, and now you don’t have to do anything at all to be saved. That’s all very nice, isn’t it? Now you can go off and sin as much as you want? (It’s a good question, and it comes up also in Romans 6:1-2.)
The answer is that anyone who deliberately thinks like that clearly hasn’t repented
at all in the first place; so they aren’t a real child of God. Repentance is saying: By the power of God’s Spirit that He promises to put within me, I will seek to turn from all sin and independence, and to live every future moment and in every way following Jesus as my Lord and Master! (Maybe pause to renew that as a prayer?)
THE LIFE OF REPENTANCE – HOW IT WORKS
Still, there is a problem. From the moment of our new birth, God the Holy Spirit has His dwelling-place within us. Read 2 Corinthians 5:17: `Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!` And He is transfiguring us into something unimaginably glorious! (Read 2 Cor 3:18!) But meanwhile we Christians do sin. God wants us to foster in us a passion not to sin, a passion for white-hot holiness: `Be holy as I am holy!` (1 Peter 1:16). But still we do sin, and all too often. Even Paul says: `What I do is not the good I want to do: no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing!` (Romans 7:19).
We can swing between two responses to this. We may be tempted to feel, `Jesus’ death covers all my sin – so it doesn’t matter too much if I sin.` Not much repentance there though! Or maybe we feel: `I was a Christian, but I’ve sinned: so God won’t love me any more!`
Well: have we lost our essential relationship with God when we sin? Sometimes when we sin, our natural tendency is to run away from God, as if our entire relationship actually depended on what we do. But if we’ve grasped grace, we know instead that, when we sin, we need to run back as soon as possible to Jesus our Saviour. Read 1 John 2:1: `My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But, if anybody does sin, we have One who speaks to the Father in our defence—Jesus Christ`, who points to His blood as the payment for all our evil. And Psalm 32:5 : `Then I acknowledged my sin to You and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD”—and You forgave the guilt of my sin!” There is always forgiveness, we can always repent, come back to Jesus and start afresh! (So practically, because this matters: Do I care to do this when I sin? Or do I just hope God didn’t notice or doesn’t bother?!)
We are God’s children; so when we sin, we should hurry back to God and quickly confess our sins in genuine repentance. The Father is waiting lovingly for us to do that! Read 1 John 1:9: `If we confess our sins, He is faithful & just, and will forgive us our sins, & will purify us from all unrighteousness.` God will welcome us back every time! Look for example at how Jesus relates to Peter, even after he had denied Jesus, in John 21:15-17. And then absorb the certainty of Psalm 103:12 – `As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us` – and of Romans 8:38-39: `Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!`
God’s grace means that, once we’ve reached out and repentantly received Jesus’ forgiveness through the cross, we’re permanently in a place of forgiveness, a place of colossal love. Our peace, our sense of ease with God, everything in discipleship spirals out from this grasp of Jesus and His cross, His amazing act of colossal love and unearned grace…
This is fantastic, and God wants us to share this great `good news` of His massive unearned love with the world! No other religion has it. Acts 20:24 calls it the `gospel of God’s grace`; and read Romans 5:8 – `God shows His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners [not deserving it at all], Christ died for us!` `For God so **loved** the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life` (John 3:16). The gospel is the sensational good news of God’s unbelievably lavish generosity and love to each and every human being who repents; it’s what everyone most needs to hear, and we’re called to share it as widely as possible!
THE LIFE OF REPENTANCE – WHERE IT LEADS
In the end, everything in discipleship and following Jesus flows out from this. In future posts we’ll think about praying, living Jesus’ way in our relationships, being the presence of Jesus at work, sharing our faith, caring for the world. But why? Because if you don’t do these things God won’t love you and you’ll go to hell?
NO! Read 2 Cor 5:17 again: `If anyone is in Christ [born again], they are [already, in the most important sense; once and for all] a new creation`- locked into the life of God forever! We don’t earn that. `It’s by grace you have been saved, through faith… not by our own works` (Eph 2:8-9)! But, importantly, the very next verse tells us (read Eph 2:10), now that we are God’s repentant children, we do have a calling and a destiny: `We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do!` God’s grace and our active, repentant, holy discipleship-in-practice are two essential sides of the same coin!
It’s like in marriage. What makes someone married? Because they never forget a wedding anniversary? No: what makes them married is that once for all they have made their marriage vows – not that they go on earning it afterwards. But because they are married they do certain things like remembering anniversaries! It’s true that, if they don’t bother with these kinds of things very much, the relationship can probably grow very sadly distant, and that’s true of our spiritual lives too. But these actions don’t determine whether we’re married or not! Yet also – they most certainly matter…!
Read Ephesians 2:8-10 again. We’re surely not saved by any good works we do (v9); yet we children of God are now His workmanship (His craftsmanship!), created in Christ so that we will do good works (v10)! When we were `born again by the Spirit`, a massive thing happened: the old us actually died (Romans 6 talks about this), and God the Holy Spirit came to live in our innermost being; and He gives us all the power we need (Romans 8 talks about this: read vv8-9), to live in practice the Jesus life that we repented for. In short (read Phil 2:13), `it is God who works in [us], to will and to act in order to fulfil His good purpose!` We do still have free wills; we may neglect our relationship with Him, we may let our hearts grow sadly cold, we may make ourselves go the long way round to God’s glorious destiny for us; we may even waste our lives on earth, or make choices that will force God to do painful surgery on us. And yet if we’ve given ourselves to Him He will not give up on us; in the end He will find the lost sheep crying in the darkness and His love will triumph, accomplishing the glory He has planned for us! So then let’s live in tune with God’s will and purposes to which we surrendered when we first repented: `Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit!` (Gal 5:25)…
Summing up then: As we grasp the colossal saving love of God for us, and because we grasp the colossal love of God,
we want (this is ongoing repentance!) to give ourselves to Him, following Him more and more;
to grow in passion to hear all that He wants to say to us through the Bible,
and then in response to worship Him and pray to Him;
to grow in passion to live the Jesus lifestyle in our home, our church, our work, our street;
to grow in passion to point our workmates and neighbours to this fantastic Jesus;
to grow in passion to see His kingdom furthered both locally and throughout the world!
Not in order that we may earn God’s love! We can’t, ever, and we surely don’t need to! But because of His grace; because, when we needed rescuing so much, He loved us so much that He died for us. That’s why we want to learn what’s on His heart, on His agenda, and make it our central, repentant life-priority to grow with Him in these things…
ABSORB TIME: Let’s thank God for His grace, His colossal unearned love for us expressed in the cross; and then let’s commit ourselves again to a life of repentance, totally oriented to following Him, growing in repentance and faith, by His power: a life centred on passions for learning from His Word, responding in worship, prayer and growing obedience; and for being His presence in the world, pointing others to Him; all by the power of His Spirit…
