Repentance is Freedom
19th August 2022
Following the article I wrote two weeks ago about repentance, I'd like to add one more thought: Repentance sets us free.
People sometimes discuss whether our beliefs are more or less important than our conduct, whether it's better to believe the right things or to do the right things. Some seem to think that, as the "Peanuts" character Linus said, "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sincere". Other seem to think that it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you live a moral life. But all this misses the truth that if your beliefs are defective, then your conduct is bound to be defective. To take extreme examples, if you believe that murder and theft are good things, then you're far more likely to kill and steal.
On the whole, we act according to our beliefs. A lot of people don't accept that, but those people are confusing what we think we believe with what we actually believe. Many Christians think they believe what their teachers tell them is Biblical, but they don't actually believe it. If they truly believed that regular church attendance, or tithing, or daily Bible study were important, for example, they'd do it.
As Christians, we believe, of course, that God has a set of ethical values, which He has communicated to us in the Bible. These ethical values, being God’s values, are true, not only in the sense that they're not false, but in the sense that a plumb line gives us an accurate sense of the vertical, that a set of wheels are true if they point forwards, that a compass is true if it points north. If we accept biblical ethics, then we believe in God's ethics, and God's ethics are right.
Jesus said:
John 8v31b-32
"If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
This saying if often interpreted to mean "… you will know the Gospel, and the Gospel will set you free". That's certainly true. Some people, remembering that Jesus also said, "I am the way the truth and the life" (John 14v6) interpret His words to mean "… you will know Jesus and Jesus will set you free". That's certainly true, as well. But Jesus is saying both of these things and more.
Jesus offers us freedom from the power of sin. As he goes on to say:
John 8v34-36
... "Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
If we will repent, that is, if we will change our belief system to bring it into accordance with His teachings - both the verbal sayings of Jesus recorded in the Gospels and the contents of the Bible as a whole - then we will increasingly, by His mercy and the graceful operation of the Holy Spirit, obey His teaching, including His moral teaching. And as our lives are progressively conformed to God's ethics, we will be increasingly free from sin.
Jesus offers us the truth of how men and women can and should live, which sets us free to pursue righteous living, because we now know what that is.
Jesus offers us the truth of the Gospel, which brings us forgiveness and adoption as God's children, and sets us free from condemnation and eternal death.
Jesus offers us the truth of who God truly is, which sets us free from doctrinal error.
Jesus offers us the truth about God's character, which sets us free to be secure in His love.
Jesus offers us the truth about God's power, which sets us free to trust Him to intervene in our lives.
Jesus offers us the truth about eternal life, which sets us free from fear.
What sets us free is not our conversion experience, when we prayed the sinner's prayer and gave our lives to Jesus. Nor is it a lifetime of faithful and regular church attendance. What sets us truly free is believing the Bible and putting it into practice. That is, holding to Jesus's teaching. This requires us to change our mind about everything that is contrary to the Bible. That is what repentance is.
To repent is not to make any kind of sacrifice. To repent is to know and accept God's holy word, which will only ever do us good and will set us free to be the people we can be - the people God designed us to be. To repent is to be free.