Repentance

• The more you mature in your relationship with the Lord, the more you will repent and change.

I just got out of a pastor’s discipleship group where we were discussing Matthew 4 and Jesus’ call to repent. 

“Repent” is central to the understanding of the gospel. It means “change” – and change is all fun and games when it feels good. But when it challenges our ingrained sensibilities, we need a good measure of grace to receive the capacity to…change. 

Repentance is frequently thought of as something you do in order to be saved. Turn from your wicked ways and start following Jesus. But I’ve become convinced of this principle: the more you mature in your relationship with the Lord, the more you will repent and change. As you go deeper with God, your capacity and willingness to change and grow accelerates. 

In other words, repentance is not simply a singular experience at salvation. That might be the mega-repentance of your life, but it will be followed by hundreds, if not thousands, of micro-repentances/changes that will become the essence of your discipleship pilgrimage. These might involve attitudes, habits, ways of loving and serving, your financial dealings, your devotional life, your physical habits. 

Christian Smith has written a book (Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers) that examines the religious and spiritual practices of our nation’s youth. He rather famously coined the term “moralistic, therapeutic deism”: live a good life, be nice, and, if you do so, God will provide therapeutic benefits like peace and happiness. But He’s not expected (or sought) to be involved beyond that. 

This ideology makes a huge difference in one’s approach to the Lord. Teens pray, Smith found; 40% or more do so daily. But their motivation is not worship or thanksgiving or obedience. God becomes a great problem solver with the ability to deliver the easier life. If teenagers have a problem, they pray. In their minds, God comes to the rescue by providing calm, security, success. 

But do they pray to repent, to change, to be radically different for the sake of Christlikeness? Hardly, because, as Smith suggests, their distant God is not demanding. His role is to alleviate their stress and discomfort.

What Smith found among adolescents is not unique to their age group nor to American Christianity, though it is widely present among both. I head to Nigeria this week (where I have been many times before), and in Lagos many roadside signs beckon Africans to attend any number of churches that promote the prosperity gospel. Worship with us, pray with enough faith, give enough money…and God will bless, bless, bless you with more money, nicer cars, bigger houses, healing. I am quite sure Nigerians learned that from Americans, but they have taken it to unusual heights—perhaps out of desperation, in light of widespread poverty.

But what if God’s blessings come largely, if not mostly, by repentance, change, rebuke, and judgment? Or, as Paul, found, through torture and death: “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” This same apostle, whose life was more abundant than any of ours who live in the wealthy West, could tell us what such repentance led to: being whipped by the Jews five times (39 lashes each), beaten with rods three times, and shipwrecked three (eventually four) times, facing dangers from rivers, robbers, religious thugs, his own people (Jews), Gentiles, in cities, in the desert, and at sea. He endured low pay, hard work, sleeplessness, hunger, thirst, cold, nakedness, misunderstanding, and—according to early Christian writings—beheading in Rome.

That was not a life of morally therapeutic deism. Having encountered the living Christ on the road to Damascus, Paul spent his remaining days being transformed through continual obedience to God, resulting in one of the most consequential, joyful lives ever recorded. 

And the gist of that kind of life should be ours.