He Came To Himself

Personal Note: The platform I rent has changed their format, and I need grace while figuring it out. I think it is less confusing for you to make the transcript in blue — and I hope it stays blue when you answer.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Sunday:

1. How has God been beautiful to you this week? How have you experienced His goodness?                                                                                                     
   

   Monday: The Text

Ken Chuang Pexels photo                                                                                                                   2. Read Luke 15:11–20

A. Describe the younger son’s misery in verses 14-16. Use your sanctified imagination!

B. What brought him to his senses?

C. Was there a time in your life, as there has been in mine, when pain helped bring you to your senses? Will you share?

D. According to verses 18-19, what did he plan to say to his father?

E. How did the father respond? Find everything you can.

Tuesday: The Importance of Repentance                                                                                                                                                                         Now this particular parable, as famous as it is, is often not understood as a story about the meltdown of community and the restoration of it. For example, the family, which is the most basic human community, has unraveled in this story. The younger son of the father has asked for his inheritance early, before the father dies. We looked at this last week. In that culture, to ask for the inheritance when your father is still alive is to wish him dead. He takes the money. He leaves. He repudiates the family. He repudiates his father.

So the family is unraveling, but that’s not the only community that’s unraveling, because, as you see, this young man, who is an Israelite, goes off into a foreign country. At the very end, before he returns, he is feeding pigs. This means he has also repudiated his nation and his faith community. But the rest of the story, after the first couple of verses, is about how the community began to get restored.

The key theme we’re going to look at tonight, which is crucial for the restoration or the renewal of community, is the theme of repentance. If you were here a couple of weeks ago, when we looked at the first famous parable in Luke 15, the story of the lost sheep, we were actually told God loves repentance.

Even though the word is not in this text, what we have when the younger son decides to go back to his father is an example of repentance. We want to look tonight at the importance of repentance, the anatomy of it (what it’s actually made of), the key to doing it, and the kind of community that results from it.

1. The importance of repentance

Think now. This is a story, so what is the key factor that begins to heal the younger son’s insides, what brings him to his senses? What is the key factor that begins to restore the family? The father, all along, has been loving his son. Right? But what is the fuse that detonates the father’s love into radical action in the son’s life? It’s repentance! The term, “came to his senses,” in verse 17 is a Semitic idiom that refers to repentance.

Even though the father loved the son already, what triggers his love, what detonates his love into radical action, is the repentance of the younger son. If the father here represents God, which he does in the story, then we’re being told no less than if you want the love of God and the power of God to explode into your life, the fuse that detonates the love of God to explode into your life is repentance.                                                                                                                          3. “The fuse that detonates the love of God to explode into your life is repentance.” How have you experienced that? On a personal level, when someone truly repents to you, how does it impact you?

Do you notice how often Jesus says, “Repent and believe the gospel; repent and enter the kingdom; repent for the kingdom of God is at hand”? Do you know what he’s saying? He’s saying, “If you don’t repent, I have nothing to give you. I have nothing to do for you. You can’t even begin to enter into my realm.” Repentance is the key to everything.

When Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation, he nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the Wittenberg Cathedral door. The first of the 95 theses was, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he meant the entire life of believers should be one of repentance.” The first of Martin Luther’s theses in which he was laying out his understanding of biblical gospel Christianity was, “All of life is repentance.”

Now that’s completely different than, say, what the world thinks. For example, Lord Byron, the Romantic poet, has a famous line in which he says, “The weak alone repent.” Here’s Luther saying, “All of life ought to be repentance,” and here’s Lord Byron saying, “The weak alone repent.” Lord Byron, of course, represents what the world thinks about repentance.

Most people think repentance is a sign of weakness. Secondly, it’s an experience of disempowerment, so we feel drained. All the power is taken away from us. Thirdly, it’s an aberration. It’s something you hope hardly ever or never happens. But Martin Luther says, as he reads the Bible, he sees repentance as being the very opposite.

First of all, Luther teaches (and he does some wonderful stuff on repentance) it is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of strength. Do you realize how full of joy you have to be? Do you realize how loved you have to be able to feel? Do you realize how strong, spiritually and emotionally, you need to be in order to repent at the drop of a hat when you do something wrong?                  4. How did Luther see repentance in contrast to Lord Byron? With whom do you align and why?

You admit it. “Okay. Yes, I was wrong.” You humble yourself. Do you realize how strong you have to be to be like that? The inability to repent is a sign of weakness! It’s not a sign of strength. The world says repentance is a sign of weakness. Luther says the Bible says it’s a sign of strength.

