Real blessings that come with repentance
Regular Network Norwich and Norfolk columnist James Knight explores the freedom we can have when we rely on God's grace.
Repentance is one of those words that is not at all congenial to many modern mids - and while it is true that many modern men and women do not believe in God, and thus give no thoughts to words such as ‘repentance’, ‘atonement’, ‘sin’, and ‘salvation’, it is equally true that many do not have a clear enough concept of what these words really mean in relation to Jesus Christ, and therefore have never really put themselves in a favourable position to consider objectively what Christianity means with any degree of lucidity or clarity.
It is not always understood that the act of repentance, just like the acts of abstinence are in fact acts of human blessing; that is, they are acts which occur for our betterment not to our detriment. Awareness of their true meaning in relation to our ontological outlook will open doors that have been closed for too long - and this is one of the ways that we, as Christians, can help bring about a revival. The Bible says this - “You also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the good news of your salvation (Ephesians 1:13) -emphasising that the message of salvation applies to everyone, including those who have not yet heard the good news, and those who have disbelieved it or chosen to disregard it.
John the Baptist calls for repentance (Matthew 3:9-10) which will be validated once one recognises Christ’s call (Luke 5:32) - for that is how salvation occurs. Jesus Christ is the source of God’s mercy in reconciling mankind to Himself. Atonement involves our being reconciled with God through Christ’s sacrifice (Romans 3:25). In other words, our sins are atoned for (Isaiah 6:7) because of Christ’s grace; His love for the world provides a reparation for all our past mistakes and wrongs, and all we have to do is recognise that He has taken care of the sins of the world by dying on the cross for us, and accept His gift of eternal salvation by living for Him.
"Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land." Isaiah 1:18-19.
In these present times this sort of talk is anathema to many people, particularly in a country such as ours, where Christianity is seen by many as being mythological and outdated. We may, indeed, be sure that any form of true happiness will not be attained merely by human efforts. We have to ask for God's help. And even when we get things wrong or make mistakes or let God (and ourselves) down - very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but the power of always trying again; for however important forgiveness, or courage, or any other virtue may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important than impressing men and achieving a good earthly status. Our trying again after we have fallen cures our illusions about our own abilities and teaches us to depend on God. It is because of God that we have all of our abilities in the first place; thus we learn on the one hand that even in our best moments we cannot trust ourselves without Him, and, on the other hand, that we need not despair even in our worst moments, for our failures are forgiven and He is with us every step of the way.
It should not be at all surprising that this notion seems strange and ill-assorted to many people in these present times - after all, we love to be in complete control of everything, and our resistance to relinquishing control, even to God, is sometimes overpowering - even to the point that complete rejection of Him can be favoured over self-surrender. With this predicament I have much sympathy, after all, it is sometimes very difficult to seek meaning in a world that ultimately resists our attempts to explain it - particularly those explanations that happen to assail our control over our own image and status.
Faith and the deep and often mysterious cognitive commitment to ‘handing it over to God’ can emerge from very many strange and unexpected places, as we discover that ‘image’ and ‘status’ are often facades that conceal the real person underneath. And that is the person that God is most interested in - the ‘real you’ - for that is the person He wants to make right and bless abundantly, not the fictitious ‘you’ that betrays your deep longings and belies who you really are. It is only when the true wonders of repentance and atonement are made known to us that salvation becomes first a possibility and then a reality - it elicits in us a real and genuine feeling of blessedness as we discover that God has a plan for us, and that each and every one of us can be very much part of that plan if we choose His way.
I think the most powerful way to see the real nature of our need for repentance is to consider for a moment the act which necessitates such a need - the crucifixion. Christ died so that we could have our sins removed, therefore the act of repentance is in fact a real blessing - it is a blessing that removes from us the burden of works and the pressures of being ‘good enough’ in a world that is predominated by status and in-groups and vogues and fashions - all of which are overshadowed by peer pressures and media thralls. The liberation that God offers is something far more prodigious and glorious. If we can even for a split second feel, or make some attempt to feel, God’s thoughts and feelings as He divested Himself of all His glory for our sake; if we can truly share (however ephemerally) the suffering and agonies, it is then that we shall experience God most fully in our lives. Our Christian faith only becomes real to any of us when we have in some way faced the horror of the cross, and appreciated that it is our God who hangs there, and so can genuinely say with incredulous wonder “He died for me”. The real interplay of balance between realising and wanting is harmonised through Christ on the cross, and it is only when one becomes liberated through His dying that the pressures of the secular world begin to dissipate and our lives have real fullness.
