The Essence of True Repentance

Repent! 

It's the first word of the gospel message. It is simultaneously commanded by God and granted by him. John baptized unto it, and commanded fruit in keeping with it, but what is it? The simple definition is a change of mind or heart, but often we have a change of mind or heart (or at least we think we have), only to find ourselves back in the same place far sooner than we ever thought possible.

Is repentance meant to be a yo-yo experience, the penitent returning to the same place of regret over and over? Not ultimately, but I think we sometimes get stuck there. We need more than godly sorrow, guilt has its place, but I think it's more stagnating than instigating. If such is to be any more than wasted emotion, we need to get up and climb over that hill to see a new horizon. Repentance is about transit-- it moves us from where we were to someplace new.

Truth is: regret is not the same as repentance, even though it is a stop on the way. It is possible for one to reach the conclusion that God considers a thing wrong, and even to regret that it’s been done, but still not see the thing the same way that God does. That point of agreement is where the journey toward repentance crests the final hill to see the quest's goal. For the one who sees what God says, but does not see as God sees, only Romans 7 can be his or her lot-- overcoming certainly will not be!

Regret can never be the source of victorious, overcoming behavior in the future. Even if determined action is taken against regretted behavior, that will only end up attaching a collar and leash to a wild leopard. It does not and cannot change the nature of the beast. The imposition of an alien viewpoint cleanses the soul no better than sweeping rubbish under a carpet cleans the house. For repentance to produce fruit, a sincere realization that God was right and we were wrong needs to arise in the soul and overwhelm heart and mind.

We can beat ourselves up endlessly for the stupid things we do, say and think, but that won't translate into victory unless that "aha moment" distills in our souls and we see it God's way. Not just see it, though, we have to actually agree with God. That's not something you can do by checking a box at the end of a user agreement and move on, it's something birthed in the soul and wakened in brokenness. Only then can we truly relinquish our will to his, come into agreement with him and achieve change.

Only then can we walk together with God. The prophet asked, "Can two walk together except they be agreed?" The answer to rhetorical questions is always obvious, but sometimes the applications are anything but. The answer to effective repentance is out there waiting for us to connect the dots. From the intersection of Godly Sorrow and the Need of Change the sign post points toward the next stop called Agreement. On the other side of that ash heap we're trying to climb over is the junction where we and God meet and travel on together. 

It's the essence of true repentance.

What Makes Us Saints?

I've stated that what makes us sinners is that we were made with Godlike abilities in God's image, but, not being God, we possess no ability to control them. Only God can do the God thing, so in effect, the tiger was too big for our tank. We can't blame God for sharing that image with us, his vision for us is astonishing and generous, but it's not something that can be achieved with him going one way and us going another.

What can be done to rectify the situation and bring us back into the promise? 

Apart from judicial concerns (not to minimize them in any respect) it requires the machinery of our souls to be rebuilt and thereafter, to be operated on a new basis. That entails enduing God's image with God's Spirit, which we get a taste here and now, and at the catching away, remolding new flesh untainted by sin and the curse as a home for that image. Afterwards, that which is in God's image will walk on for eternity in absolute agreement with God-- on every issue, inclination, desire, and action, everything! That is sainthood.

Because God completes the good work he begins when he infuses his Spirit in the born-again, the born again are considered saints now. Everyone of them.  

If all this sounds weird to you, realize that, that is the model of Jesus Christ himself. He walked conceived by Spirit, endued with the Spirit, and in absolute agreement with his heavenly Father in every respect. That is what life as God's image is supposed to look like. It is what heaven will be like. To the degree that one can't embrace this model, he or she will look more like a sinner (supposedly saved by grace) than a saint.

On the other end of the spectrum, I think it is a misconception to adopt Miserable Worm Theology. What we start out as doesn't define us before God, but what we will end up as. It is not humility for the born again to think themselves worms before God, but lack of vision. That won't inspire anyone to walk in the Spirit-filled fullness Christ purchased for us. Since Christ has done so much to make us new, shouldn't we embrace what it is that makes us saints, and be glad, rather than slithering, stuck in an old way of life that's nothing more than yesterday's news?

What Makes Us Sinners?

That mankind has a sin nature is clearly taught in scripture. Romans 7 gives an adequate description of how it displays itself, even in those who are "good," but what, exactly, is the sin nature? I think it could be described in terms of the bondage of the will accurately enough, but where exactly did that bondage come from and how does it work?

I stated before that mankind was made in the image of God, but in ignorance (innocence). That condition was called good by God, despite the claim I've made that it was not his ultimate aim, nor will it be our condition in eternity. Our higher abilities (like will, choice and creativity) were made complementary to God's because he wanted mankind to live on his level as his family and friends. Though he is the omnipotent God, scary on so many levels, his aim is to have us be one with him.

What does all this have to do with the sin nature? Well, God alone is good: only he has what it takes to express Godlike attributes in harmony with his perfect will. Only he can manage those things which make up his image. The sin nature arose in mankind when Adam and Eve, despite having the breath of God (a living Spirit), exercised Godlike capacities in opposition to God. Sin is the exertion of will contrary to the will of God.

As a consequence, the breath that God imparted lost its connection with the God who breathed it (spiritual death), mankind was thereby separated from God, cursed, and whatever capacity pristine man had to walk in the will of God was lost irretrievably. Since then, we walk in dying flesh apart from God, godlike to some degree, but anything but like God. We possess some godlike capacities, but without the ability to harness them to "good." We do what we have an urge to do regardless of what God wants: some more, some less. 

That is the essence of our sinful natures. Adam and Eve had their life degraded to that level, and at that level they reproduced what would become all the rest of us. They passed on their broken nature as sinners, because it was all they had to pass on. The machinery of our soul cannot function without God being in us, and us being in agreement with him. That disagreement, and the disability that results in being without God is what makes us sinners.

Raisins Or Grapes

"Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards,

for our vineyards are in blossom."

The Song of Songs 2:15

Big challenges present big problems, and can produce epic failures. But small things can accumulate and ruin everything as well. Like a constrictor, slowly but efficiently they squeeze the life out of us by tightening their grip on every exhale. We breathe out but don't breathe in. Sometimes the constrictors in our lives seem like good things-- anything but slithery (Revelation 2:2-3). 

In spiritual constriction, the Spirit goes out in word and deed, but isn't given the opportunity to refill the vessel. The constrictors can be something as mundane as the mere distractions of living (Luke 8:14). The Spirit is replaced by that which is not Spirit, like inhaling nitrous oxide instead of oxygen, which makes the constrictor's clinch no laughing matter.

The soul of our existence is our oneness with God (John 17:20-26). When the congress between the Spirit of God and us is free, without competition, we know who He is and who we are in him. We're anchored, standing on solid ground. When we begin getting too occupied doing things, even holy things, we end up getting out of Breath. We go stale, we drift, doubts increase, and unfortunately, so does sin.

Jesus was incredibly busy and yet never seemed in a rush. He knew what his source was. He didn't substitute action for interaction with his heavenly Father. Somehow, whether in our rush to do good, or just to do, we lose track of that lesson, and forget that what makes us what we are and fuels what we hope to be is God's presence in our lives.

What hope do we have apart from the warmth of our fellowship and the depth of our conversation with God? Jesus masterfully got that point across by using the illustration of the vinedresser and his vines. He truly is looking to bring the very best out of us. However, I don't think that we can take that in any way implying that he would be happy with raisins rather than grapes.

When Less Is More

What are the three best things anyone can do to aid evangelism?

1) Love (John 13:34-35; 1 John 4:7-8; Hebrews 10:24; 1 John 3:16-20; Galatians 6:10);

2) Demonstrate the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:4-5; Hebrews 2:4; 1 Thessalonians 1:4-5; Luke 24:46-49)

3) Be ready with your answer (1 Peter 3:15-16; John 9:24-38; Acts 26:1-29; 2 Timothy 1:8a; Luke 9:26).

We don't need to drink liquor with the world in order to win them, or to gyrate and grind with them at dance clubs, or to use vulgar language, or to entertain them, or to be entertained with them in order to have something to talk with them about around the water cooler. Evangelism is not offering the world more of what it already has, but that which is divinely different! Not different just for difference sake, nor different by artifice, but the difference that arises naturally, really supernaturally, when God is in the place.

If people will not heed the invitation to put their trust in Christ and walk with him now, when that invitation is accompanied by the demonstration of love, Holy Spirit power and personal testimony, then they don't need to be in God's company in eternity. Not because they are anymore wicked than any of us, but because they will not surrender to the will of God and the leadership of his Spirit. God alone is good, and if one can't agree with him, he or she needs to burn in hell! 