Secondly, the world says it’s an experience of disempowerment. “Ha! No,” says Luther. It’s an experience of liberation. A repentant person, a person who is constantly repentant, is someone who is free, finally, from pretense and evasion, free from the need to always win every argument, free from the need to defend himself, free from the need to expose others, to show other people, “You’re not so great.” See?

A repentant person is someone who is vulnerable and happy to do it and says, “Yes, I was wrong. I was absolutely wrong. I should never have done that. Let’s make it right.” Very quick to repent, and very joyful in repentance. It’s liberation! “I don’t have to spin everything. I don’t have to control what everybody thinks.”

Therefore, since it’s not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength, it’s not an experience of disempowerment, but it’s an experience of liberation, Luther says it should happen all the time. All of your life should be repentance if you understand gospel Christianity. So who’s right: Luther or Lord Byron? Who is right: the Bible or the world?

This might surprise you for a second. I’m going to say, in a way, they’re both right. Do you know why? It’s because there really are two kinds of repentance. Paul talks about it in 2 Corinthians 7:10, where he says, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” Isn’t that interesting?

Years ago, I read this, and it just really went right through me. There’s a kind of repentance, there’s a kind of acknowledgement of sin, an admission of wrongdoing, a confession of guilt which leads to salvation and life and no regret, no loss of confidence. See? No gnawing yourself in the dark for years. There’s also a kind of repentance that leads to devastation. It leads to self-doubt. It leads to the loss of power, a loss of confidence, and death. Well, we had better get it right then!

5. Does anything else stand out to you from the above section?                                                                                                        Wednesday: The anatomy of repentance

What is this repentance, this gospel repentance, this biblical repentance that is so good, that God is so excited about, according to the parable of the lost sheep, that Luther was talking about, that should, if you understand it, permeate and saturate your whole life? Well, we can learn three things about the nature of true repentance by looking at what the young man in the parable does right.

First. repentance is coming to your senses. The first thing it says is in verse 17. We already referred to it. “… he came to his senses …” Isn’t that an interesting phrase? “… he came to his senses …” We live in a technological age, and because of that, if we think there is a way to do deep life change, then it ought to be something we can put into bullet points or a set of steps, and then once we have it, we can do it in our time, on our terms.

But if repentance is coming to your senses, if the thing that really, deeply changes your life and fills your life with liberation and joy is coming to your senses … Think about this for a second. “What do you mean, coming to your senses?” Do you decide you’re going to come out of a trance? No. Do you decide to wake from your delirium? No.

I’ll put it this way. The sins in your life, the flaws in your life, the character shortcomings in your life that are creating the most problems for you and the people around you right now, by definition, are the ones you can’t see. See, that’s why they would be the worst ones. That’s why the most harmful flaws, by definition, would be the ones you don’t see. You’re in denial about them. The human heart runs on denial the way my car runs on gas. You know that.

Well, then, repentance is the moment in which you come to your senses. How does that happen? It happens to you. Your wrongdoing sets up strains in the fabric of reality. For example, God created the world in such a way that he says, “Live like this.” So if you’re selfish, that sets up strains. You’re moving against the fabric of the way God made you and other people. If you hold grudges, if you’re full of pride … In other words, when you do things wrong, it sets up strains in the fabric of reality and eventually, they lead to breakdown.

When the breakdowns come, when the circumstances hit you, when there’s some kind of meltdown, then you suddenly say, “Whew! What have I been doing? What has been wrong? How could I have thought that? What’s the matter with me?” Like the younger son, when he comes to his senses because of pain, because of breakdown, then with help from his father and from other people around him, he can repent.

Repentance starts with coming to your senses. That’s not something you can decide to do. It’s something that comes to you and then you have to respond to it. You can miss it. See, anybody who understands their heart, anyone who sees themselves clearly knows the seasons in which you see yourself clearly and come to know your heart are not seasons that come at your command. They come and then you have to respond.

So the first thing is repentance, life-changing, liberating repentance, always happens in response to you coming to your senses. It’s something other people or circumstances bring to you.                                                                                                                                                                     6. Keller says we cannot decide to come to our senses — it is something that happens to us. If you watched my interview, what brought. me to my senses? What has brought you to your senses?

Secondly, repentance is vertical. When he actually responds, he does it right, because he says, “I will go to my father and I will say, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I am not worthy to be called your son.’ ” There it is. “I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I am not worthy to be called your son.” Let’s look at this.

