After Sin 2- Israel and True Repentance

From Numbers 13-14:
Moses and the Israelites arrive at the Jordan at last and send out scouts.  These return with evidence of a fertile land, but filled with a giant, fortified enemy.  The people's hopes collapse, and they mutiny, collecting stones with which to kill Moses and his allies.  Until God intervenes.  His glory fills the tabernacle, and Israel is silenced.  He threatens the destruction of all Israel for their unbelief, and is only dissuaded by Moses' pleas for mercy.  He banishes this generation from Canaan forever.

When the people hear this, they 'mourn greatly'- and decide to do something about it.  In the morning, they strap on swords and march towards Canaan.  They will repair what they have broken, do what should have been done.  They ignore the warning of Moses and invade the promised land a day late-  and are utterly routed in battle.
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We often try to repent in this way.  When we have sinned, we try to correct our misdeed.  We try to cover our tracks, fill in the breach, make reparations, often only to be beaten down at our attempts to do better.  But true repentance is so much richer than that.

When we meditate on the news of a loving, dying, rising God, we realize that while our sin is grievous, it is no longer condemning.  And while it may cause problems, it is no longer controlling.  The tracks of sin have been washed clean by our Lord's blood.  He has filled the breach we created.  He has repaired our relationship with the Father, re-making our peace with Him.

Which leaves us in an interesting place.  If repentance is not covering our tracks, or filling our breaches, or re-creating peace, what is it?

In the Christian Bible, 'to repent' is the most common translation of the greek word 'metanoia'.  This is an unfortunate translation*.  To repent means 'to turn around', while the literal translation of metanoia is 'to think again' or 'to change one's mind'.

In Numbers 14, Israel 'turns around'.  It changes its behavior.  It covers it's tracks, fills the breach, makes reparations.  It does what it should have done.  But God rejects their new attempts at obedience.  Why?  Because they attempt to fix themselves without Him.  And this is bound to fail, because we have a greater brokenness than our behaviors.  Israel's repentances is at best addressing symptoms (behaviors, fears, faithlessness), while the disease runs much deeper.

Jesus demonstrates this idea when he says that to hate your brother is to kill him, and to lust is to commit adultery.  He makes it clear that sin is deeper than behavior- it's a heart issue.  It's an issue of our affections, of our longings and desires.  Chiefly, sin is mislove, not misdeed; broken relationship, not broken actions.  Therefore repentance is not acting differently so much as loving differently, thinking differently, relating differently.  It is returning to relationship with the Lord in thought, desire, and conversation, and living from Him, instead of attempting to earn our way by living from ourselves.

Let's get practical.  Once you have sinned, and realize it, you must not resort to new laws and new rules.  Not at first, anyway.  Boundaries are good, but often we use them to hedge our iniquity and try to be good enough.  And when used in that way, rules only attempt to minimize something enormous- a deliberate rebellion against Love itself.  Rules cannot contain such evil, much less defeat and transform it**.

But forgiveness can.  Love that would be broken, that would take on rebellion and bear the true pain of our sin, can.  Repentance, then, is to ground your thinking, your desires, your hopes, on this Love.  It alone will change our desires, and so will change our actions.

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*Not that I could think of a much better one-  I don't envy the translators' jobs one bit.

**Rules are useful in seeking how to love well, not to be good enough.  How do we work on our motives?  Look again at Jesus, who was good enough and has made us good enough.  We no longer need to try to reach what He has attained for us- thus we are free to love, freely.  And if rules help you love, go for it.

After Sin 1- David and True Conviction

While some hold that true Christians will never sin, it is clear biblically that sin continues in the life of the believer even after the indwelling of the Spirit*.  If, then, sin is common (read: inevitable) for us, we must hope in a boundless grace.  As Jesus tells the twelve to forgive their brother not just 7 times but 70 times 7, we understand the limitless grace of God.  As inevitable as our sin may be, equally inevitable is His redeeming and recovering outpouring of grace on His sons and daughters.  It is cause for worship, and the very spring of peace within us.  Additionally, His response to our sin also creates within us a desire to change, to be transformed and better love, better serve.

As king David sins with Bathsheba, in 2 Samuel 11-12, I recognize my own proclivity to fall, even in the best of circumstances.  He sleeps with a married woman, who becomes pregnant, and so he orders the tactical murder of her husband.  But the Lord sees, and through a prophet rebukes David.  The illegitimately conceived son dies prematurely, and a plague falls upon Israel.  David is struck with heavy conviction.  You can hear it in Psalm 51, written immediately afterwards.  'Against you, you only, have I sinned.'  His prayer moves me, because while he is saddened by what he has done, his greatest sorrow is that of broken communion with the Lord, whom he loves.  He sees that a beautiful, loving relationship has been pushed away by his very own hands, a beautiful marriage and a beautiful life lost.  And the loss of such beauty leaves him sorrowful.  Yet he hopes and trusts in the salvation of God.  He is sorry, and transformed.  He no longer desires the sin that he once desired, for he now knows the depth of its pain, the weight of its ramifications.  He has seen beneath the surface of wrong-doing, and has been awakened by the Spirit to the core of his wrong-thinking and wrong-loving.  Thus he is convicted, and thus repentance begins.**

I remember distinctly when I told a grocery-shopping companion that I could guess the life-story of one of her old friends after a brief conversation with him.  I proceeded to bluntly surmise his history, complete with emotions, sins, failures and fallouts.  In fact, I characterized him quite accurately, and was smugly proud of my precision.  But within a few minutes a sensation fell on me which was sweetly sad and beautifully disappointing all at once, a sensation I was unsure I had ever felt before.  I realized, by my companion's facial expression (and the faint whisper of the Spirit) that I had without hesitation turned a human, made in the image of God, into a shallow caricature which I could judge and critique from afar.  I had been grossly arrogant, using discernment (a gift from God) to make a man whom He loves into a dismissed silhouette, a paper story worthy of only my temporary satisfaction.  Immediately I was sorry, and had absolutely no desire to ever, ever do that again.  I was filled with a desire to view those I meet with compassion and deep empathy, to use my gifts in love and not in pride. For perhaps the first time, I truly perceived the beauty that had been lost in my sin, and thus my desires were changed.

