LENT: Continual Repentance

Will has been doing an excellent job guiding us through Lent. Unfortunately, today the only thing Will is guiding is his pillow, because he's sick like a dog. So I shall offer a post in his absence. It will not have nearly the sublime meditative quality of his writing; but I trust it will serve as a reliable guide nonetheless.

This week's theme has been repentance. And as Will wrote yesterday, the danger with repentance is that "self-protection and self-worship ride in the Trojan horse of repentance all the time." The prophet Joel warned Israel to "rend your heart, not your garments" (Joel 2:13). The Apostle Paul differentiated between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow: "the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death" (2 Cor 7:11).

The key to true repentance is that it always terminates on Jesus. True repentance does not wallow in self-loathing or delight in self-flagellation. Rather, it allows an honest sense of my sinfulness to drive me toward the depth of Christ's mercy in the gospel. "For every one look at sin," said R. Murray McCheyne, "take ten looks at Christ." Our community is often quick to embrace the "I'm a sinner" part of the gospel without quickly affirming the other part: "and Jesus is my only hope." The side-effect of this half-hearted gospel is that we end up simply excusing sin, not turning from it. Worldly sorrow leads to death/despair. Godly sorrow leads to salvation, because it points me toward Christ.

No one understood this more fully than the Puritans. And so I offer today this prayer from the collection of Puritan prayers called The Valley of Vision. May God use it to help us "repent of our repentance."

PRAYER:
O God of Grace,
Thou hast imputed my sin to my substitute,
and hast imputed his righteousness to my soul,
clothing me with a bridegroom's robe, decking me with jewels of holiness.
But in my Christian walk I am still in rags;
my best prayers are stained with sin;
my penitential tears are so much impurity;
my confessions of wrong are so many aggravations of sin;
my receiving the Spirit is tinctured with selfishness.

I need to repent of my repentance;
I need my tears to be washed;
I have no robe to bring to cover my sins,
no loom to weave my own righteousness.
I am always standing clothed in filthy garments,
and by grace am always receiving change of raiment,
for thou dost always justify the ungodly...

Grant me never to lose sight of
the exceeding sinfulness of sin,
the exceeding righteousness of salvation,
the exceeding glory of Christ,
the exceeding beauty of holiness,
the exceeding wonder of grace.

SCRIPTURE READING: Deuteronomy 10:12-22