First of all, he says, “I have sinned against heaven.” Now wait a minute, he hurt the father. He hurt the elder brother. He hurt the family. What? “Primarily, first of all, I have sinned against God.” If you go back to Psalm 51, the most famous and greatest confession of sin in the Bible, where David is confessing his sin for having stolen a man’s wife and then having arranged to have him killed in battle …

In Psalm 51, he starts his confession like this: “Against thee, oh God, oh Lord, against thee only have I sinned.” Wait a minute. What about the guy who is dead? Why is he saying to God “Against thee only have I sinned”? Why would you say God first? But that’s right, because biblical, life-changing repentance, liberating repentance starts understanding whatever sin you’ve done, primarily and first of all, you have sinned against the goodness and greatness of God.                                                                                                                                                                    7. How did the younger son model true repentance?

Now why is that important? Here’s why. What is it that wakes you up to what’s wrong with you? Pain. What’s wrong with you is a form of self-centeredness. But when the pain wakes you up to see you’ve been bad, the great danger at that moment is you want to do anything at all to get rid of the pain. It is very possible for your so-called repentance to be, not a change from self-centeredness, but actually a greater, deeper experience of self-centeredness. Repentance can be nothing but self-pity and self-absorption.

I remember years ago, when I was a young minister. I was young. I think I had been married for like a year. I was in this little town in Virginia, and a man called me up and said, “I need marriage counseling.” There are no counselors in town. I’m 25 years old. I’ve been married for a year. “Sure. Come. I’ll tell you all you need to know.”

So he showed up with his wife. Here’s what had been happening. He was a very selfish man. He was a very arrogant man. He was a very manipulative man, and his wife had said to him, very recently, “I’m leaving. I’m packing my bags.” He said, “If we go to counseling with a minister, would that help?” She says, “Well, okay. I’ll go with you.” So they show up, and we went through all the things she wanted him to change. He was so scared, and so upset, and he was weeping! Men in Hopewell, Virginia, almost never wept.

He was weeping, and he was very upset. “She was going to leave me!” She made a list. She said, “Stop doing this,” and so that week he did. Then the next week, she said, “Stop doing this and start doing this,” and that week he did, and he did. Then the next week … So things started going along better, and she says, “I see hope here. I’m not going to leave.” But after a few months, once he was sure she wasn’t going to leave, he went right back to the way he was before.

Now was he sitting there in the room these first couple of times saying, “I’ll just act like I’m going to change, but I won’t. I’ll just fool her, and that way she won’t leave me”? No. He was really sad. He was really in pain. He was really upset for himself. You see, to really be upset for the consequences of your sin, to really be upset because of the pain your sin is bringing to you is not the same thing as being upset about the sin. It’s saying, “I’ll do anything it takes.”

You actually, therefore, are not changing. You’re just becoming more self-centered and more manipulative, actually. Even though he was very upset, he was upset for himself. He wasn’t upset for what he had done to her, and he certainly wasn’t upset for how he had disobeyed God. As a result, he was upset about the sin’s consequences but not the sin, and he never changed. He actually got worse.                    

So why bring God into it? Here’s why. Stephen Charnock, the great Puritan, at one point explains the big difference between a selfish, self-pity kind of repentance and a true repentance. He says a legal conviction of sin arises from a consideration of God’s justice, chiefly, but an evangelical, a gospel conviction of sin, arises from a sense of God’s goodness. Did you hear that?

He says, “A legally convinced person cries out, ‘I have exasperated a power that is as the roaring of a lion … I have provoked one that is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, whose word can tear up the foundation of the world …’ But [a gospel-convicted] person says, ‘I have incensed a goodness like the dropping of the dew; I have offended a God that had the deportment of a friend …” All the difference in the world.

You see, when you say, “I have sinned! I have sinned against one whose word can tear up the foundation of the world,” what are you upset about? “I’m going to get it.” He’s upset about himself. “Oh, I’m going to suffer. Oh my gosh.” But, you see, there’s another approach that says, “Look at this good and loving God. Look at all the things he wants for me. Look at all the things he has done for me. How could I treat him like this? How could I break his heart?

When you know, when you repent, not just about the fact that you broke the rules and it’s messing up your life, but because you’ve broken his heart, and that is unconscionable, you’ll find, when you say, “My sin is against the goodness of this God,” it helps you to hate the sin. It helps you to hate the thing you did, not just the consequences of it, and you begin to stop doing it! You actually change! You don’t become more self-centered. You become less self-centered.

