What Real Repentance Looks Like

To All in the CGGC:

This is the closest thing that I have to an actual word from the Lord. This has been on my heart for a long time. I have gazed at it carefully through that clouded and rippled ancient mirror through which prophets see (1 Cor. 13:12). This is as close to what He is saying to you through me as I can make it. As the Word instructs, weigh carefully what is said.

At the same time I have been calling for repentance, I have also been struggling to understand what repentance would look like if we actually practiced it. Here's what I see in Scripture:

Repentance is a radical and violent change of mind and will. Even in the New Covenant, where the violence is described metaphorically and spiritually, it is very real and it is eternal.

Think about models of repentance in the Old Testament.

When Moses saw the worship of the golden calf, he actually called all those who were with him together and he told them each to take a sword, to go among the worshipers of the golden calf and to kill his 'brother and friend and neighbor.' In that time and place, if you didn't do that, you didn't repent. It was not enough merely to agree with Moses about Yahweh, repentance required extreme obedience to the notion that discipleship means hating mother and father, son and daughter and even self.

I find seven accounts of repentance and spiritual awakening in the Books of Kings and Chronicles in the Old Testament. They are all violent stories of the tearing down of altars to false gods and of the killing of the priests and worshipers of gods other than Yahweh. All of those stories are clear in asserting that this sort of violent and radical fruit of repentance pleased the Lord.

Think about models of repentance in the New Testament.

Under the New Covenant, repentance is described with violent metaphors that are perfectly consistent with those tales of Moses and the faithful kings of Israel and Judah.

When Pharisees and Sadducees came to observe the ministry of John but not to repent, John called them a brood of vipers and commanded them to produce fruit in keeping with repentance. He told them that the ax is at the root of the trees and promised them that every tree that does not bear fruit will be cut down and burned.

John's description of the ministry of the Messiah was equally violent. He said of the One who would come after him that His winnowing fork is in His hand and that He will clear His threshing floor and gather His wheat into the barn and burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

Note the message that Jesus preached from the beginning to the end of His ministry:

First, repent. Then, believe. Belief not based in repentance is not the belief Jesus commands.

Jesus defined the repentance necessary to be His disciple, as Moses did in the face of the golden calf, as being so extreme that if you don't hate your mother and father and wife and children and even your own life, you don't qualify as His disciple.

It was that radical type of commitment that the apostles preached from the day of Pentecost. When the crowd to whom Peter explained the coming of the Spirit asked, "What shall we do?" Peter didn't say, "Accept Jesus Christ as your savior." His first word in response was, "Repent."

In Jesus' letters to the seven churches in Revelation, every church He didn't praise He commanded to repent and He promised harsh judgment and violent consequences to churches that failed to repent. To those in Ephesus he said, "If you do not repent I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place." To those sinning in Pergamum He warned that if they didn't repent, "I will fight against them." To Thyatira, He said, "I will repay each of you according to your deeds." To Sardis, He said, "If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief." To Laodicea He said, "I am about to spit you out of my mouth....Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline."

From what I can tell, as a Body our understanding of what it means to serve the Lord is symbolized by the writing of our radical Mission and Vision Statements which we don't believe in and which we have no intention of enacting. We foolishly suppose that our radical, pious words equal repentance and that they please the Lord.

My reading of the Lord's response is that He is not pleased.

I believe He sees those words, devoid of commitment to action, as obscene mockery of truth.

I believe He is preparing judgment against us and that He is raising prophets to call us to produce genuine, radical, biblical, extreme, fruit of repentance. I believe that our Mission and Vision Statements condemn us--they call down curses on us.

Repentance is not a matter of words. It is a matter of radical change in what people actually do.

We think that we can gently, sweetly, and patiently nurture ourselves and our people into change. We can't. The Lord doesn't empower change in that way. He has never accomplished repentance in that way. He has never called for it in that way. He doesn't think of change in those moderate terms. He defines it only in terms of the darkest black and and whiter than snow white. To think we can redefine repentance in an image that pleases us is to lift our chins to the Lord in defiance and tell Him that we know better than He always has.

He won't bless us if we continue to pursue a repentanceless pseudo-Christianity. He will fight against us. In fact, I believe that He already is fighting us. He will come to us one day like a thief. He will repay us for our defiant deeds. And, if we still refuse to repent, He will spew us out of His mouth and remove our lampstand from its place.

I believe that the truth John described is our truth. The ax is at the root of the trees. I believe that the ax is not yet swinging. But, the swing is being measured. The only thing that will keep the ax from swinging is acts that are fruit of repentance.

We need to repent: Really, really repent as the Word defines the act.

We don't have much time.