READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Micah 7:18-20
1 Peter 5:6-11
- St. Luke 15:1-10
Grace, mercy, and peace will be with you all from God the
Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and
love. (2 Jn 1)
Who speaks to you saying,
“Just so, I tell
you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over
ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
“Repent”, preaches Jesus in St. Matthew 4:17, “for
the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
And maybe you’ve heard this one too: “When our Lord and
Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent' (Mt 4:17), He willed the entire life of
believers to be one of repentance”, the Blessed Dr. Luther from the first of
his 95 Theses.
All of Christendom would agree, that to leave out repentance
from your life is a false faith. So if all of Christendom agrees, how come all
of Christendom doesn’t agree? Repentance becomes a big deal, for the Christian,
and for good reason. Not only is it something that is commanded by Jesus, but
it is also something that is hunted by the devil.
As St. Peter told us in the Epistle, “Be sober, be
vigilant; for your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about,
seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist steadfast in the faith” (1 Pet 5:8-9).
That is, the tasty meal is a Christian who truly repents.
So what is repentance?
Dr. Luther goes on to say what it cannot be: “This word
cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, that is,
confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy. Yet it does not
mean solely inner repentance [either]; such inner repentance is worthless
unless it produces various outward mortifications of the flesh (Gal 5:24). The
penalty of sin remains…till our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.”
The controversy arises when God’s Word presents the word
“repentance” in two ways. First, it is used to refer to the entire conversion
of man, which includes faith, from the kingdom of death, to the kingdom of
life, as we hear in the Gospel today.
Second, repentance and faith are separated out as in Acts
20:21, “testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and
of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This led to talking past each other, indulgences and the
sacrament of penance, in Dr. Luther’s day, and it leads to the same problems
even today! We don’t need to wade into the Roman Catholic church to find the
attempts of certain Christians to pay God or to pay Him back for His work for
them. It may not be money or a piece of official paper, but you see the church
signs that say, “Christ died for you, what have you done for Him?”
Thus, the Christian world has really not moved on. In our
sin, we still are prone to believe that we can show God just how sorry we are
for things and prove to be a better Christian. And you may have already come to
terms with this sin. In fact, you may have an idea right now, about who needs
to repent, and what they need to do. He needs to stop sleeping around. She
needs to clean up her language. He needs to give his life to Jesus.
Odds are you have those thoughts. And odds are that none of
those you think about is you. You’ve already cleaned up your act, so you’re
done with repentance. You’re already right with God. Your heart is already
Jesus’s. You are living your best life now.
Jesus may use the word repentance in two ways, but in both
cases, He expects it from you. Thus, repentance has two parts: first is
contrition. That is, you are truly terrified in your “conscience”, which feels
that God is angry with sin and grieves that it has sinned. This contrition
takes place when sins are condemned by God’s Word.” (Apology XII (V):29)
This is your inner condition. You know, when you say you
have faith, deep in your hearts, this is what is meant. This inner action is
worked by God’s Law, when all your sins are revealed, as Psalm 38:4, 8 teaches,
“For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too
heavy for me. I am feeble and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my
heart.”
The second part is faith, of course, for contrition and
works do not obtain forgiveness and faith alone makes alive towards God. Faith
reveals that the sins that terrify us are forgiven, in Christ. Without faith,
there would be no repentance, for you would not feel sorry for your sins,
neither would you acknowledge them. Faith both hears God speak of sins and
believes He has sent His Christ.
True repentance is believing that we are not the man
searching for the sheep, neither are we the woman searching for the coin, but
the sheep and the coin itself. For the sheep and the coin are lost. And what
Jesus is saying here is not that they have been placed in the Lost & Found,
by some good samaritan. Neither is He saying that they are lost so they should
stay where they are and wait for help.
This “lost”, is death. This is King Herod going after Jesus,
in St. Matthew 2:14. This is the Pharisees conspiring on how to kill Him, in
St. Mark 3:6. This is the Good Friday crowd asking for Barabbas and to destroy
Jesus (Mt 27:20).
And why? Because the True Just Man has appeared. The man Who
needs no repentance and needs no regard and heeds no social benefits, when He
speaks or makes decisions. This Just Man is not like us. We are the truly just,
in our eyes, seen by all to be good and upright. We are a friend to the world
and act only as is true to our inner-self.
Since repentance calls that inner-self to the judgement
seat, we must get rid of it. A book we can stop reading, but a man must be
killed.
Listen to the book of Wisdom, written 200 years before
Jesus, chapter 2:
“Therefore let us lie in wait for the Righteous Man; because
he is not for our turn, and he is clean contrary to our doings: he upbraids us
with our offending the law, and objects to our infamy the transgressions of our
education.
He professes to have the knowledge of God: and he calls
himself the child of the Lord.
He was made to reprove our thoughts.
He is grievous unto us even to behold: for his life is not
like other men’s, his ways are of another fashion.
We are esteemed of him as counterfeits: he abstains from our
ways as from filthiness: he pronounces the end of the just to be blessed, and
makes his boast that God is his father.
Let us see if his words be true: and let us prove what shall
happen in the end of him.
For if the just man be the son of God, he will help him, and
deliver him from the hand of his enemies.
Let us examine him with despitefulness and torture, that we
may know his meekness, and prove his patience.
Let us condemn him with a shameful death: for by his own
saying he shall be respected.
Such things they did imagine, and were deceived: for their
own wickedness hath blinded them.” (12-21).
Remember, in all of Holy Scripture, it is God alone Who is
the Just Man. A regular man is called “just” only secondarily, if he has faith
in God. The Just Man is that special Servant of God, Who will take upon Himself
the sins of His people and by virtue of that, He will save them.
“Have nothing to do with that Just Man”, screams
Pilate’s wife, “for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because
of Him” (Mt 27:19).
After Christ breathes His last breath, a centurion standing
under the cross says: “Certainly this was a Just Man” (Luke 23:47).
And from St. Peter: “For Christ also has once suffered
for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet 3:18).
Repentance goes wrong, Luther writes, when it forgets Christ
and faith (SA III:III:10–21). This happens when repentance is seen only as our
works, and when it is sidetracked into debating what is right and what is wrong
and believing we can work up faith inside us.
No, Luther writes, true repentance throws it all together
and says: “Everything in us is nothing but sin.” True repentance teaches us to
discern sin by saying: “We are completely lost; there is nothing good in us
from head to foot; and we must become absolutely new and different people”, in
Christ (SA III:III:33–37).
Our Lutheran Confession are unique in that they declare
faith to be a part of repentance, thus directing your eyes to Jesus alone, that
you may be comforted by the forgiveness freely offered to you in Jesus through
faith. This teaching can set you free from doubt, giving you the confidence
found in Christ alone. (Ap XII(V):4–10, 88–90).
Eyes focused inward, only dig up more and more dust.
Repentance is God focusing us outward, in order to hear God’s judgement on sin
and then to agree with His Offering of Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, for
us.
Jesus was lost to death, yet found again. You were dead in
your sin, but are now raised with Christ in baptism, by faith alone (Col 3:1).
Dr. Luther concludes, “Christians should be exhorted to be
diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, death and hell,
and thus be confident of entering into heaven through many tribulations rather
than through the false security of peace” (Acts 14:22).
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