There is a kind of repentance that focuses completely on what’s wrong with you, in which case you’re going deeper into self-centeredness. You’re not changing from it. There’s a kind of repentance that is focused on the goodness of God and how you’ve broken his heart, and it looks there first. That changes the self-centeredness that is ruining your life.                                            8.Describe false repentance.

Thirdly, repentance is horizontal. But let’s go on, because he doesn’t just say, “I’ve sinned against God.” He also says, “I have sinned against you in your sight. I am not worthy to be called your son.” Now there’s the horizontal, and it’s just right. No blame-shifting, no excuses … Do you see that?

He doesn’t come back and say, “Father, I have sinned against you, but if you had my brother, and you had to sleep in a bunk bed year after year after year with this self-righteous Pharisee … You have no idea.” No. Nor did he say, “Father, I have sinned against you, but I’m a young man and I had to sow my wild oats, and youth will have its fling.” No. No excuses, no blame-shifting …

What you have here is repentance. Repentance is a response to an awakening, coming to your senses. It focuses on God and gets away from self-pity. It takes complete and absolute moral responsibility without blame-shifting or excuse-making at all. Now we’re pretty close to understanding what kind of repentance we are actually supposed to have if we really want it to be a life-changing thing, a strong thing, and a liberating thing.                                                           9. Does anything else stand out to you?

Thursday: The key to repentance

But we’re not quite done, because the key to it all is seeing, not so much what the younger son did do, but what he didn’t. The last thing we see here about his little speech he comes up with … His repentance plan is very simple. He says, “Father, I have sinned against heaven. I have sinned against you. I am not worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired men.”

Ah, what’s that? Well, notice … “Make me like one of your hired men.” Now a domestic servant was someone who actually lived on the estate. You know, he had room and board there, but a hired man was someone who lived in the town and who was a day worker and who was paid a wage. Do you know what he’s doing?

He says, “Father, I know I’ve sinned. Father, I know I’ve done wrong, but I don’t want your mercy. I don’t want your grace. I don’t want to come back into the family. I want to pay back absolutely every single cent I stole from you, and when I put it all back, then maybe I can be back into the family. I don’t want to be put back into the family. I want to earn my way back into the family. I don’t want it to just be given to me. I don’t want just grace. I want to earn my way back. I want to pay you back.”

Now it’s very important to remember that in a way, because this is a parable, because this is not something that actually ever happened, it’s an illustration Jesus made up, we have to be careful. We have to read it at two levels, because at one level, if you, as a human being, are going to another human being to try to make things right, and you have really wronged them, then this is perfectly fine.

In other words, if you’ve stolen something, you ought to give it back. If you have wronged somebody, you ought to do everything you can to make it right or to give back as much as you possibly can. That’s fine. But if the father in this story is God, then the younger son’s approach to repentance toward God is the biggest mistake you can make.

Here’s why. Just for a second, keep in mind something we often talk about here: religion versus gospel. Religion is a framework of thought. It’s a stance of life, and it’s an understanding of approach to God that says, “If I have a good record, and if I do everything right, then God will bless me. If I have that good record, if I really live the life I ought to live, if I minister to people, if I serve people, if I’m really moral and a good husband, wife, mother, father, son, or daughter … If I have a good record, then God will bless me.”

In that framework, what is the source of your power, your confidence, and your hope? That good record! “When I see that record, when I’m standing on that record, when I feel like it’s a strong record, then I have power, confidence, and hope.” This is the reason why, within a religious understanding of things, repentance is a disaster because, first of all, repentance is an experience of weakness and disempowerment because … Why?

Because repentance separates you from your source of power, which is the sense that, “I have a good name, and I have a good record.” Repentance is admitting you don’t have that! So as soon as you start to repent, you’re just devastated. You start to feel you don’t have a self left. It separates you from your hope. It separates you from your power. It separates you from your self-image and your confidence.

Secondly, in the religious framework, it’s not only an experience of weakness, but it’s a form of atoning for your own sin, always. Why? Because if your hope is this great moral record, then do you know what you’re trying to do when you repent? You try to flagellate yourself. You try to beat yourself up. You try to loathe yourself. You try to talk about how awful you are to yourself, or maybe other people. What are you trying to do? You’re trying to get that good record back.

What you’re actually trying to say is, “Okay. I thought I was a good person, and now I see I’m maybe not so good, but I feel so bad, and I’m saying I’m so bad, and if I talk about myself, about how I’m so bad, then surely only a good person would think they’re so bad. Right?” You see, in other words, “Surely God, other people, and I myself will come to believe, because I’m beating myself up so much, I’m really okay and I deserve to be back in his good graces.”

