Tag: Repentance

Why Should I Repent?

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Discipleship, Practical12 Comments

Castle

In Matthew 4, Jesus begins his ministry. His first act is to preach, and His first message is:

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Not necessarily a motivating message by today’s standards, or is it?

While many pastors desire to motivate their congregations to commit to Jesus with promises of health and wealth, Jesus motivates in a different way. Even though His call to repent and be His disciple is radical – He calls us to choose Him over our family, give Him the right to direct our career, our entire life, allowing Him to use us as His instruments for His purposes – it is worth it.

What is Our Motivation to Repent?

In the simple message Matthew records for us, Jesus provides us with motivation for why we should turn from our sins and become His disciple. “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” He proclaims, making the Kingdom of Heaven our motivation to repent.

Why is the Kingdom of Heaven a motivating factor?

(1) The Kingdom of Heaven is ruled by God Himself and is a perfect kingdom.

There is no injustice or unrighteousness in it, no oppression or poverty, no disease or sickness. It is a perfect kingdom. A kingdom for which we all long, and it is here now.

Jesus has come to put everything right. Where the fall marred the perfect kingdom as sin entered the world, hindering relationships and bringing death and disease, Jesus has come to set class struggle, family breakdown, disease, sickness, and death, right. He has come as the perfect King to establish a new and perfect kingdom. A king and kingdom for which we all long.

(2) All those not in the kingdom will be judged and sentenced to an eternity in hell.

John the Baptist is the forerunner of Jesus. His preaching minister preceded Jesus’, preparing the people for Jesus’ arrival. In his messages leading up to the ministry of Jesus, he provides us with our second motivation for repentance. He tells those who came out to him:

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Matt. 3:11-12)

He pictures Jesus with a winnowing fork in hand separating the chaff from the wheat. The chaff is burned, while the wheat is put in the storehouse. John’s message tells us that those who do not repent will be sentenced to eternity in hell. While those who do repent, will experience eternal life with Jesus in His kingdom.

For at least those reasons, we are motivated to repent of our former way of life and turn to the Lord.

Challenge

While the biblical motivation to repent differs from that of the world, it is right and good. So today, if you have never repented and turn to Jesus as your Savior, want you do so now? Turn from your sins toward the Lord. Call on Him as Lord and Savior. Submit to His rule over your life. Make the perfect King your King today!

Questions for Reflection

  1. Does knowing that Jesus is a perfect King who rules over a perfect Kingdom motivate you to follow Him?
  2. Can you think of other biblical motivations to repent?
  3. Can you think of other worldly motivations?

Resources

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What is Does it Mean to Repent?

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Discipleship, Practical5 Comments

If someone where to ask you, what is true repentance, how would you answer?

You might say, “True Repentance is being grieved over our sin so much that we turn away from sin and turn toward God.”

You might continue by saying what one commentator has said, “True repentance is to return to God, to His covenant, and to loyalty and obedience.”

That is a pretty heavy definition, so let’s break it down into manageable parts.

True Repentance Means we are Grieved Over Sin

We see in the first place that repentance is more than just being sorry for what we have done. It is to be grieved over our sin.

One day, when I was young I was doing something I should not do with the neighborhood kids. I don’t remember what it was, but I knew my mom did not want me to do it, but I did it anyway. Some how my mom knew I did what she did not want me to do. I don’t know how she knew, or how she found out. Mom’s seem to have that keen ability to just know when their kids disobey.

Later that day, she asked me about it. Instead of telling the truth, I decided I would lie to see if I could get away with it, but my mom knew I was lying. And because I disobeyed her and lied to her, I was punished for it.

I remember as I sat in my room, I was grieved, not just because I had gotten caught, and now I could not go out and play with my friends, but because I offended my mom.

Repentance is similar. It is an understanding that we as sinners offend a Holy God, and in realizing that, we are truly grieved over our sin. Not just because we will be punished one day, but because we offend God.

True Repentance Involves the Entire Person, Loyalty and Obedience to God

We also learn that repentance involves more than just grief. It involves radical transformation of the entire person – our mind, our heart, and our will.

Many of you have seen the movie the Matrix. At the beginning of the movie, the main character, Nero, is offered a choice between two pills, a red pill and a blue pill. The blue pill allows him to carry on life as if he had never even met Morpheus and learned the truth. The red pill allows him to be plunged into the Matrix fully learning all of what Morpheus and his crew know.