Three kinds of people
In my experiences there are three kinds of people in the world. The first kind are those who do not believe in any kind of God or supernatural being and, thus, strongly repudiate words like ‘repentance’ if they are not related to censuses items in juridical or judiciary systems. They usually live parochially, regarding the whole of nature as something which necessitates their own creation of subdivisions conditioned by their own tastes and sensibilities. The second kind are those who claim to believe in the supernatural - a form of either deism or theism or one of the false religions which either affects their life only in so far as it remains unobtrusive or it requires a cultural commitment as well as a philosophical or methodological commitment. This is a broad category, consisting of all the people who are not atheists, but are not Christians either. Now the third kind are those who have found the truth by whichever means was necessary; that is to say, they have discovered the true meaning of life - they have found truth in Jesus Christ, and can truly say that ‘To live is Christ and to die is gain’ (Philippians 1:21). These are the people who have purged themselves of that tiresome business of seeking prestige and admiration, soliciting ‘image’ and coveting ‘status’, by trying to harmonise the contrasting demands of the self and the Divine by putting Christ first (to the best of their ability) in everything they do. The old parochialism has been reconditioned and made into something that centres on Christ before everything else, for in belonging to Christ, they are fully attuned to His love and grace, and are set free from a great many of the pressures of the world.
Some people who become Christians in their adult life experience the literal passing through each of these three stages, while for others it occurs only metaphorically - but in passing through these stages or simply by becoming aware of them in the abstract metaphorical sense, a man comes to notice that it is only the third kind of people who are truly happy and content. In other words, it is only those who can say with heartfelt conviction, ‘To live is Christ and to die is gain’ that are truly blessed in this world. The kinds of pleasure that one distils from earthly things depends in no uncertain terms on whether one can live for Christ and let the old self die to be enriched by the renewal that His love and grace provides.
And if there are many who reject or do not understand the true nature of repentance, the same must be true of God’s grace as well. If a man does not recognise the true pleasure and blessings of God’s grace, he cannot be saved, because he cannot produce it synthetically. That is not to say we cannot receive the grace of God without fully understanding how it is working inside us; after all, a man can take Paracetamol without understanding exactly how it makes his headache better. I think a man’s realisation of his need to repent of his sins and his reliance on God’s grace are much the same to begin with - after all, a man can accept what Christ has done without knowing quite how this acceptance is going to change him; in actual fact, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it, and how he would be truly blessed until he started to become enriched on his Christian journey.
We may, indeed, be sure that perfect salvation will not be attained by anything we credit ourselves with - the credit is all His, and everything that is good about us is good because of His desire to give; thus our first realisation of the need for repentance is the first step in our accepting our need to rely on the grace of Christ rather than on ourselves, for then we will experience the greatest gifts and blessings imaginable.
The views carried here are those of the author, not of Network Norwich and Norfolk, and are intended to stimulate constructive debate between website users. We welcome your thoughts and comments, posted below, upon the ideas expressed here. You can also contact the author direct at james.knight@norfolk.gov.uk
James is a Norwich local government officer, author and Proclaimers church member in Norwich. You can access his current collections of columns here
Meanwhile, if you want to find out more about Christianity, visit: www.rejesus.co.uk |
., 27/05/2009 |
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| | | Salvation Alert!!!!!! (Guest) | 27/05/2009 22:10 | Repentance is what the Lord Ipsulots and the two Mikes need. Here is a famous story...
One Sunday afternoon Dr. Ironside was walking along Market Street and noticed a sizable crowd gathered at the corner of Grant Avenue. He realized by the sound of the band and the singing that this was a Salvation Army meeting, and he joined the circle of people to enjoy the music and testimonies. The lassie captain knew him immediately, for it had hardly been more than a year since he left the Army. She asked him if he would like to give his testimony and he happily assented. While he was telling the Gospel and of his own experience of God’s saving grace, he observed a rather well-dressed and intelligent-looking man in the audience, standing a little apart from others. This gentlemen took a card out of his pocket and wrote something on it and, as Ironside was concluding his message, walked up to the "ring" and handed it to him.
Still speaking, Harry glanced down at the card and promptly recognized the name of a man who had been giving widely-advertised addresses on the West Coast for some months. He was an official representative of one of the early trade unions, the IWW - the Industrial Workers of the World, facetiously called by its opponents, I Won’t Work. This particular man was famed for his ability to incite his hearers to class hatred and animosity toward the capitalistic system. He had passed him the card, Harry realized, for a purpose other than to give him his name, so Harry turned it over and read the penciled words, "Sir, I challenge you to debate with me the question ‘Agnosticism vs. Christianity’ in the Academy of Science Hall next Sunday afternoon at four o’clock. I will pay all expenses."
