IT MUST feel strange to Christians
of earlier generations if they were to attend modern worship services.
One of the things they would find extremely odd is the absence
of the prayer of confession which is an essential part of the
worship service.
Could it be that it is no longer fashionable to talk about sin,
human depravity, and our need for repentance in God's presence?
Or perhaps it is due to a lack of biblical and liturgical understanding
of what worship is among well-intentioned but inadequately trained
worship leaders.
Jesus began His public ministry with a clear and profoundly simple
message: "Repent and believe" (Mk. 1:15). The sermon
that Peter preached when the Church was constituted at Pentecost
can be summarised as "Repent and be baptised" (Acts
2:38). We must not fail to notice the importance that both our
Lord and the apostles gave to repentance. It was central to their
message.
There may be some who might think that the messages of Jesus and
Peter were their first sermons intended mainly for those who needed
to be evangelised and converted. But is that true? Is repentance
only required of those who are about to become Christians? What
about long-standing Christians? Do they ever graduate from the
need to repent? Scripture tells us that repentance is required
all through our lives. Our experience supports this.
Peter, when writing to Christians, keeps emphasising the importance
of repentance. He writes: "Therefore, rid yourselves of all
malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander of every kind"
(1 Pet. 2:1). As long as one is unable to say that he has finally
got rid of these sins completely, he continues to be in need of
repentance. Peter also points out that there were those in the
church who had "left the straight way" and who "never
stop sinning" (2 Pet. 14-15). Worse, they were leading others
astray and their condition was worse than it was before they became
Christians (vv. 17-22). In explaining the delay in Christ's return,
Peter declares that the Lord was patient with them, "not
wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance"
(2 Pet. 3:9).
It is clear that repentance is an essential
aspect of our Christian lives. We enter the Christian life through
repentance and we grow and mature in it through repentance (or
as Frederica Mathewes-Green in The Illumined Heart has put it,
repentance is both the door and path of the Christian life). Repentance
must therefore be taken seriously.
It is vitally important that in worship services time is given
for worshippers to confess their sins to God, to repent and experience
God's forgiveness. This can be further enhanced by making it personal
and I mean it in two ways.
Firstly, even when there is a prayer of confession, it is often
too general and impersonal. Worshippers tend to read the text
without their sins in mind and without a broken heart. There is
therefore no transaction between a sinful soul and a holy God.
This can be rectified in part by a biblically informed and Spirit-led
worship leader (ideally the pastor) who can help worshippers to
pray the prayer of confession sincerely and meaningfully.
Secondly, repentance must be seen from a relational perspective.
It is true that sin is transgression or the breaking of the moral
law. When we realise we have broken a moral law, we often feel
guilty. But our understanding of sin and repentance must go deeper.
We need to realise that when we sin we not only break the law,
but also the Lawgiver's heart. This will profoundly change our
experience of repentance when we realise that we have hurt our
heavenly Father's heart.
A common thread that runs through Scripture is the God whose heart
is broken by human sin, or as theologian Jurgen Moltmann has put
it, "the Crucified God". We read in Scripture that the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each grieved by human sin (Gen.
6:6; Mk. 3:5; Eph. 4:30). When we understand this, we will take
neither sin nor our need for repentance lightly.
Our repentance must be personal in that it is relational. We must
not only feel guilt because we have broken the law but we must
also feel godly sorrow in realising that we have broken God's
heart. When I was a youth I was taught that every time we sinned
it was like crucifying Jesus afresh. Perhaps there was pastoral
value in that, (though we know that Jesus died "once for
all" - 1 Pet. 3:18), in the sense that it saw sin and repentance
in such interpersonal terms.
When repentance is experienced in terms of our relationship with
God, often there is a pouring out of tears (or as Martin Luther
put it, "heartwater"). It is a sign that God is dealing
with the spiritual abscesses deeply embedded in our souls. Healing,
relief, and spiritual growth follow. In the early church, tears
were seen as a spiritual gift and an important aspect of the Christian
life. They were intimately connected to deep repentance, which
according to Tertullian, was the work of God in our lives. Such
tears are shed because repentance was understood in terms of our
relationship with God. That is to say, when we sin we bring pain
to God's heart.
When we repent, we begin to understand and realise the depth of
this pain in God's heart caused by our sinfulness (Gen. 6:6).
We then experience painful sorrow in our own hearts. This coming
together of the divine pain of a holy and loving God and the sorrowful
pain of a repentant human heart brings about deep transformation.
This repentance then becomes the fertile soil for vibrant growth
of the soul. For when we repent we discover the depths of God's
grace and forgiveness and the beauty and majesty of His love.
May this Lent season, therefore, be a time when we rediscover
our need for repentance . It is time to discover that sin is not
a harmless toy but a deadly weapon in our hands that can terribly
hurt God (just think of the cross) when we abuse the freedom and
power that the Sovereign God has given us in love. And for that
reason we must come to hate sin because it hurts God.
Refer to helpful suggestions on "a daily repentance workout"
in an excellent article on repentance by Frederica Mathewes-Green
in http://www.frederica.com/orthodox/repentance.html