As he stares at those two pills he has a choice. Keep living like nothing happened. Or change everything. We all know that Nero chooses the red pill and is plunged into the Matrix with Morpheus‘ and his crew. When he chose that red pill, he turned away from the life he once knew and embarked on a new journey.

That is also apart of what it means to repent of our sins. It is a complete turning away from our old way of life to a new way of life in Christ. We can’t just do this intellectually. When Nero decided to take that red pill, his whole being was involved.

Similarly, when we repent of our sins, we don’t just do so intellectually. Our whole being is involved. Our mind, our will, our heart all turn from sin toward God. When we do that, we submit ourselves to God, to His rule, and to what He wants for our lives, just like Nero submitted himself to the Matrix, it’s rule, and what it wanted for his life.

So when we repent of our sins, we are saying that we will be loyal to God and obedient to Him, and our loyalty involves more than just our mind, it involves our whole being.

Challenge

We have to ask ourselves, given this definition of repentance, have we really repented?

  • Are you grieved knowing you have offended a Holy God because you are a sinner?
  • Have you turned to God from your sin, allowing Him to be the Lord of your life?
  • Are you loyal to God and God alone?
  • Are you obedient to God’s commands?

If we are truly repentant, these things will be evident in our life. I pray they are evident in your life.

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What are the Ingredients for Proper Evangelism?

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Discipleship, Evangelism, Pastoral, PracticalLeave a comment

Say you are planning to cook a chicken pasta dish tonight for dinner. In the process of cooking the meal, you forget to add the chicken. When everything is said and done, you will probably have a good pasta dinner, but you will not have the meal you set out to prepare. While our pasta dish will taste fine without the chicken, leaving out an ingredient in our evangelism might not turn out so well.

What are the ingredients to proper evangelism?

There are four main things we need to include in our message:

  1. God
  2. Sin
  3. Christ
  4. A call to repent and believe

Let’s look at these one at a time:

God

God is the Creator. As our Maker, He is also our Ruler. As our Maker and Ruler, He has absolute claim on our lives. We are not only to look to Him for guidance, but we are to also submit to Him and obey His commands.

Sin

Sin tells us that we have rejected God as our Creator and Ruler. In place of His rule, we seek our own.

Sin entered the world at the Fall mankind when Adam and Eve rebelled against God’s rule. As the head of the human race, all who come after them are also plunged into a world of sin and inherit a sinful nature. The result is separation from God. Since He is holy, He cannot have a relationship with an unholy people.

Sin is offensive to God. Not until we understand how offensive sin is to a holy God, and how utterly sinful we are, will we see our need for salvation.

Therein lies the problem of the human race, most people do not believe they are sinful because they measure sin by particular actions. It is easy to see that a murderer is sinful, but a good upstanding citizen, who doesn’t even have a parking ticket; why they are not sinful? The Bible tells us otherwise. In Romans, Paul says, “None is righteous, no, not one; (Rom. 3:10), which means even good people are sinners, whose sin separates them from God.

Sin not only explains why we can’t have a relationship with God, but it also explains why the world is the way it is. Disease, sickness, death, corruption, and all kinds of evil exist because of sin.

Christ

Christ is the Savior of mankind. In order to understand fully Christ’s saving action, we need to know about both His Person and Work. The reason for both is because His cross work was only possible because of His life.

Person: Jesus is the incarnate Son of God who lived a perfect life. Never transgressing one of God’s laws, which allowed Him to be the perfect sacrifice for mankind.

Work: Jesus offered Himself up as the perfect sacrifice for the sins of mankind. In our place He hung. As He did our sins were nailed to the cross with Christ. The Perfect One became sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).

On the cross, Jesus suffered the wrath and punishment of God. Wrath and punishment that we deserve because of our sinful nature. Since He took our place, He made a way for mankind to be reconciled to God.

Jesus not only died on the cross for our sins, He also raised from the grave after 3 days defeating death. After 40 more days, He ascended into heaven where He know sits on His throne as the King over all. One day He will return to defeat Satan, judge those who did not believe in Him, sentencing them to eternal damnation, renew all things, and rule the world.

All those who believe these things about Jesus will be saved.

A Call to Repent and Believe

While repenting and believing is not a part of the gospel story, it is a necessary ingredient to evangelism because evangelism aims at conversion. So we must call people to repent and believe.

Questions for Reflection

  1. Do you believe God is our Creator, or do you believe we were created through an evolutionary process?
  2. How do you determine who is and who is not a sinner?
  3. Why is it necessary for us to know about both Jesus’ person and work?

Resources

Post adapted from: Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, by J.I. Packer, 66-81

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Reflections on Scripture

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Devotionals1 Comment

This morning in my reading, I came across Jeremiah 5:20-24. Here is what it says:

Declare this in the house of Jacob;
        proclaim it in Judah:
“Hear this, O foolish and senseless
people,
        who have eyes, but see not,
        who have ears, but hear not.
Do you not fear me? declares the
LORD.
        Do you not tremble before me?
I placed the sand as the boundary
for the sea,
        a perpetual barrier that it can-
not pass;
        though the waves toss, they can-
not prevail;
        though they roar, they cannot
pass over it.
But this people has a stubborn and
rebellious heart;
        they have turned aside and
gone away.
They do not say in their hearts,
   ‘Let us fear the LORD our God,
who gives the rain in its season,
    the autumn rain and the spring
rain,
and keeps for us
    the weeks appointed for the
harvest.’

My Reflection

As I reflected on this passage, I was reminded there are people around us everyday who know that the Lord is our Creator, who know He is the One true God. These same people look out like Judah and see His power. How He controls even the raging sea, so that it does not go pass the boundary He has set for it. How He is the One who gives us rain and causes our crops to grow.

Even so, they choose to ignore the Lord. They do not fear Him. Rather, they turn from Him to worship other gods and to do what seems good in their own eyes. But what happens when the end comes? What will those who do not fear the Lord do when they stand before Him in judgement?

Judah did not repent and worship the One true God, and His wrath was poured out on them. Let Judah’s example serve as a warning to all those who act in the same way, who ignore the Creator of this world, in order to serve other gods and themselves. A day of judgment is coming, and the Lord, who is mighty and powerful, will not be ignored then. To all who do not fear the Lord, repent and worship Him.

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X-Ray Questions: Abolishing slavery

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Discipleship, Practical, X-Ray Questions4 Comments

In an effort to help us root out the idols of our hearts, I am doing a series entitled X-Ray Questions. Last time I introduced the series and gave one question to ask ourselves. You can read that post here.

This week we will continue to explore our hearts. This time our question focuses on exposing the desires that rule us.

X-Ray Question

(2) What do you want, desire, crave, lust, and wish for? What desires do you serve and obey?

This summarizes the internal operations of the desire-driven flesh in the New Testament epistles. “My will be done” and “I want ___” are often quite accessible. Various desires rule people, and sometimes another person’s will has control over you in peer pressure, people-pleasing, slave-like, or chameleon behavior. In such cases, your heart’s craving is to get whatever good they promise and avoid whatever bad they threaten: “I crave to be included, appreciated, accepted, and admired by you.”

Understand

Understand that if we seek satisfaction in man, we will be controlled by a desire to please man and will become a slave to their approval. This means that our desire to please man will be elevated over our desire to please God. We will choose those things that please man every time because we are enslaved by the desire for their approval. As a slave, we are not truly free and will find ourselves in a more miserable state.

Repent

Repent by finding your satisfaction in God and desiring nothing but Him and His salvation (Pss 17:14-15; 73:23-28). Only through God’s salvation are we freed from the desires of the flesh. We no longer need to find our approval in man, and no longer remain a slave to sin (Rom. 6). So then, when we find ourselves desiring man’s approval and acceptance, preach the Gospel to yourself. It is through the Gospel that we are freed from our enslavement to sin and reconciled to God.

Scripture

Reflect on these Scriptures as you seek to root out this idol in your life: Pss. 17:14-15; 73:23-28; Prov. 10:3; 10:28; 11:6-7; Gal. 5:16-25; Eph. 2:3; 4:22; 2 Tim. 2:22; Titus 3:3; 1 Peter 1:14; 2:11; 4:2; 2 Peter 1:4; 2:10; James 1:14; 4:1-4.

All X- Ray questions taken from David Powlison’s book Seeing with New Eyes.