This, I believe, is the true conviction of a believer.  The predominant emotion in it, in my experience, is an aching sadness at beauty lost, like a funeral of one deeply loved, or the moving away of a very good friend.  These are examples of a sweet sadness without fault, and indeed, the sadness of sin is different because we recognize our fault.  But the sadness is because we have trampled on beauty, not because we have broken a rule.  This allows conviction to change us into more loving creatures, instead of wrapping us in further behavioral modification.

Often after sin we are overwhelmed with shame or a sense of condemnation, overwhelmed by a renewed awareness of our failings:  we should have known better, have had greater self-control, loved God more.  And of course we should have.  All these things are certainly true, and yet we fail, as Jesus knew we would***: and His love endures.  And by His death, His separation from the Father, He has borne our sin and freed us from its ramifications.  Thus the power of shame is reallocated to Him, condemnation proclaimed over His body.  We are hence left with an emotion born not of fear and self-preservation, but of love of God and love of His beauty.  True, godly conviction, as far as I can tell, is known by this sorrow of His beauty lost, worshipful reliance on the Him for grace, and realigned desires for beauty and so to act differently.  If you experience such godly conviction, worship, for it is a merciful gift of a thing.  If you do not experience conviction as such, pray, as David prays in Psalm 51, that the Lord might renew the joy of His salvation to you.  Because it is only in the gospel, in the love of Jesus bearing our shame, that our true guilt can produce sorrow, worship, and change.

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*  Half of the epistles are written expressly to call churches back from different sins and shortcomings.  Peter himself is corrected for a lack of integrity in his treatment of the gentiles.


** I intend to discuss this process in the next post, titled 'After Sin 2- David and True Repentance'.


*** Luke 22:32
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Addendum:  Should you repeatedly be floored by despair and condemnation, shame and fear over sin, know then that this is not the conviction, presence, or voice of our Lord God.  These experiences in no way align with the love and mercy of a suffering, dying, crucified Savior, and therefore contradict the most explicit and complete image of God humanity has ever known.  We must then surmise that these emotions and experiences are either the self-scourging of the proud flesh, wanting to prove itself and earn its way, or the enemy seeking to tear down that which the Lord has built up.  Both voices are to be rejecting and replaced by the knowledge of the good, strong love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, which sets us free.

Freedom of Choice

Don't even think that I'm going to get into that free-will/predestination debate.  I will have nothing to do with it today, save that my foundation contains some principles of both, principles which the really really really scrutinizing reader will fish out.  Alas, I intend to address other things.

Namely, the freedom the Christian has to make a decision without heavenly direction.

I'm always intrigued by Isaiah 30:21.  It says that a voice will tell you 'this is the way, walk in it'- but it describes the voice as following decision.  'Whether you turn to the right or to the left, you will hear a voice...'  I may be misunderstanding Hebrew grammar, but it sure appears that direction may or may not be given- but affirmation will come.  Similarly, Psalm 90:17 asks the Lord to set His favor on us, and to 'establish the works of our hands.'  It repeats the sentiment twice, as the author begs the Lord to make secure what the author has begun, seemingly without direction or certainty of success.

Similarly, in Genesis 13:17, where God gives Abraham the task of scouting out the land that his offspring would inherit, the Lord does not say to mark the borders (though that comes), nor to follow the hills and the streams.  He just says 'go, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.'  I think of myself, as a child, loosed into the creeks behind my parent's house.   Explore.  Journey.  Discover.  There were parameters (make sure you're within earshot of the dinner bell; wear a lifejacket if you're alone)-  but in large part there was freedom.

So too does the Lord often release us.  If no direction comes, perhaps we, like the reader of Isaiah and like Abraham, have the freedom to explore.  Obviously within parameters, obviously listening for clear direction, submitting to the counsel of scripture and one's community.  But, all that aside, it does seem that the Lord sometimes offers us freedom to choose.  Seems like a bad idea to me, letting me hold the reins.  But, over it all, He is still sovereign, and can fix anything I screw up.  Nor will He let me get too far while I still fear Him (in the biblical 'reverence/awe/worship/submission' sense of the word).  He loves us too much to let something so petty in the grand scheme of things get in the way of a relationship with us.

In fact, remaining in the purgatory of indecision is often damaging to my own faith and to relationships around me, as I become increasingly agitated, anxious, and undependable as the culminating weight of a decision postponed bears me downward.  And because I can make no commitments out of indecision, many of my friends are left hanging, waiting in blindness themselves. This neither loves them, nor trusts the goodness of God, which has been so incredibly displayed on the cross.

So, if you are trapped in indecision, perhaps the word of God to you is to not freak out, and instead to make a choice.  As Augustine is reported to have said, 'love God, and do as you please.'  Because God's loving sovereignty is stronger than our decision, whatever it may be.  He remains.  Your relationship with Him remains.  The kingdom remains.  And so it's not as big a deal as you think.  If indeed it is more loving and more faith-full to act than to wait in fear, then Trust, Listen, Go.  He goes with you, regardless.