So within a religious framework, repentance is a disaster. It separates you from your source of power and confidence. It’s a way of doing exactly what the younger son says, and that is, “I’m going to earn it back. I’m going to pay it back. I’m going to atone for my own sin.” As a result, in a religious framework, repentance goes on and on and on and on. It goes on endlessly.

Do you know why? How do you ever know you’ve beaten yourself up enough to really earn your way back? You gnaw at yourself the rest of your life, and you never get your confidence back, and you never get your mojo back, and you never get your joy back. It’s a disaster. Absolutely every single thing in this parable mitigates against that approach to repentance. Why?

Look. When the younger son approaches, where is the father? It’s pretty interesting. Here’s what he’s not doing. We don’t have the father who is sitting inside his house, occasionally, like all of us, glancing out of the window and suddenly, out of the window, he happens to see the son almost on the porch.

He says, “Oh my gosh. There’s that artist formerly known as my younger son. This had better be good. After what he has done to me … Let him knock. Let him cry. Let him call. Let him grovel, and if he knocks and calls and grovels enough, if he’s abject enough, maybe his repentance will renew my love. Maybe it will revive and resurrect my love. This had better be good.” That’s not what you have at all!

You have a Middle-Eastern patriarch who is obviously scanning the terrain because when the young man is far off, he sees him and he runs. We’ll get to this next week, actually. Middle-Eastern patriarchs didn’t run. You had to pull up your skirts to run, you know. If you were a boy, you ran. If you were a woman, you ran, but Middle-Eastern patriarchs did not run.

But he runs and he embraces and he falls on his neck. That’s literally what the Greek says. He falls on his neck and kisses him. Of course, in just a verse or two, you’ll see he puts a robe on his nakedness and his rags, and he puts a signet ring on his finger, which means he’s back in the family. He can do contracts. He throws a party feast, and he refuses to let the son earn his way back in. By sheer grace, he grants it.

The whole idea of repentance earning your way back is completely rejected. Notice carefully. The whole religious idea of repentance is, “If I’m really abject enough, maybe I’ll resurrect God’s love.” But in this, what we have is it’s God’s love that actually enables the repentance. Don’t you think this poor guy, this nervous guy … He’s walking back. He’s going over his speech. Suddenly, his father runs and pounces on him with love and laughter. Don’t you think that might have made the speech a little easier? Yes, of course. It’s not like our repentance gets God’s love. God’s love enables the repentance. God’s pouncing, aggressive love enables the repentance.

Now here it is. In the religious approach, repentance separates you from the source of your power and your hope and your confidence, because that’s a good record. That’s your power and its source. But in the gospel, repentance reconnects you or connects you more deeply to the source of your power, confidence, and joy. Why? Because if you’re a Christian and you understand the gospel, the source of your self-image, the source of your power, and the source of your confidence is not your record, but his record. It’s not what you have done, but what he has done.                                                                                                                                                           10 Describe the difference between religious repentance and gospel repentance.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Friday: The Gospel in the Story

He, Jesus … What did he do? I think it’s pretty astounding that Jesus Christ told this story. What was he thinking when he tells the story of a young son who is in agony? He’s in rags, he’s naked, and he’s crying out, and the father opens the door and receives him, enrobes him, and feasts him. Yet at the end of Jesus’ life, he cries out to his Father. He’s stripped naked, in rags, as it were, on the cross, and he cries out, “My God! My God!” and what happens? The door is shut. He’s not robed; he’s disrobed. He’s not feasted; he gets vinegar to drink.

Why? Some people use repentance as a way of making themselves miserable and atoning for their sin, but Christians know Jesus Christ on the cross was miserable for us. He was stripped naked for us so we could be clothed in God’s love. He got the rejection we deserved so we get the welcome of God. Even before we repent, God is on us, robing us, kissing us, and feasting us.

When you repent, you remember you’re a sinner saved by grace. When you repent, you remember, “The whole reason why Jesus Christ came was to do this for me.” When I repent, I get back in touch with who I am. That’s why gospel Christianity says all of life is repentance, and you want to do it all the time!

When I think about the things I do wrong, they usually either come from pride, self-centeredness … But the gospel says, “You’re so sinful, Jesus had to die for you.” That humbles me into the dust. The other things I do wrong come from fear and anxiety and feeling like I’m not valuable, but the gospel says, “Jesus Christ was glad to die for you,” and that affirms me to the sky.

In Jesus Christ, you mean more to him than the stars in the heavens. The more I get in touch with the fact that I’m a sinner saved by grace, and the more I’m humbled into the ground and raised to the stars by his love, the less I need to do the self-centered things that screw up my life and everybody’s around me.

Repentance is getting back in touch, and to the degree I get back in touch with the wonder of what he did, how he was willing to come and, in rags, be stripped and have the door of the universe shut in his face, and the Father not answer him when he called, so when I call, the Father always answers … When you call, the Father always answers when you come through Jesus Christ.

Don’t you see the liberation of being repentant? A repentant person is somebody who is always, always free from evasion, free from having to create this idea of a good record, free from having to tell everybody he’s right and everybody else is wrong and, “You’re misunderstanding me.” He’s free some needing to expose other people and argue with people all the time. He’s free from needing to win any arguments ever again.

Do you know what’s interesting? A repentant Christian is somebody … Because you’re humbled, it means you repent and repent and repent, but the more you repent, the better you get, the less you do those self-centered things, and the more the self-centered things you do are smaller and smaller.

But, you know, you don’t feel like you’re getting any better. See, if you’re a repentant person, if you are a godly Christian, you don’t feel like you’re really getting much better, but everybody around you knows you are. You’re exactly the opposite of the way everybody in the world is. Everybody else in the world says, “I’m pretty good,” but everybody else around them knows they’re not. Which person do you want to be?                                                                          11. How does the gospel show us simultaneously how bad we are and how loved we are?

4. The kind of community that results from repentance

Finally, what if we really were a group of people who knew all life was repentance? What kind of community would we be? Let me just suggest two things, but they’re pretty strong.

First, every Christian has to be in a community where there’s accountability. Do you believe repentance comes from coming to your senses? Didn’t we say you can’t just decide to come out of your trance? Circumstances, friends (like how the father helped the son to go through repentance) … If you understand sometimes you need to be brought to your senses, then what kind of community do you need to be in?

Odysseus, on his great voyage in The Odyssey … There was a place at which he knew he was going to go by the island of the Sirens. Therefore, he was told when he heard the siren call, he would go nuts and he would drive the boat into the shoals and everybody would die. So what he did with everybody was he tied himself to the mast, he put wax in all of his sailors’ ears, and he said, “Now when I start to go nuts and start to curse at you and start to yell, I’ll be out of my head. You just ignore. You just keep rowing, and after that, I’ll be fine.” That’s what happened.

You’re saying, “You’re using this as an analogy for what it means to belong to a church?” Yes, because, you see, if you come here, you take your notes, and you come and go as you wish, you’re a consumer. You don’t join, you don’t become a member, and you don’t actually take vows that say, “If anybody (my elders, my officers, my pastors, or my friends) sees me living in a way I shouldn’t be, you have the right to call me on the carpet.” Have you done that? If not, you don’t understand repentance yet.

You see, a gospel Christian knows sometimes you’re going to need to be brought to your senses. Sometimes you’re going to be out of your head. Sometimes you say, “Tie me to the mast and wait till I get sane!” Therefore, every Christian has to be in a community where there’s accountability: you for them and them for you.

You say, “Boy, I’ve been in a church where that was abused. Authority was abused.” Fine, okay. There are a lot of quacks out there, bad doctors. Does that mean you don’t need medicine? Is that the end of antibiotics for you? I hope not.

Secondly, you need a community in which people help you walk and live the way you should. If it’s a repentant community, then every other person who is ever correcting you, holding your feet to the fire, and holding you accountable would be a repentant sinner and would be incredibly gentle and would never give up on you.

They would never stop holding your feet to the fire, but they would never, ever, ever, ever, on the other hand, just write you off. They’ll love you to the end. They’ll be patient with you to the end, because they’re just sinners. They’re not better than you. They don’t feel better than you, if they’re repentant.

Don’t you want to be in a community like that? Don’t you want to build a community like that, a community of truth and love, a community in which the people are so gracious and so gentle with each other, nobody ever abuses anybody else, and yet nobody lets anyone else just go off the way they want to go, because we know they need to repent? All of life is repentance. Let us pray.

Father, thank you for this wonderful affirmation, and yet this great challenge, which is when the Lord Jesus Christ called us to repent, he meant the entire life of a believer should be one of repentance. We pray that you would help us to understand this as liberation. Help us to create a community of repentant sinners who lovingly help one another. You said, Father, in James 5:16, “… confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” Let it be so. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.