Repentance

"You're not really sorry if you keep on committing the sin."

There is some truth to that.  A nine-yr-old isn't really sorry if he's just saying the words while inwardly plotting a way to keep on whopping his brother as soon as Mom is occupied elsewhere.  The car thief isn't really sorry when he's found guilty before the judge for one theft, while at that very moment his chop-shop is dismantling or disguising another dozen cars. 

But there's the gossip who intends to do better, who desires to do better, but who slips back into her old ways during the course of what started as a normal, pleasant conversation.  Or maybe there's an addict who does what he can to stay clean, but sometimes in weakness succumbs to the addiction.  The devil is quick to accuse: "See?  You're still committing the sin.  You aren't sorry.  That means you are impenitent, and there is no forgiveness for you."

It gets worse when the sin is failing to trust in the Lord with all your heart.  "You aren't trusting in Him?  You still sin?  Obviously you are not repentant.  Because if you were, you'd just knock it off and overflow with abundant trust, never struggling with sin again." 

Repentance means a person is turned from trusting in his own works to relying upon the Lord.

Hey.
Relying upon the Lord?

For what?

For good behavior?
For strength to stop sinning?
For wisdom and fortitude to do what is right?

Well, yes.  For those things too.

But mostly ...
for relying on His forgiveness. 

If repentance means making sure we Just Stop Sinning Already, then repentance is still about trusting in myself.  And that's really no repentance at all.

Bearing Fruits Worthy of Repentance

The tax collectors and soldiers came to John, listening to his preaching, believing his message, and asking, "What shall we do?"  The answer for all of them was pretty much, "Do your job honestly, without hurting other people."

Now if you were a taxpayer in Judea at that time, whether you believed in the Lord or not, you would derive some benefit from all these people trusting in the Messiah.  These Christians beginning to bear fruits of repentance.  Some of the taxpayers would be collecting only the amount they were supposed to collect. Some of the soldiers would be fair and good.  Certainly not all of them.  And not even these new Christians were sinless.  But some of them were indeed transformed (in part) by the Gospel they believed.

So even before Jesus died,
even before He was miraculously healing people,
even before He was preaching,

already there were some temporal blessings breaking in, like the tiniest little foretaste of what was yet to come.

Stop That Sinning!

Repentance doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to stop sinning. 

Part of repentance is recognizing that the sins I do occur because of the sinner I am.  And the sinful nature is going to keep on being sinful until I'm laid to rest in the grave. 

Here's what repentance really is:  that I'm not going to rely on myself and my own efforts to solve the problem of sin in my life.  Rather, repentance means that I flee again to Christ, and depend all the more upon His forgiveness.




So does this mean the Christian can sin-like-crazy and indulge in whatever the Old Adam might desire? [She sighs in exasperation and wonders, "Are you for-real??"]

The reason the Christian desires to amend his sinful life is precisely because there has been a change of heart, worked by the Gospel, which causes him to be distressed by sin and to yearn to be free of it.

The Confessions state that the "Holy Spirit works faith when and where He pleases in those who hear the Gospel."  It is also true He works the fruits of faith when and where He pleases.   The Lord may have different ideas about what is good in our life than we do.  When we make an idol of our "good Christian walk," then the Lord knows better than we what is good for us.

We tend to think of the "amendment of life" as doing this, stopping that, fixing that habit.  Even bigger, though, is letting go of the sins of others, where Christ's forgiveness flows through us to others who've been rotten and don't deserve kindness.  Hmm ... just like Jesus forgives us.

Fixing Pietism

Joe has been accused of being a pietist.  He wonders, "Am I?" 

What's the solution?

Usually the person cusses, gets drunk, and does other decidedly impious things.  Hey, if he's not pious, then he can't trust in his piety, right?  Problem solved!

Except it's not.

Sometimes the flip-side is a response.  "Am I a pietist?  Am I looking too much at my own devotion, my own prayers, my own obedience?"  So I look closer at myself.  I pay more attention to my devotions and my church-attendance and my prayers.  After all, I need to pay attention to my efforts to not pay attention to myself.

