Thursday, April 05, 2012
Queue Boston
OK - a trivial pop cultural reference to a very serious topic from Mark Roberts:
In popular culture today, and often in Christian culture, repentance is a matter of feeling sorry. “Repent of your sins” (not that many people speak this way anymore) means, “Be sorry for what you have done.” Such sorrow seems often to be remorse over having been found out more than genuine sadness over having done wrong.Christ did not come to make use feel better, He came to make us actually better. Why is it we just want to feel better?
Biblical repentance usually includes feeling sorry for our behavior. But repentance is not a matter of feelings, but of choices and actions. In Scripture, “to repent” means “to turn around and go the other direction.” It’s a change of purpose, intention, and values. It means living in a whole different way, turning from sin, turning to God, and walking in his paths.
Mostly I think it is because to get actually better we have to face how rotten we really are. We are afraid of our own ugliness. But here is where it gets interesting. We can hide our own ugliness from ourselves, but God has already seen it, and knows it intimately - and died to make it better.
If Christ died knowing full well the extent of my sin, how can I fear it? And yet, I do.
God help me to move past the desire to merely feel better and to become actually better!
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