1 Clement & Repentance

I have been reading 1 Clement, and around the middle of the letter, Clement makes an appeal to the Christians in Corinth who have strayed far from God. It is a call to repentance, and Clement makes it clear (here and elsewhere) that those who fail to repent will be judged by God. In the passage below, Clement makes clear what is to be abandoned in repentance and what is to be embraced. He does not skimp on words to make the point that repentance is a very serious issue and not one to be minimized. Clement’s brutal and shocking choice of words hones in on the point that the person who does not repent is a person detested by God; and the person who does not repent will suffer God’s heavy judgments. He writes:

Therefore, since there is nothing [God] does not see and hear, let us approach Him with awe, and have done with this hateful fondness for mischief-making, so that we may find shelter in His mercy from the judgment to come… We must bid farewell to all slandering, lewd and unclean coupling, drinking and rioting, vile lusting, odious fornicating, and the pride which is an abomination… Self-assertion, self-assurance, and a bold manner are the marks of men accursed of God; it is those who show consideration for others, and are unassuming and quiet, who win His blessing… [So now let us return to the Lord by] fixing our minds trustfully on God; by finding out what is pleasing and acceptable to Him; by doing whatever agrees with His perfect will; by following the paths of truth. Wickedness and wrongdoing of every kind must be utterly renounced; all greed, quarreling, malice and fraud, scandal-mongering and back-biting, enmity towards God, glorification of self, presumption, conceit, and want of hospitality; for men who do these things—and not only men who do them, but men who consent to them—are held in detestation by God.

Scripture says, But unto the wicked God says, ‘Why do you recite my statutes and take my covenant upon your lips? You hated instruction; you flung my words behind you; when you saw a thief you went along with him, and you chose the company of adulterers. Your mouth abounded with evil, and your tongue wove a web of trickery. You sat there slandering your brother and planning the downfall of your own mother’s son. While you were doing all this I remained silent, and so you thought, you wicked man, that I was no better than yourself; but I will rebuke you, and make you see yourself as you are. Think of this, all you who forget God, or he will pounce on you like a lion, and there will be nobody to save you. It is the offering of praise that will glorify me; there lies the way by which I will show him God’s salvation.’

The end of this is what really shakes me up. The caricature-sketch Clement gives can apply to so many people we see within our churches. Remember that Clement is writing to people within the Corinthian church, and in quoting the Scriptures, he is applying it to their “situation in life”. There were people in the Corinthian church who knew well what God required and did not do it. They would, with their lips, praise God. They would speak delightfully of God and His ways, but God was not blinded to their hearts: they hated “instruction” (the act of being told how to live and thus living that way). They knew the commandments of God but “flung” them behind them: they paid no heed and ran forward doing what they wanted without any regard to God’s commandments. They made thieves and adulterers their close companions; the wisdom writings consistently warn against “taking company” with such people, and the New Testament says to avoid rich friendships with people (note: we are not to avoid these people altogether, but we are instructed not to become “best friends” with them). These people spoke evil things (the exact nature of that is unknown, but most likely it has to do with manipulation, deception, etc.). These people were slanderers of others and plotted the downfalls of people they were close to.

And while they were doing this, God remains silent. They may presume in God’s silence many things. In this instance, the figure in the sketch presumes that God is no better than Him. One might also presume that God is okay with what he is doing, or that God doesn’t notice. More often, we may believe that within God’s silence is His aching love to have us return to Him, and we may—with this thought—presume upon His great love to not repent. “God wants me so much, He won’t punish me.” But the truth of the matter is that for such people, a time will come when God will rebuke them, revealing to the person the true nature of themselves. How this rebuke will take place may vary from person-to-person, but whatever it is, the person will be face-to-face with the awful condition of his or her own heart. The rebuking here is to be taken as an act of judgment: when God judges, He often forces the person to see himself for who he really is; and, sometimes, the judgment comes when it is too late for the person to repent.

And quoting Scripture, Clement urges those who refuse to repent—those who “forget God” (not meaning an intellectual or knowledgeable forgetting, but a “forgetting” in the sense of paying Him not attention and instead focusing on other “gods”)—to “think of this” (to meditate upon it, to really contemplate it, to become aware of the realities of it). The end result, in Clement’s hope, is that such a person will repent. And if that person does not repent? Then God will—eventually—pounce upon him like a roaring lion. A roaring lion attacks and kills and dismembers. This is akin to what God’s judgment upon the unrepentant will be—and when that time comes, there will be no one to save he who had been unrepentant.