Wait.
What did I just say?

Ohhhhh....
you see the conundrum plain as day, huh?



Maybe there actually is a solution.
A solution that looks nothing like the two common fixes.

Maybe the solution is, "Lord Jesus, I am a pietist.  I want You to like me better than the next guy because I'm such a good Christian.  This is self-idolatry.  I beg You to have mercy on me, a sinner."

Do you think He will?

How's My Faith-Walk Coming Along?

In the story of the Emmaus disciples (Luke 24), the disciples are listening to Jesus preach to them all that the Old Testament taught about the Messiah.  When He blessed and broke and gave them the bread, they realized this fellow was Jesus.  And He disappeared from sight.  Then they said, "Whoa.  Hey!  Yeah.  Our heart burned within us as He taught us!"  And they skeedaddled back to Jerusalem to tell the others.  

Did you notice?  When they were listening to Jesus, their eyes and ears and minds and hearts were captivated by HIM.  They weren't evaluating their feelings.  They weren't thinking about their faith.  They paid no attention whatsoever to their response to His preaching ...

because all they cared about was Him.

Learning to Trust

When Pastor recently said something about "learning to trust Jesus," I realized that there are two different ways people could take that.

1)  Matthias is learning to walk.  He wants to.  He keeps doing it.  It's not "work."  It's just what he does.  And he falls a lot.  No biggie.  You just keep growing up and bumbling along, and the walking gets easier.
2)  Pick a typical third-grader.  Choose one of the math-haters; not a weirdo like me who thought math drill was play-time.  That kid may be learning his math facts.  But he's doing it because the teacher is arm-twisting him into it.  He hates it.  It's boring.  It's hard.  He doesn't understand what good this will do.  Why does he have to do this anyway?  "Because it's good for you."  "Well, I'd rather climb a tree or ride my bike."  There's no joy in the learning.  And he hates being berated when he makes a mistake.

Both are learning.

But "learning to trust Jesus" is much more like the first than the second.

Trusting in Which God?

Remember that part at the end of Narnia, where the Calormene fellow ends up in heaven confused, saying he worshiped Tash and not Aslan? 

Yeah, that's bothered me, like, forever.

Today I bumped into an article about a Lutheran gal who converted first to Roman Catholicism, which then [she said] made it easy to convert to Islam.  She went on her pilgrimage to Mecca.  It's sad to hear the bondage of the rules which must be done to get your brownie-points for making the pilgrimage, and what you can do to get yourself an exemption to some of the particulars while still racking up your brownie-points.

The woman rightly desires a conviction that "God is all I need or will ever need."  She says that those who have that trust will never be worried or discouraged.  That's quite a lot of pressure to measure up to, emotionally and mentally.  But I suppose it's true.  IF I had perfect faith in Jesus, I would never be worried or discouraged.  But that ain't gonna happen.  That's why He loves and forgives sinners  -- we can't be confident and perfectly full of trustingness.

What comes after "God is all I need"?  Statements like these:
"I realize that this is something I have to work on every day."
And talk about feeling God's presence.
And, "Now that I have experienced this pure connection to God, I want to maintain and grow it. The onus is on me to make the changes necessary to help this happen."

I want to grow this connection with God.
The onus is on me.

What happened to "God is all I need"?



I've heard Christians say, "God is all I need," but then focus on their following, their works, their praying, their feelings, their efforts to grow?  Which God are they worshiping?  How is it different from the Muslim god?

That Gnawing Fear

All through the Psalms we hear praise for God's having brought His people through the terrible events that befell them. 

So why don't I do that?

Let's be logical. 
Let's be reasonable.
Here's how it often works:
Bad stuff happens.
God rescues us.
We are taught afresh that He cares (!) and that He will help (!).

So why do we panic then at the thought of the next bad thing?

