Repentance: Doing Business with God
On October 31 the people assembled again, and this time they fasted and dressed in burlap and sprinkled dust on their heads. Those of Israelite descent separated themselves from all foreigners as they confessed their own sins and the sins of their ancestors. They remained standing in place for three hours while the Book of the Law of the Lord their God was read aloud to them. Then for three more hours they confessed their sins and worshiped the Lord their God. Nehemiah 9:1-3
Genuine Repentance Begins with a Broken Heart
It seems to me both Jesus (the living Word) and scripture (the written Word) are pretty clear about the place of repentance/surrender in the life of a Christ follower. Jesus would not let the rich young ruler (Matt. 19, Mark 10, Luke 18) follow him because, “this one thing you lack”. Or consider Philippians 3 where the apostle Paul considers everything a loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. Consider also Romans 12 where he encourages us to present our bodies as living sacrifices acceptable to God. The Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) also speaks to this. God called Abraham to leave everything behind in order to go with God.
The people of Nehemiah’s story, likewise, have some important lessons for us here. Upon hearing the law of God read to them by Ezra, the people’s hearts broke. They realized more and more (as they heard God’s law) how rebellious they had been over the centuries as a people. They wept and they mourned. Granted, the short-lived commitment afterward at least raises some question about how sincerely they really felt this loss. But that only makes the point stronger: the lynchpin to genuine repentance, the necessary and critical foundation for it, is a heart that is broken over the ways we have been unfaithful to our ever-faithful God. We can otherwise say all the right things and we can believe all the right things. But if our hearts are not breaking over sin and rebellion and unfaithfulness, then we are not fully surrendered to God. And, frankly, we are not following Jesus.
From a leadership standpoint, we simply cannot miss this foundational piece of spiritual formation in the lives of those we shepherd. If we are leading them to do good and to believe the right things, then we are building their sense of self-worth. But leading them in confession and repentance is what builds their faith.
Corporate Confession of Past Failures
Nehemiah chapter 9 is a beautiful illustration of corporate repentance. There is an element of repentance which looks back in time and recognizes all the ways I (we) have been unfaithful to God. As we see in Nehemiah, this particular part of repentance can be done corporately. It is entirely possible that a family, a church, a community, or even a nation can look back in time and confess our sins. It seems to me this has presented some confusion in our Christian culture.
For example, we can look back and acknowledge/confess our nation’s sins regarding slavery. Likewise, a church or a denomination of churches can look back and confess the ways it has fallen short of God’s plan. There is nothing wrong with this. “But I did not participate in that…” misses the point of this confession. The sadness and brokenness we feel is for what WE (our family, our church, our nation) did.
None of the people confessing in Nehemiah 9 had done the things they were confessing. These were all things that had happened decades, even centuries, earlier. With shattered hearts, they held those things before God. There can be a corporate aspect to this “looking back” part of repentance. But not so much the next part of repentance.
Individual Surrender and Commitment Going Forward
When the time came for the people of Judah to look forward and make some promises about how they would live going forward, there was a clearer individual component to the process. Lots of individual names were affixed to the written pledge. The accountability needed for moving ahead with these promises needed to be more specific, more individualized. It makes sense if you think about it. I can make promises to you about what I will do with or for you in the future. But I cannot make promises about what anybody else will do.
In our legal system’s parlance surrounding contracts, we would call this a privity problem. And, when it comes time to enforce the contract (or to remedy broken promises), it would present a standing problem. In either case, it is dealing with the struggle with holding someone accountable to a promise they were never a party to in the first place. This revolution we call Christianity is grounded upon a type of individual surrender and decision to follow Jesus. I cannot make that decision on your behalf. You cannot make it on my behalf. With this second piece to the repentance process, the piece where we look forward and make promises, it is largely an individual process.
As we shepherd our people, we must help them understand that. Everyone else in your family or your church can decide to follow Jesus, but you still have your own decision to make. And that piece of repentance is something we must teach our people to do on their own over and over again as a kind of spiritual discipline in their lives. Nehemiah has taught me some wonderful lessons as I learn the high calling of shepherding God’s people. But none of those lessons feel more important to me than this one about repentance.
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