July 29, 2021 (Thursday)
Have you ever failed in your walk with Christ? There are
some people who believe it’s not possible for a Christian to sin. The other
twist to this is the saying that Jesus died for our sins, “past, present, and
future.” The reason that is said is because the person wants to deny the continual
need for repentance.
I think repentance is an ongoing, continual thing. I’m not the
type that believes we sin “daily in word, thought, or deed.” Christian theology
suffers from extremes. Either we overestimate or underestimate our sin and our
need for repentance. These overly simplistic mantra’s replace healthy self-awareness.
John says to believers, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive
us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” [1 John 1:9 ESV] Notice, John says “sins” (plural)
and not “sin” (general). What John is urging us to do is to deal with specific
sins as the Holy Spirit brings them to our attention. This is not the
repentance and confession of a sinner, it’s the cleansing of the saint.
Christians ignore the Old Testament to their peril. We like
to say it was before Christ, and by implication grace. However the mechanics of
salvation has always been through faith (see Romans 4). We are told what we
read in the Old Testament serve as examples (see 1 Corinthians 10.6). I think
one of the main examples of repentance is found in Psalm 51.
David has just been busted by Nathan for the incident with
Bathsheba and Uriah. He cries out, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according
to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” [Psalms 51:1
ESV] I think it’s interesting that David asks for mercy. David is, by our
standards, a sexual predator. He has committed adultery (rape by our standards)
and murdered her husband (who is a close friend). He knows his sin is
intentional. He has no excuse. Forgiveness is out of the question. His only
hope is mercy.
Of course we depend on God’s steadfast love and abundant
mercy. For the guilty, absorbing the reality of God’s grace being greater than
our sin is humbling. Paul stated, “The Law stepped in to amplify the failure, but where sin
increased, grace multiplied even more.” [Romans
5:20 CEB] That word “multiplied,” in the Greek means overflowing. The image
comes from a river overflowing and flooding everything. In our world, this is
bad. In the ancient world, the flooding brought new nutrition to the soil and
filled cisterns (water reservoir). The overflow was life.
Getting back to David, he mentions “transgressions.”
Remember the underestimating our sins thing? The word, pasha, means “rebellion.”
We’ve all seen it. A child is told where the line is, so they go up to the line
and put their toes on it. Looking back and not seeing the concern or disapproval,
the child will put on a defiant face and put one toe across the line and look
back. Like the child is saying, “you can’t stop me.” Finally the child will
gleefully race across the line into oncoming traffic. Okay, maybe we haven’t
see a child run into traffic (I hope), but the result are predictable.
It’s stunning to think we can expect forgiveness when we are
not even able to throw ourselves on the mercy of God. Yes, Jesus paid the
price. Yes, God’s grace is greater than all our sins. But, I wonder if when we “repent,”
we know we are not sorry and we will probably do it again.
How about another word picture to capture the gist of our
sins? “Like a dog
that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.” [Proverbs
26:11 ESV] While the casual observer watches a dog vomit, they think “gross!” The
dog, on the other hand, thinks “seconds!”
Let’s not go back for seconds…
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