The novel I'm currently reading is set in central Asia in the 200s BC.  The king hated opposition; it made him angry; it made him frightened. 

He had struggled for power all his life, and every man he'd defeated and killed made him more afraid.  One day he would not discover a plot in time, and with every victory he grew less certain of his own power.  (Horses of Heaven by Gillian Bradshaw, p 119)

"With every victory he grew less certain of his own power."

Yes.
That's it.
Upside-down though it be.
Plots and suffering and tragedy make us less certain of our own power.  It should not, however, make us any less certain of God's power.

Personally, I'd be more comfortable with a life where nothing went wrong, than with a life where God keeps rescuing me.  But that wouldn't be the Christian life, now, would it?

False Accusations

The beatitudes end with "Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake."

So what kinds of evil?  I suppose it might include things like, "Hey, the pastor embezzled thousands of dollars from the church" (which is entirely a lie) or "My neighbor is a Christian and he does _____" (which likewise is completely a fabrication).

But the evil they spoke against Jesus?  "He is overturning the Law."
The evil spoken against the apostles?  "Overturning the Law."

That's why Jesus was reviled and persecuted and killed.
That's why the apostles were too.

Thing is, that evil accusation ("overturning the law") is NOT TRUE.  Those who idolize the Law think the accusation is true.  But it's not.  Jesus fulfilled the Law; He did not do away with it.

Be Perfect

"Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5). 

Yikey-schnikey!  If you're like me, you can't help but hear that as a word of condemnation, as a command which you can never obey.

Pastor made a comparison recently.
Think of all the stories in the Gospels.  Jesus laid hands on a leper and said, "Be healed."  And the sick person is healed.

Jesus laid hands on a blind man and said, "Receive your sight."  And the man could see.

Jesus laid hands on a deaf person and said, "Be healed."  And the person was healed and could hear. 

In any of those cases, do we congratulate the person for healing himself?  Duh .....  NO.  The glory goes to the Lord Jesus who healed those who could not heal themselves.



So why this weird switcheroo when it comes to His performative word: "Be perfect"?
HE declares it.
HE makes it so.
Is that the command we sinners perceive it to be?
Or is it a blessing and a gift?

A Blessed Dying to Self

The Lutheran approach to [theosis/divination] is categorically opposite from the way the Orthodox tend to think of it.

This is the process of theosis:  God keeps on taking things away from you, one after the other.  And every time He takes something else away, He says, "You still have Me, and I'm enough."  And the day is going to come when He takes away your breath.  And He's going to say, "But you still have Me, and I'm enough."  And this is theosis.  Not this infinite climbing up, but this finding that having Him really is enough.  He gives Himself fully to you.  And if you have Him, you have everything you need.  And He gives Himself fully to you.  The older you get, the more you get this thing about TakingAway; the sorrows mount.

You live more and more from Him, and less and less from your old Adam.  This is progress in sanctification.

 Pastor Weedon 

at the Redeemer conference, 

at the 5-6 minute mark

Godliness

"The mystery of lawlessness" was in the reading recently from 2 Thessalonians 2. 

It seemed an odd phrase.

So how does it compare with "the mystery of godliness" (1 Timothy 3)? 

Wait a cotton-pickin' minute.
Godliness?
Paul says the mystery of GODLINESS is what Jesus did? 

We tend to think godliness is what I think and what I say and what I do and how I feel.  And Paul has this notion that godliness is Jesus' incarnation, suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and that these events in the Creed are preached.

The Handwriting on the Wall

And you, being dead in your trespasses
and the uncircumcision of your flesh,
He has made alive together with Him,
having forgiven you all trespasses,
having wiped out the handwriting of requirements 
that was against us,
which was contrary to us.
And He has taken it out of the way,
and nailed it to the cross.  (Colossians 2)


Remember Belshazzar (Nebuchanezzar's son)?  Big ol' party.  Lots of drinking.  Lots of worshiping idols.  A hand that appeared out of nowhere and started writing something on the wall.  People freaking out.  (You would too, if a bodiless hand appeared and started graffiti-ing up your wall.)  "Hey, remember Daniel?  Let's get him here.  He's really wise."