No one is fit for, nor could they possibly stay in heaven if they're not absolutely surrendered to God's will. Such surrender is the very stuff of faith, hope and love. It's what Jesus demonstrated during his earthly journey. So whatever Christians do in the name of evangelism, that whatever has to resolve in a call to the not yet surrendered to surrender unconditionally to Christ.

A church that accommodates human willfulness for the sake of evangelism, instead of confronting it, provides no service to anyone except Satan. Silencing the call for repentance, or expanding the tent of salvation to enclose sinful human perversity is not evangelism, nor even pre-evangelism. It's just participating in another's sin. If that is actually what it takes to grow the church in post-modern society, then growth is a diminishment which actually makes less more.

Why Did God Make Man?

Upon finishing the work of creating, God's evaluation of all he had made, including mankind, was that everything was good, in fact, very good. Of all that he had created, humans alone were described as made in his image. Apart from all else, they could relate to God correspondingly, akin to Adam relating correspondingly to Eve after she was created. Those two were persons in a way analogous to God being a person and so were relational with God at a level akin to his.

If we understand Paul's description of completion in a well-known passage, we begin to understand God's ultimate aim in making mankind in the way that he did. Mankind was not intended to be a pet in a menagerie, but a friend and family member to God. God made man in his image, because man was intended to share life with God on his level. If that sounds like a reach, note the soaring language of Christ's high priestly prayer.

I don't think it was ever God's intention to sustain Adam, Eve and their offspring in blissful, everlasting state of innocence (really, ignorance). Failure from such a state is possible, even probable, and it is not what we are raised to at the end of time. In order to accomplish his ultimate aims, mankind would have to be let in on everything at some time. It seems that tree wasn't put in the garden just for show.

At the right moment, mankind would had to have been brought into the fullness of knowledge and into the realm of sight to fulfill God's aims. On the journey to that end, the essential quality that God was attempting to distill within the human race was faith. Faith does not germinate in the realm of sight, but only in the state of ignorance and in the experience of the not yet. In that state, it is the faith of the created in their Creator, their absolute trust in him, that allows God to ultimately share all that he is and has with them without the potential of failure afterwards.

When one trusts in God, God in turn can trust him or her. It's like the old Hollywood storyline of someone fabulously wealthy hiding his or her identity and then seeking true love and friendship in the ignorance and innocence of other people. Life on God's level can only truly be led by God, but for those who have true faith in him, such life can be shared with them without the inevitability of betrayal. And everlasting life with God at that level is what Jesus actually modelled and exactly what we've been made for.

God Chooses Faith

God has mercy on whom he will have mercy. For some, those words limn an arbitrary selection, made draft board-like by a God who keeps his own counsels. Though God speaks these words self-descriptively, are they meant to convey divine capriciousness? Considering that God says so much else about himself that is not capricious, I would say, no.

That God exerts his will to direct the course of history to a foregone conclusion does not mean that true independence amongst humankind has to be co-opted in order to accomplish his aims. In another post, I pointed out that God’s ultimate purpose in making us was to create family and friends that could relate to him on his level. Certainly, one aspect of that level is freedom of choice and action. I believe it is essential to God’s design in choosing ends that humans express freedom of choice and action.

Is faith even possible under any other conditions?

Paul tells us that faith is the crucial factor in God’s selecting. Faith is what includes us, unbelief is what excludes us. And just so we’re clear on this, faith is not the result of our desire or work, it is merely a reaction to God’s intervention. Apart from God interjecting himself into our lives and presenting us choices, no one would call on him. God sends word to us of possibilities with him, he asks us to trust him, to make a faith choice, a real choice. Who can get the credit for that but God? 

Those who get saved merely respond to God’s tap on their shoulder. Therefore, every single one who walks into the kingdom to come will be able to say they do so because they believed in what God said and did, even though they never could have without God's interposition. In God's scheme of things we’re not puppets or pets. He does not intend for us to walk in uncertainty, wondering whether or not we are one of those that he’s pre-wired for salvation, nor does he desire any of us to smugly rest on our laurels, certain that we are. 

God asks us to examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith. Like faith itself, that's something God doesn't do for us, but that we do ourselves. It can serve little purpose, it seems to me, for folk to get lost in arcane theological conjectures concerning their election when, practically speaking, the point becomes moot if one believes and has experienced the reassuring work of the Holy Spirit. The only truly helpful thing for those who call upon the Lord to know about election is that God chooses faith.