Harry read the card aloud to the crowd; he then answered his challenger, "I’m very much interested in this challenge. Frankly, I’ve already been announced as the speaker at another meeting next Lord’s day afternoon at three o’clock, but I think it will be possible to finish in time to reach the Academy of Science by four or, if necessary, to have another speaker take my place at the earlier meeting."
"Therefore," he continued, "I’ll be glad to agree to this debate on the following conditions, namely that in order to prove that this gentleman has something worth debating about, he will promise to bring with him to the hall next Sunday two people whose qualifications I shall give in a moment, as proof that agnosticism is of real value in changing human lives and building true character. First, he must promise to bring with him one man who was for years what we commonly call a 'down-and-outer.' I’m not particular as to the exact nature of the sins that wrecked his life and made him an outcast from society whether he was a drunkard, or a criminal of some kind, or a victim of any sensual appetite. He must be, however, a man who for years was under the power of some evil habits from which he could not deliver himself, but who, on some occasion, attended one of this gentleman’s meetings and heard him speak, glorifying agnosticism and denouncing the Bible and Christianity, and whose heart and mind as he listened to such an address were so deeply stirred that he went away from that meeting saying, 'Henceforth I, too, am an agnostic!' or words to that effect, and as a result of embracing that particular philosophy he found that a new power had come into his life. The sins that he once loved, now he hates, and righteousness and goodness are henceforth the ideals of his life. He is now an entirely new man, a credit to himself and an asset to society all because he is an agnostic."
"Secondly," Ironside went on to say, "I would like this gentleman who has challenged me to debate to bring with him to the hall next Sunday one woman and I think he may have more difficulty in finding the woman than the man who was once a poor, wretched, characterless outcast, the slave of degrading passions and the victim of man’s corrupt living." "Perhaps," said Harry, nodding in the direction of San Francisco’s infamous Barbary Coast, which was only a stone’s throw from the spot where he was speaking, "perhaps one who had lived for years in some notorious resort down there on Pacific Street, or in some other hell-hole, utterly lost, ruined, and wretched. But this woman also entered one of this gentleman’s meetings and heard him loudly proclaiming his agnosticism and ridiculing the message of the Holy Scriptures. As she listened to him, hope was born in her heart and she said, 'This is just what I need to deliver me from the slavery of sin!' She followed this teaching, then, until she became an intelligent agnostic or infidel. As a result, her whole being revolted against the degradation of the life she had been living. She fled from the infamous place where she had been captive so long and today, rehabilitated, she has won her way back to an honored position in society and is living a clean, virtuous, happy life all because she is an agnostic."
"Now, sir," Harry continued, "if you will promise to bring with you two such people as examples of what agnosticism will do, I will promise to meet you at the Academy of Science Hall at the hour appointed next Sunday, and I’ll bring with me at the very least one hundred men and women who for years lived in just such sinful degradation as I have tried to depict but who have been gloriously saved through believing the message of the Gospel which you ridicule. I’ll have these men and women with me on the platform as witnesses to the miraculous saving power of Jesus Christ, and as present-day proof of the truth of the Bible."
Quickly turning to the Salvation Army captain, Ironside asked, "Captain, have you any who could go with me to such a meeting?"
"We can give you forty, at least," she exclaimed enthusiastically, "all from this one corps, and we’ll furnish a brass band to lead the procession."
"Fine!" Harry said, "Now, sir," facing his challenger, "I shall have no difficulty in picking up at least sixty others from various missions, gospel halls, and evangelical churches. So if you promise faithfully to bring two such 'exhibits' as I have described, I will come marching in at the head of such a procession, with the band playing Onward Christian Soldiers, and I’ll be ready for the debate."
His opponent, who had at least some sense of humor, smiled rather sardonically and, with a wave of the hand as if to say, "Nothing doing!" walked away from the scene of the meeting while the crowd applauded and cheered the street preacher who had met the challenge of the agnostic and put him to flight. They recognized immediately that no philosophy of negation, such as agnosticism, could ever make bad men and women good, and yet they knew from observation and experience that this is exactly what Christ has done for centuries and is doing every day.
| | | | Ria Landon (Guest) | 04/06/2009 13:53 | Great article again James.... Thankyou
Loved the story Guest, thankyou too
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