And what had the hand written?  "You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting" (Daniel 5).




A long time ago, in a galaxy state far far away, there was no midweek Bible study at our church.  The men had 9-to-5 jobs.  The women were stay-at-home moms, and many of them were involved in Explorers, a humongous, city-wide, non-denom Bible study.  They finally talked me into going, due in part to my desire for a preschool-like experience for my eldest kid.  Oh my goodness -- I'd never heard of so many rules for attending Bible class!

I broke rules on my very first day.  Explorers begins with opening worship, followed by small-group discussion of the previous week's lesson, and then everybody gathers again for what is essentially preaching on the week's passages.  You are not allowed to talk in the small-group discussion if you have not completed your at-home study of the passages and written your answers to the homework.  My first week?  I obviously hadn't done homework.  And I dared to talk.  Can you believe it?

(The ladies in my class were thankful.  They were confused by how often the Old Testament talked about "So-and-so, son of So-and-so, son of So-and-so."  I knew the explanation and told them the brief history tidbit.  And everybody was happy.  Until a couple of women from my church found out later that I'd broken the No-Speaking rule.  They were not happy.  Apparently, our small group gained a naughty reputation with the leadership for speaking too much and too candidly with each other.)

Over the weeks and months I attended Explorers, I grew to love the women in my small group.  Most of them were Baptist.  (In the South, "non-denom" has a decidedly Baptist feel to it!)  These women were burdened by the law.  They wanted to be good Christian women.  They desired the Lord and yearned for Him, but they were constantly being beaten up by the law.  They did not know Him to be a God of grace, but a god of rules and commands and laws and requirements.

Oh, another of the rules for Explorers small-group is "no denomination-specific discussion."  Everything has to be non-denom.  Uh.  Yeah.  I guess I broke that rule too.  I did manage (most of the time) to hold it in with regard to the sacraments and the office of the ministry and other Lutheran views.  But the gospel?  I had to speak the gospel.  How could I not?  And after all, supposedly all Christians believe the Gospel, right?  We're readin' the Bible here, folks!  How could we keep mum about the mercy of the Lord in Christ Jesus??

So when those dear women fretted that God would zot them for their inability to live as they ought, I talked about Jesus and His cross and the forgiveness of sins.  A few bristled.  Many sighed with relief.  Several hugged me and thanked me. 

Near the end of the year came the story of Daniel and the handwriting on the wall.  "You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting."

Oh, the outpouring of words that day.  The baring of hearts.  The fear.  So much fear.  "I'm not good enough."  "I am going to be found wanting.  I deserve to be destroyed."

Is there any greater joy than to be able to speak to a sinner: "But Jesus was the One put in the balance.  He took your sin.  He was 'found wanting.'  But His blood forgives your sin.  His righteousness is your own.  When God weighs you in the balance, all He finds is holiness and perfection.  No, it's not your own, that you earned.  But it is yours, because your Jesus gives it to you in His mercy and love."  And the person argues with you: "No, it just can't be.   You don't understand.  You don't know what kind of secret sins I have.  You don't know my heart's doubts."  And you get to "argue" back with them, "No, really.  He forgave all your trespasses.  He has wiped out the handwriting of requirements."



Sometimes it's really cool to be with people who aren't Lutheran, people who are tickled pink when they hear the gospel in all its fresh comfort.


Given the age of most of the women, and given how long ago this happened, many of the dear saints in my small group are probably already in heaven.  Someday I'll see them again.  And hug them.  And talking to them, my hidden Southern drawl will creep back into my usually-Northern voice. 

Clean and Holy

I used to think it was so unfair of God to have those rules about being clean and unclean.  How could the Jews ever keep those rules?  For example, touching a dead body rendered a person unclean ... but somebody had to prepare the body for burial.  How could God makes rules and expect us to keep them when the rules were unkeepable??

