The life of holiness is one of
downward growth all the time. When
Peter writes, "Grow in the grace and knowledge
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter
3:18), and when Paul speaks of growing into
Christ (Ephesians 4:15) and rejoices that the
Thessalonians' faith is growing (2
Thessalonians 1:3), what they have in view is
a progress into personal smallness that allows
the greatness of Christ's grace to appear. The
sign of this sort of progress is that they
increasingly feel and say that in themselves
they are nothing and God in Christ has become
everything for their ongoing life. It is into
this framework, this continual shrinkage of
carnal self, as we may call it, that the
thesis of the present chapter fits.
A life of habitual
repentance
What I intend to argue is that Christians are
called to a life of habitual repentance, as a
discipline integral to healthy holy living.
The first of Luther's ninety-five theses,
nailed to the Wittenberg church door in 1517,
declared: ''When our Lord and Master Jesus
Christ said, 'Repent' [Matthew 4:17], he
willed that the whole life of believers should
be one of repentance." Philip Henry, a Puritan
who died in 1696, met the suggestion that he
made too much of repentance by affirming that
he hoped to carry his own repentance up to the
gate of heaven itself. These two quotations
indicate the wavelength we are now tuning
into.
In my part of British Columbia, where
rainfall is heavy, roads on which the drains
fail soon, get flooded, and become
unserviceable. Repentance, as we shall see,
is the drainage routine on the highway of
holiness on which God calls us all to
travel. It is the way we get beyond what has
proved to be dirt, rubbish, and stagnant
floodwater in our lives. This routine is a
vital need, for where real repentance fails,
real spiritual advance ceases, and real
spiritual growth stops short.
In speaking of habitual repentance, I do
not mean to imply that repentance can ever
become automatic and mechanical, as our
table manners and our driving habits are. It
cannot. Every act of repentance is a
separate act and a distinct moral effort,
perhaps a major and costly one. Repenting is
never a pleasure. Always, in more senses
than one, it is a pain, and will continue so
as long as life lasts. No, when I speak of
habitual repentance, I have in mind the
forming and retaining of a conscious habit
of repenting as often as we need to–though
that, of course, means (let us face it)
every day of our lives. It is the wisdom of
churches that use liturgies to provide
prayers of penitence for use at all
services. Such prayers are always words in
season. In our private devotions, daily
penitential prayer will always be needed
too.
Little is said these days about the
discipline of regular repentance. The
writers on the spiritual disciplines have
noticeably not dealt with it, and the
standard Dictionary of Christian
Spirituality, now published in the United
States as the Westminster Dictionary, has no
entry on the subject. Yet it is a basic
lesson that has to be learned in Christ's
school of holiness. The theme is a vital one
for spiritual health, as has already been
said. So let us try to understand it well.
What is
repentance?
What does it mean to repent? The term is a
personal and relational one. It signifies
going back on what one was doing before, and
renouncing the misbehavior by which one's
life or one's relationship was being harmed.
In the Bible, repentance is a theological
term, pointing to an abandonment of those
courses of action in which one defied God by
embracing what he dislikes and forbids. The
Hebrew word for repenting signifies turning,
or returning. The corresponding Greek word
carries the sense of changing one's mind so
that one changes one's ways too. Repentance
means altering one's habits of thought,
one's attitudes, outlook, policy, direction,
and behavior, just as fully as is needed to
get one's life out of the wrong shape and
into the right one. Repentance is in truth a
spiritual revolution. This, now, and nothing
less than this, is the human reality that we
are to explore.
Repenting in the full sense of the
word–actually changing in the way
described–is only possible for Christians,
believers who have been set free from sin's
dominion and made alive to God. Repenting in
this sense is a fruit of faith, and as such
a gift of God (cf. Acts 11:18). The process
can be alliteratively analyzed under the
following headings:
1. Realistic recognition that one has
disobeyed and failed God, doing wrong
instead of doing right. This sounds easier
than it actually is. T.S. Eliot spoke
the truth when he observed: "Humankind
cannot bear very much reality." There is
nothing like a shadowy sense of guilt in the
heart to make us passionately play the game
of pretending something never happened or
rationalizing to ourselves action that was
morally flawed. So, after David had
committed adultery with Bathsheba and
compounded it with murder, he evidently told
himself that it was simply a matter of royal
prerogative and, therefore nothing to do
with his spiritual life. So he put it out of
his mind, until Nathan's “You are the man!”
(2 Samuel 12:7) made him realize, at last,
that he had offended God. This awareness
was, and is, the seed bed where repentance
grows. It does not grow elsewhere. True
repentance only begins when one passes out
of what the Bible sees as self-deception
(cf. James 1:22, 26; 1John 1:8) and modern
counselors call denial, into what the Bible
calls conviction of sin (cf. John
16:8).
2. Regretful remorse at the dishonor one
has done to the God one is learning to
love and wanting to serve. This is the
mark of the contrite heart (cf. Psalm 51:17;
Isaiah 57:15). The Middle Ages drew a useful
distinction between attrition and contrition
(regret for sin prompted by fear for oneself
and by love for God respectively; the latter
leading to true repentance while the former
fails to do so). The believer feels, not
just attrition, but contrition, as did David
(see Psalm 51:1-4, 15-17). Contrite remorse,
springing from the sense of having outraged
God's goodness and love, is pictured and
modeled in Jesus' story of the prodigal's
return to his father (Luke 15:17-20).
3. Reverent requesting of God's pardon,
cleansing of conscience, and help to not
lapse in the same way again. A classic
example of such requesting appears in
David's prayer of penitence (see Psalm
51:7-12). The repentance of believers
always, and necessarily, includes the
exercise of faith in God for these
restorative blessings. Jesus himself teaches
God's children to pray “forgive us our
sins... and lead us not into temptation”
(Luke 11:4).
4. Resolute renunciation of the sins in
question, with deliberate thought as to
how to keep clear of them and live right
for the future. When John the Baptist
told Israel's official religious elite:
"Produce fruit in keeping with repentance"
(Matthew 3:8), he was calling on them to
change direction in this way.
5. Requisite restitution to any who have
suffered material loss through one's
wrongdoing. Restitution in these
circumstances was required by the Old
Testament law. When Zacchaeus, the renegade
Jewish taxman, became Jesus' disciple, he
committed himself to make fourfold
retribution for each act of extortion,
apparently on the model of Moses'
requirement of four sheep for everyone
stolen and disposed of (Exodus 22:1; Exodus
22:2-14; Leviticus 6:4; Numbers 5:7). An
alternative alliteration (as if one were not
enough!) would be:
- discerning the perversity, folly, and
guilt of what one has done;
- desiring to find forgiveness, abandon
the sin, and live a God-pleasing life from
now on;
- deciding to ask for forgiveness and
power to change;
- dealing with God accordingly;
- demonstrating, whether by testimony and
confession or by changed behavior or by
both together, that one has left one's sin
behind.
Such is the repentance – not just the initial
repentance of the adult convert, but the
recurring repentance of the adult disciple –
that is our present theme.
Excerpt from Rediscovering
Holiness (Revised and Updated)
Know the Fullness of Life with God,
Chapter 5, by J.I. Packer, published
by Regal
Books, 2009]
J. I. Packer is a Reformed
theologian and retired professor of
theology at Regent College,
Vancouver, Canada. He is a prolific
author, and a well-known pastor,
teacher, and lecturer.
