Repent

I wrote this some years ago when I was sending out weekly emails to many members of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. Looking it back over during this Lenten season, it still seems to ring.

“I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance…”

A season of self-examination and repentance. A grand thing if we do what it really says and not what the world has made of repentance over 2000 years. Somewhere along the way “repent” changed meanings. The biblical meaning “change your mind” or “change your thinking” (Greek metanoeo) became “feel regret” or “feel sorry.”

Can we go back to the original meaning, please? Because changing what we think about God is the most important thing we can do for ourselves, for our families, for the Brotherhood. This Lent, can we study up on how we’ve misunderstood how good our Father in Heaven is, and how He sees us instead of making another list of our sins and tacking them to another Cross or burning them in another brass bowl?

Those sins are forgiven. They were from the moment Jesus said, “It is finished.” 

There may be some small purpose in finding those things in my past that still make me “feel sorry.” I may need to identify them so that I can know which things my accuser still uses to make me feel less than I am as a child of God. But once I’ve identified them all I need to do is “agree quickly with my accuser/adversary” (Matthew 5:25) and claim the righteousness that is mine in Christ Jesus. “You’re right, I have sinned, but that doesn’t change who I am because I am washed in the Blood of Jesus!” 

Some will surely fear that such a “Gospel of Grace” is really only an encouragement to sin. Not at all. Paul dealt with that in Romans 6, “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!” But if the Gospel we preach and the Gospel we live under isn’t at risk of being misunderstood that way it’s not about Grace, it’s still about law. 

It’s time to stop trying to avoid sin and try to live into the fullness of life that Grace offers. When we change what we think, what we think about God, there may be some regret. It’s called “godly sorrow.” But this isn’t something that stings (that would be accusation) but rather a softer sorrow that sees what might have been but was not because our thinking was wrong. It carries no weight because it is accompanied by the awareness that we are held by a God who makes all futures possible for us. There is nothing lost that cannot be restored.

My question for myself and my suggestion for all of us this Lent is not “So how did I mess up this year?” but rather, “How have I underestimated the goodness of God? What have I missed that He wants to show me?” That, my friends, is true repentance.