But that's not what holiness is about.  Holiness isn't about doing all the right things and keeping ourselves oh-so-pure.  It's about being contaminated as the helpless unclean one is served and helped and made clean.  Again and again, Jesus' miracles show Him getting dirty by touching the lepers and the ill and the bleeding and the dead. 

God sure does seem fond of oxymorons.

Such Great Faith

Many Christians want to have "great faith."  So when we hear that Jesus marveled at the great faith of the centurion in last Sunday's story (3-yr series: Luke 7), we wonder what that is.   And we wonder how we can have great faith.  Do people notice our prayers, our good works, our level of holiness?    Surely that would show great faith, right?

Notice the difference between the Jews and this Gentile.  So often the Jews would come to Jesus on the basis of their own merit.  "We have Abraham for our father."  "All these commandments I have kept from my youth."  "Lord, I thank you that I am not like this tax collector.  I fast.  I tithe...."  Even when the Jews came to Jesus on behalf of the centurion, they said he deserved help because he'd done so many good things for them. 

But what did the Gentile say?  "Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof." 

And when Jesus praised the great faith of the Canaanite woman, it was when she'd just agreed that she was an unworthy little dog.



(I'm still pondering what "little faith" is.  It always seems to be in the context of "God, You don't care about us" or "Eeeeks -- bad stuff is happening to us."  Do you suppose it too has something to do with whether I'm "worthy" enough that Bad Stuff shouldn't happen to me?  And if Bad Stuff does happen, then it must somehow be up to me to resolve it?)

Great faith =                              I have no standing

but Jesus saves me anyway

and lifts me up to be His brother

The Law Is the Final Word

At least, it is according to almost everybody in the whole wide world.

Other religions teach that works are how we please the god or how we gain heaven or nirvana or whatever.  Be good; get a reward.  When I was having a conversation with a Jehovah's Witness about eating turkey on Thanksgiving and celebrating birthdays, that's what it came down to: "follow the rules, get a blessing from god."

Other Christian denominations too teach the same thing.  Yes, they admit that the Lord (the eternal God of the promise of salvation, the God who is triune and whose nature is love) helps us be good.  And yes, they admit that the Lord forgives our screw-ups for when we're not good.  But the point of religion is still to Be Good.  That's essentially what the Roman Catholic's purgatory and the Eastern Orthodox's theosis end up being about.  (Of course, most of them would deny it.)   And it's what most Protestants teach.  (And I'm sure they too would deny it.  And that's a good thing; it means their rational minds are conflicted against the saving faith worked in them by the Holy Spirit.)

It's even a controversy among Lutherans.  While no Lutheran would disagree with the necessity for good works, and while no Lutheran would disagree with the truth that we are saved by God's grace in Christ through no merit of our own, there are still many who (somehow) come off sounding like the point of the Gospel/forgiveness is to make us able to do a better job of following the Law.



In Bible class last Sunday we were discussing Luke 5.  The Pharisees and teachers of the law had come from all over the place, from Galilee, but also from way down in Judea and from Jerusalem.  They wanted to check out this Jesus dude and the stories they'd been hearing.  And when he forgave the sins of the paralyzed man, they were hacked off.  "Who can forgive sins but God alone?"

Pastor had other points to make, but for the most part, I got lost, thinking and thinking about why the legalists were there and why they were perturbed.  We live in a [ahem] diverse society today.  Everybody thinks they should be able to do whatever they want.  Everybody should be able to think whatever they want.  Children grow up and reject what was imparted to them.

SO ... what does it hurt anybody for Christians to believe in grace? 

Why do people fuss about it?

Okay, okay, IF we purportedly believe in grace and then live in sin that hurts other people, then I can understand people saying, "Whoa, hold up!  Your so-called freedom in the Gospel is damaging me."  And that would be valid.  But if the law is being preached rightly, and the gospel is forgiving sinners, then licentiousness can result only through rejection of true doctrine.

So why the objection to people trusting in grace?

