How are we to respond to God's love? In repentance and faith. Repentance is defined as a change of mind: turning to God and from selfish ambitions, dreams, and goals. Repentance involves a decision to want to want God (because our hearts are convoluted). The Kingdom of God is an invitation to plug into what God's doing in the world, and becoming a member of God's family comes with both privileges and responsibilities. As part of God's kingdom, his family, we're to make him and what he's up to our motivation. We have a responsibility to partake in God's universal recreation, beginning with ourselves. This transformation of the self isn't about gaining membership but living it out. It comes from a safe place: we're secure in God's family, secure in our status and identity before God, irrespective of how we perform, entirely respective upon Christ's work. This repentance is a lifelong thing: there's initial repentance, that decision to want to want God, that decision to turn from devotion to self to devotion to God; and then there's consequent, daily repentance: the implementing of that repentance, putting it into practice, and continuing on the journey of spiritual transformation into Christlikeness.
Anthony J. examined Philippians 2.1-13, bringing to light 4 aspects of this lifelong repentance.
The Starting Point: Confidence. Lifelong repentance, absent confidence in our secure position within God's family irrespective of our performance, turns into moral performance: we keep check of our status with God through what we do, and when we sin (as we will), we begin losing confidence. We become hesitant to come before God in prayer; we become overwhelmed with guilt that stifles our energies for the kingdom; we become inward-focused on our performance rather than outward-focused on what God has done and is doing for us. Lifelong repentance involves confidence in who we are in Christ. We shouldn't be fearful and scared of "falling out" of God's grace and favor every time we fuck up. We don't have to jump through any hoops to keep our standing with God. Yes, repentance involves things we'll have to give up and things we'll have to adopt even though we don't necessarily want to; but from a position of confidence and trust in God, we can do these things knowing God has our ultimate good in mind.
The Ethic of Repentance: Self-Denial. Repentance isn't about adhering to a certain list of dos and don'ts. Yes, scripture has those; but the main thing is our internal disposition. The issue is who we are, and repentance is living out our identity, and repentance operates from the safe, secure place we have in God's family. Repentance is ultimately about subordinating our interests to the interests of others and, especially, to the interests of God and his kingdom. This involves a turn from self-centered living and vain glories, turning from a lifestyle and internal disposition that makes our own interests premier. Repentance involves humility: regarding others as better than our selves, and reversing the classic human position of a pompous view of ourselves and suspicion of others. Lifelong repentance is the slicing and dicing of selfish ambition, not of sticking to a list of good and bad behaviors. When we make it about what we do, the heart of the problem (our internal disposition) is left uncensored. Moral behaviors are often, if not usually, done for selfish reasons: to feel good, to get a pat on the back, to look good before others, or to achieve self-assurance of God's approval for us (and this self-assurance vacillates from arrogance to self-defeat depending upon our actions). Lifelong repentance involves seeing our selfish ambition more-and-more and warring against it.
The Goal: Christ. This atmosphere of repentance as self-denial is embodied in the hymn of Philippians 2. Christ is the CAUSE of all the benefits we have in God's family. Christ is the epitome of self-denial and sacrifice. He is the model of the Christian life; and even more, he is the model of what it means to live like a genuine human being redeemed from the fall. Our goal in repentance is moving towards Christlikeness. Or, to put it another way, the goal is to become, in greater and greater measure, what we truly are: redeemed human beings. And how do we get there? We often see God as a concept or as an idea rather than as a reality; thus when God conflicts with what we want, as a concept it's easy to compromise or ignore those things we don't like. But when we see God as REALITY, when we understand the gospel to be REAL, that's when change happens. God is voraciously inviting us into character transformation with him.
The Power: God At Work In Us. Philippians 2.12-13 tells us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in us. God exists in Christians differently than with non-Christians. Christians are filled with the Holy Spirit; God literally lives in us, and he's working in us. All that language about working out our salvation highlights the responsibility we have in the enterprise. God doesn't just make us change, he doesn't flip a switch. We have a role to play, in tandem with God, in our repentance and Christian life. This role is secondary to the Spirit, of course, but God has set up this thing in such a way that we have a part to play. This isn't surprising, since all along God created us to work; we were created to work the planet, to subdue the wilderness beyond the Garden; and now we are called to do the same thing, starting not with the wilderness beyond the Garden but with the wilderness in our hearts. We are to move forward in repentance, in tandem with the Spirit, in "fear and trembling," a classic phrase back in the day that translates into English better as "reverence and awe". We are to see God as he is, we are to submit ourselves before God as our Maker and Creator, and we are to have a humble, open heart before the God who works in and, dare we see it, for us.
Yes, a life of repentance is a life of struggling, of tension between desires. But there's joy and peace in the tension. When we struggle, we're moving in the right direction, growing in Christ. Approaching repentance like this, with the confidence of our position before God, with the example of Christ, and with the power of the Spirit in us, is relieving. It's not all up to us, and we don't have to earn our place in God's family. We can engage in this process without fear, in boldness and confidence in Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment