Your first love

After Revelation 2: 1-7 

The stranger enters,

startling and disturbing,

standing at the entrance

and casting his glance

around them. As he walks

to the front, slowly, all eyes

follow. Your reject evil,

he says; you reject false

leaders. You endure in

patience. But, and you 

know there’s a but, you

have turned away from

your love, your first love,

retaining the form but not

the substance. In you

passion for truth, you’ve

forgotten how to love. 

Know where you came 

from; know how far 

you’ve fallen. Repent,

and return, or I will 

remove your light, remove

your lampstand. He stands

before them, waiting.

 

Photograph by Jametiene Reskp via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“Churchgoing,” poem by Marilyn Nelson – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“Give Me Jesus,” 19^th century African American spiritual – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Siloam – poem by Joel Kurz at Mere Orthodoxy,

 

This is just to say – poem by Sarah Crowley Chestnut at The Rabbit Room.

 

“What is Repentance?” by R.C. Sproul

More than 50 years ago, the Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn published a small volume entitled We Never Make Mistakes, comprised of two novellas. The two offer devastating accounts of what daily life could be during the Stalin regime. A regime that “never made mistakes” or never admitted that it made mistakes grinds down the human spirit, eventually creating people who also “never make mistakes.”

We in the West don’t live in Stalinist regimes today, but we have our own variant. How many times do we see Hollywood stars, politicians, and other celebrities, when caught making a mistake or doing something wrong, begin their apology with the word “if,” as in, “If I offended anyone.” That’s not an apology. It’s not a change of heart. It’s not showing true remorse or repentance. What it is, at most, is a feeling of regret that the individual was caught doing wrong.

The Biblical concept of repentance is radically different. In What is Repentance? by R.C. Sproul, he explains that the word “repentance” is translated from the Greek word metanoia. “Generally speaking,” Sproul writes, “metanoia has to do with the changing of one’s mind with respect to one’s behavior. It contains the idea of ruing. To rue something means to regret a particular action. It carries with it not only an intellectual assessment but also an emotional or visceral response. The feeling most often associated with repentance in Scripture is that of remorse, regret, and a sense of sorrow for having acted in a particular way. This, repentance involves sorrow for a previous form of behavior.”

In other words, repentance has nothing to do with sorrow at being caught, but with sorrow for doing something wrong in the first place.

R.C. Sproul

Sproul goes on to draw pictures of repentance from the Old Testament, the model of King David (who did many things wrong but experienced genuine remorse for those wrongs), and a discussion of the concept of repentance in the New Testament. It is a short book but it is packed with insight and wisdom – and explaining what used to be obvious.

Until his death in December of 2017, Sproul led Ligonier Ministries, based in Sanford, Florida. He wrote numerous books, articles, sermons, and speeches on Christianity, church history, theology, Calvinism, Reformed theology, and related topics. The Crucial Questions series includes some 30 topics which are free as eBooks, and volume on conscience is a part of the series.

In a time and culture that focuses on self, always being right, and never admitting wrong, What is Repentance? is a refreshing counterpoint.

Related:

Can I Have Joy in My Life? by R.C. Sproul

What Do Jesus’ Parables Mean? By R.C. Sproul.

How Can I Develop a Christian Conscience? by R.C. Sproul.

How Should I Think About Money? by R.C. Sproul.

Does Prayer Change Things? by R.C. Sproul.

What is the Church? by R.C. Sproul.

Top photograph by Mitchell Hollander via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Ashes and dust

After Nehemiah 9

Ashes and dust

on my forehead,

I stood, first listening

then confessing,

because now was

the time for confession,

for repentance, to ask

that the stain be removed,

that I be washed

and cleansed. I learned

that the stain has already

been removed; I had

already been cleansed.

Photograph by Daniel Smith via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Repentance is Not Remorse

Last week, in our discussion about The Cure: What if God Isn’t Who You Think He Is and Neither Are You, by John Lynch, Bruce McNichol and Bill Thrall, we considered the issue of what happens when Christians hurt each other (and why), and the experiences of too many people when the hurt comes not from an individual but from a church.

Aside from the hurt, the problem worsens when we become preoccupied with it, dwell on it, and work it over and over again in our minds. That’s when the sin done to us becomes our sin.

Every one of us has examples of being hurt. And while I can only speak for myself, I suspect every one of us has examples of turning the sin into our sin.

But we can choose a different path, say the authors of The Cure, and it starts with weariness, when we become so weary of dwelling on the hurt that we do the only thing we can do.

We turn to God.

We repent.

And perhaps for the first time ever, I understood what repentance actually is.

“Repentance isn’t doing something about my sin,” the authors write. “”It is admitting I can’t do anything about my sin. It is trusting only God can cleanse me, and only He can convince me that I’m truly cleansed.

“God never tells me to get over something and just get past it. Instead, He asks me to trust Him with every circumstance.”

Even the circumstances when we’re hurt.

Especially the circumstances when we’re hurt.

Repentance isn’t remorse or regret. It is an active word, a turning over all of the hurt, the sin, the problems, all of the baggage from our lives, including our recent lives, and admitting we can’t do anything about it.

So that hurt from the busybodies’ gossip at church?

That time when the church nearly wrecked itself trying to become the next Willowcreek?

When the choir was unceremoniously dismissed and replaced with a rock band?

That time when a pastor failed, or was failed by the church?

Or when the elders made a dumb decision and ran over anyone in their path who raised an objection?

Or when you found out you wouldn’t be seeing a live pastor during worship but only someone on a video screen?

Or when the hymnals disappeared from the church pews, replaced by repetitious choruses on a projector screen?

Or when the Sunday School classes were reorganized into demographic interest groups?

You can name more. I can, too.

I can name so many that I’ve come to the point of weariness.

The point of repentance.

It’s time to trust that God knows what He’s doing, and he doesn’t need my valuable input to do it.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been discussing The Cure. Today concludes our thoughts on Chapter 5, Two Healings. To see more posts on this chapter, please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.