God's Kindness for Our Repentance

I am in one of those transition times where I have finished up a survey of the book of Hebrews and I’m wondering where to settle in next. Should I continue our home church’s journey through the weapons of our warfare, and consider how the full armor of God will help us take our stand against the evil one? Is there value in continuing through Revelation even though it is full of so many uncertainties (to me) that I can’t preach through it with confidence? Do I want to focus on a book like Romans that could take us years to complete, or one of the gospels to help us be unashamed in the gospel? I haven’t really done a survey through Old Testament books to any great extent, so maybe we need a good dose of the historical foundation of our faith, or some prophetic reminders of how seriously sin affects our relationship with God, or a poetic journey through emotions that need to learn how to attach to God as the psalm-writers expressed.

What has been on my heart all this week has been the poverty-of-spirit response to Paul’s expression that he was not ashamed of the gospel.[1] This has brought up the issue of how we avoid facing the shamefulness of our sin, which then minimizes our experience of the magnificence of our salvation, and so leaves us trying to be good Christians rather than rejoicing that God saves sinners, including the worst of us.[2]

So, here’s where that continues on for today:

To get to the place where we are not ashamed of the gospel we must experience the gospel dealing with our sin in redemption, not in honoring our good works.[3] This requires a genuine experience of repentance and faith, repentance fully dealing with what we have done in our sin, and faith fully dealing with what Jesus has done in our salvation.[4]

Since I am not sure how much God wants us dealing with our sin privately, confessing all our sins to him with a comprehensive kind of clarity, and how much we need to confess our sins together as the church, I am drawn to some of the ways that God’s people confessed their sins together in the Old Testament. The New Testament presents us with the challenge of, “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”[5] I’m sure we can gain some help in how he wants us to repent from these Old Testament examples. So, here is the one that I’m looking at first:

“Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us. For we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day, and we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.”^[6]

Okay, I wrote the above part before jumping in to some prayerful meditation on all these Scriptures. When I began narrowing my focus on talking to Father about these things, something became very clear. It also seems to answer some of the question about how much we can confess our sins together, admitting to our need of God, and repenting that “we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God”, however it applies to us both individually and corporately.

                  

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” (Romans 1)

If this is not true in my heart-of-hearts, it is not because there is less power in the gospel for my salvation than for anyone else. This is a package deal. If I do not have Paul’s experience of not being ashamed of the gospel, it is because I have not had Paul’s experience of the power of God for salvation, and this is because I have not had Paul’s experience of believing.[7]

Which means that, if we cannot revel in the righteousness of God it is because we are not attached to its revelation that it comes “from faith”, and so we cannot feel its power working in us “for faith”, and so we are not attached to the life-experience of the righteous living “by faith”.

That ties very much into what John Piper wrote about our connection to hating sin and loving righteousness.[8] Yes, we are to “flee youthful passions”, and we are to “pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.”^[9] But it is all based on our experience of the gospel that is the power of God to save us, and to satisfy us with the righteousness that is by grace through faith, the genuine experience of God’s righteousness that is from faith, for faith, and by faith.

Which brings me back to, “everyone who believes”. I recall dealing with the sin of unbelief recently.

“And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.”^[10]

“And he marveled because of their unbelief.”^[11]

“So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.”^[12]

“some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation…”[13]

These examples make it clear that God’s work is restricted by unbelief. It is not that God is restricted, but that his grace working through faith requires faith before it can continue what grace is doing. It is almost like grace is doing the spiritual CPR that will raise us from the dead, and, until we are awakened by faith, grace can do no more in our lives than we could do with a corpse. Grace will continue working to bring us to faith, but that faith is necessary for all the rest that grace will do in our lives. As soon as we are attached to Father in faith, the conduit for grace to continue working is opened, and we can then experience the from-faith, for-faith, by-faith, life of righteousness.

Thankfully, God has taken his people through such a variety of experiences where their expressions of repentance and faith become helps to us in our Beatitudinal Journey to living by faith.[14] The one that stands out the most at the moment is that of the distressed Father who had already experienced Jesus’ disciples failing to deliver his son from demonic attack.[15] When Jesus confronted him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes”, the man’s response was, “Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’”^[16]

This is what we need for our home church, and I am sure for many of God’s children who read this, enough faith and desperation to cry out with the faith that we do have, asking for help with the faith we do not have. If we have enough of this mixture of belief and unbelief to earnestly cry out to God with this prayer, he will surely answer us as Jesus did for that father and his son.

© 2017 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)

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[1] Romans 1:16-17

[2] I Timothy 1:12-17

[3] Colossians 1:13-14

[4] Mark 1:15; Acts 20:17-21 (vs 21 in particular); Hebrews 6:1

[5] Romans 2:4

[6] Jeremiah 3:25

[7] I do not mean by this that we are not saved just because our experience of unashamed joy in the gospel is not as rich as brother Paul’s. Rather, I mean that some believers have clearly not experienced salvation to the depths of our inner being as Paul did. Just as paramedics can bring an injured person back to life, but with that person now needing intense medical treatment to return to good health, so we may need intense ministry from God to heal the brokenhearted and bind up our wounds (Psalm 147:3) even though we are now fully alive in Jesus Christ. Paul’s personal experience was so powerful, complete with profound revelations of the person and work of Jesus Christ (II Corinthians 12:1-10), that his unashamed joy in the gospel of Jesus Christ was a hugely settled issue, necessary for him to be an apostle to us Gentiles with the mystery of the gospel, which is Christ in us, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).

[8] This came up in our church sharing yesterday: http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/my-sin-feels-good-in-the-moment-why-stop

[9] II Timothy 2:22

[10] Matthew 13:58

[11] Mark 6:6

[12] Hebrews 3:19

[13] Acts 19:9

[14] By “Beatitudinal Journey” I mean the gracious work of God to transform us through the experiences Jesus’ described in the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:1-12.

[15] Mark 9:14-29

[16] Mark 9:23-24