Faith Is a Reaction, Not a Work

What child has not garnered impish delight in suddenly jumping out from some dark hiding place and yelling, "Boo!" Rolling on the floor in laughter over the bizarre behavior of the victim-- screaming, throwing hands in the air, taking a swing at unseen attackers, dropping stuff, spewing unpleasantries-- the perpetrator reaps ghoulish delight over the victim's reactions. Some of the accosted do nothing at all to the perplexity and consternation of their prodder. Bummer!

Who can blame the victims when they do act in such uncharacteristic or even ill-mannered ways? After all, it was just a reaction, not premeditated, not intended, not necessarily reflective of their disposition at all. It just happened: an action and an equal and opposite reaction. We're all wired to react to stimuli, we'd probably be dead if we didn't, but each of us reacts differently.

I see faith in God, at least it's initial stage, in a similar vein. It is a metaphysical reaction by people to a word from God. Faith, it seems to me, starts with a head turn in response to God’s tap on one’s metaphorical shoulder. Abraham, the model for what faith can accomplish, found his one day when God’s word came to him and he believed. I believe everyone is wired with this capacity, hence God's command that all respond coupled with the outpouring of His spirit on all flesh. 

Everyone, however, reacts with varying degrees of responsiveness. Some, like the unmoved prudes in the example above, don't give so much as a rise to the word’s impetus. Others go hog wild. God's word, the seed of transformation, falls upon varying kinds of the soil of faith in its hearers, the rain of the Spirit falling on all. The result: abundant fruit to hard indifference. Does the soil have something to say about it's response? I think it does, but even if you don't, the principle of faith generation is the same regardless.

The Bible leads me to understand that faith is not a work, hence the contrast in that all too famous passage (as well as this one). Works are the fruit of will exerting effort, whereas faith is the soul's reaction to God's interposition. Faith is a reaction, not a work. We have all heard faith described as a leap, which is a reasonable perception, so long, that is, as one envisions that leap as resulting from the Holy Spirit saying, "Boo!".

When Grace Leads to Universalism

What can we know about God's heart? About what drives him, what moves him, what makes him draw lines in the sand? The answer of course is the Bible, our source for all that is indisputable regarding God. I suppose we can come to know these sorts of things experientially in a more personally relevant way through our fellowship with his Spirit within us, but any and every thing we can know beyond doubt arises from the Word.

Some passages I've always found particularly salient in this regard are 2 Peter 3:9

"The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."

Ezekiel 18:23 and 33:11, which virtually say the same thing (the latter is copied here)

"As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live."

and I Timothy 2:4

"God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth."

What these verses tell me, indisputably, is that God wants people, all people, saved. There is no joy in his heart over anyone being lost. I submit that there isn't anything necessary to his glory in it. There will not be one person thrown into eternal torment whom the Lord would not rather have by his side in glory. 

Which leads to another thought-- why can't God have what he wants? I mean he is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnitemporal. What stands in the way of him getting what he desires? Certainly, if he desires a thing, such as all people getting saved, that thing is good by virtue of the one who alone is good wanting it.

As some fashion them, the so-called doctrines of grace declare that people get saved because of a sovereign act of God. Before the human race born of Adam even came into existence, God chose those who were to be saved, and then fashioned existence to effect that choice. The benefactors of that choice believe and persevere, irresistibly, as they come into being. Under such a regimen, the only thing that leads to people ending up in heaven is God instilling a grace enablement within the souls of the chosen. Once elected, salvation is inevitable.

Is that a problem? Yes, if we actually take what God has told us about himself to be true! He has said of himself that he doesn't want anyone to be lost. The scripture is clear about this. If all it took to accomplish his desire was his own act, how would he act? Since I'm not willing to see God as schizophrenic, I must answer that He would save everyone. God would have to be schizophrenic to state a particular desire that must be good, and yet not be able to bring his considerable skills, power and goodness to bear upon accomplishing it.

We know from the Word that not everyone will be saved. Therefore, there must be some other factor in the equation that God is not willing or able to circumvent for that to be so. Some will, other than God's, must be in play and allowed by God to be decisive in determining who gets saved. Otherwise, God's desire would be decisive and everyone would, in fact, get saved. 

It seems clear to me, that for one to hold on to sovereign election as promulgated in the doctrines of grace and yet also accept God's testimony about his desire and his power, that one is forced, logically, to adopt universalism. If God's will is the only effectual one, then everyone will be saved. Perhaps that explains the universalist drift in the history of Calvinistic churches in New England.

Thankfully, I'm not a Calvinist, so I just accept the testimony of the Word and experience no contradiction at all.