Repentance
Must one be repentant to be forgiven, or can one go on intentionally continuing to live in sin and still be forgiven?
Must one be repentant to be forgiven, or can one go on intentionally continuing to live in sin and still be forgiven?
In Romans 6:1-2, Paul hits the nail on the head: "Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?"
Repentance is the gift of dying to sin, and it is the gracious work of God the Spirit who opens us up to this new life when before there was only death. It means to turn or return to God because we recognize we're living in some form of sin that has enslaved us. This sin has blocked our life-giving relationship with God. When God forgives us for Jesus' sake, God restores this relationship through the gift of faith in Christ although we still remain sinners until the resurrection. As believers we have been placed in a community where forgiveness of sins is a way of life.
True repentance and forgiveness help us recognize that the sin which held us captive was destroying us and was a bad thing for us and others. Part of this recognition is the strong desire not to go back into this bondage that blocks the gracious presence of God in our lives. God is jealous. God wants only the best for us.
Sometimes we confuse forgiveness with permission to go on doing what we still want to do. There is no life in this. Forgiveness of sins is not a bookkeeping event where our account is "zeroed out" so we can incur more debt. God wants more for us than that. God wants unhindered access to our life. Would we want to choose sin over God? Maybe we don't really see sin for what it is. It is God's business to help us recognize the destructive nature of sin in general and our sin in particular. The problem is that it is much easier to confess someone else's sin rather than our own.
The horrendous terrorist attack of Sept. 11 confronts us again with the fact that sin is not merely a private matter but is also the work of demonic, destructive powers which capture the wills of whole groups of people -- not just individuals acting alone. It's not easy to sort out the meaning of repentance and forgiveness in the context of terrorism and war, but we must struggle with this if we are to stay centered in Jesus Christ and not in some lesser ideology.
It is both helpful and hopeful to remember that repentance and forgiveness are the open door for the coming of the Spirit. Only if the Spirit is at work within us do we have a hope that will endure.
The Lutheran | November 2001 | Since You Asked
By Wayne Weissenbuehler