Atheists object.  People of other religions object.  And even Christians want to convert other Christians to a belief that they have to Do SOMEthing to be real Christians.

If you don't want to trust only in God's grace in Jesus' blood shed to save you, if you want to depend to some extent on your own works, I can't change your heart.  But what skin is it off your nose if I believe that?

I don't understand.

Third Use of the Law

My friend Cheryl recently pointed out a blog post.  In spite of trying to curtail my computer-time, I went and read.  I clicked on a link in the post, skimmed another blog post, clicked on another link, etc.  Apparently there is (again!) quite the ruckus in the Lutheran blogosphere about the place of "preaching sanctification."  But one thing became apparent to me in the 10 minutes that I bopped around a few sites (that is, before I grabbed control of myself and headed to the laundry room to wash sheets).

Much of the "Woe is us!  We need to preach more sanctification!" is motivated by the decaying culture out there in society.  There's political pressure for homosexual "marriage."  People kill babies unborn ... and born.  Foul language is prevalent.  Sleeping around is common.  Terrorists and madmen go on killing sprees.  This is terrible, and we want it fixed.  If the preachers preached more law, maybe it would change.

It sounds to me like what we're clamoring for is actually more "First Use of the Law."  Not more "third use."  But then again, maybe that's a clue that we don't use the law:  if it's preached, it will function as the Holy Spirit wills.

Synergism

"We believe in synergism with regard to sanctification."
I've heard it from a variety of people.
Some even quote one of the "dead orthodox" Lutheran fathers.

And yet,
how does that fit with the catechism?
"I believe that I cannot,
by my own reason or strength,
believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord,
or come to Him,
BUT the Holy Ghost has ...
sanctified me."

Toward Perfection

Admit it.  We're two-faced about perfectionism.  We say it's bad for us.  We say it's stressful.  We say, "Well, nobody can be perfect."  And yet, if we're not compelling ourselves to be perfect, we've got those teachers and bosses pushing us toward being perfect, always setting the goals higher and higher.  Once we reach the first goal, then a new goal is set.  There's no contentment, no resting, in a job well done.  Or in significant improvement.

Why is it, the closer we get to perfection, the more we're aware of our imperfection?  A kid who scores C's and B's on his tests won't flip out when he sees "C-" on his test.  But the kid who earns A's will freak over a B.  And the kid who scores 99% will be upset over a "lousy" grade like 96%.  Same thing at work.  The goal for the team is to eliminate backlogged work.  But no matter how much they improve over the year, no matter how many cases they resolve, it's never enough -- it's never perfect.  But the drive for it to be perfect is more compelling when the goal isn't as far out of reach. 

The closer we get to perfection, the more we yearn to have it.

With regard to civic righteousness, striving for perfection can drive a person bonkers and hike his blood pressure.  But with regard to religion, it can become damning if we determine that more effort on our part can get us to where we measure up.

Devotions

"O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise."

Is that really so difficult to say?

I recently attended a gathering.  The devotions had no invocation, no versicles, no creed, no hymn, no psalms, no canticles.  The devotions started with a religious reading, followed by a prayer.  You'd think we could have at least prayed the Lord's Prayer.  (Jesus did say, after all, "When you pray, say 'Our Father....'")

We've been reading John Kleinig's book Grace Upon Grace for Bible class this fall.  In it, he talks about how God's people are made holy by things like the invocation, creed, Our Father, and the benediction.  As I read that section of the book, I reflected on how impotent we think those words are.  They seem silly to most of us.  They seem little.  They seem like the same-old-same-old. 

And then you throw together more than a hundred Christians, and we pray, and I feel cheated (yes, cheated!) that we can't even say "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."  We can't have someone read a psalm to which we can respond with the Gloria Patri.  We can't confess the Faith together -- "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth...." 

Really, dear pastors.  God gave you the words to say.  You can find them in the book.  He ordered you to speak them for my comfort, for my strengthening, for my life.  Would you please just say them?!