Getting Repentance Right a sermon on Matthew 3.13-17 by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama
Once upon a time a young man
wanted to take a certain young lady to the high school prom. He was nervous
about asking her. He had never asked her out before. Truth be told he had not
asked many girls out. He had no idea if she would be interested or not, but she
was pretty and lively and basically wonderful, in his opinion. So he had to ask
her. He spent an entire evening meticulously planning what he would say. Wording
was crucial. Tone, manner, and delivery were essential. He practiced in his head
and out loud. He wanted to appear confident and suave. Getting this right could
make all the difference. The next morning his mind was not on his studies. He
was working up his courage and going over his speech again and again. He knew he
would see her after homeroom, and the perfect opportunity presented itself. She
was alone at her locker. He walked right up and delivered his oration exactly as
he had hoped he would. He was cool. He was eloquent. How could she say no? … She
found a way. She looked at him with a kind of pity (he recognized it immediately
and knew it foretold bad new) and answered, “I’m flattered that you asked me,
but I’m sorry. I just can’t go with you.” And she walked away. She said “can’t”
but she meant “don’t want to,” because she did not yet have a date. This changed
at lunch. She was eating with a group of friends and the subject of the prom
came up. “Who are you taking?” one guy asked another. “I don’t know,” he said
and, turning to the girl in our story, added, “Would, uh, you like to go with me
… or something?” “Sure!” she squealed gleefully as her face lit up. After lunch
she ran off to tell her girlfriends the exciting news. The moral of the story
is: Sometimes how you ask doesn’t matter. The answer is already determined. You
just don’t know what it is yet. God is like that. His answer is ready before we
ever turn to him in repentance and faith. Think about the prodigal son in Jesus’
parable. He was a long way from home. He had hit rock bottom. He knew he had
made a mess of his life, and the only way out he could think of involved going
back to his father and humbly repenting. He thought out carefully what he would
say. He judiciously weighed his strategy. He didn’t dare ask for too much, but
perhaps his father would hire him as a servant. “Father,” he would say, “I have
sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your
son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” But what happened? His father
Getting Repentance Right 2
saw him coming a long way off, and ran to meet him. He only got about halfway
through his speech when his father turned to the servants and said, “Quickly,
bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and
sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and
celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is
found!” [Lk 15.21-24] When you find you have reached the end of your rope and
the only place you know you can find help is God, you never have to worry that
he will turn you away. His answer is ready before you ask, and praise be to God,
his answer is yes. This is a sermon about repentance, and our scripture passage
is the baptism of Jesus. Last Sunday was actually Baptism of the Lord Sunday,
but we ordained officers, so I saved this message for today. The whole thing
revolves around two tricky questions. First, why in the world did Jesus ask John
to baptize him? Matthew mentions that John put up a bit of resistance. John
thought Jesus should baptize him, not the other way around. Second, how do you
know you got repentance right? I want to explain repentance more fully, but
basically it means turning from your own way to God. You regret what you have
done or who you have become; you admit your need to God; and you ask for his
grace. The two questions come together in this way: When you turn to God, he
welcomes you. He embraces you not because your sincerity impresses him, not
because he is sure you will do better, and not because you ask in just the right
way. He receives you by grace because he loves you. If his response depended on
you getting repentance just right, he would always turn you away. We human
beings are broken. We are damaged by our sinful nature, which keeps us from
getting even repentance right. We are never motivated by pure love for God;
there’s always a bit of selfishness in there. Grace means God welcomes us even
though our repentance needs help. Jesus gives us that help. You see, Jesus’ work
as Savior of the world began with his baptism. Through his baptism he was
repenting—not for himself—but for us. His baptism was a repentance on our behalf
that was acceptable to God. Have you ever heard an exasperated person complain,
“Do I have to do everything myself?” That is the position Jesus is in when it
comes to reconciling us to God. That was not his attitude. He wasn’t
exasperated, and he didn’t complain. But he did have to do everything. And he
did it. His baptism was part of that. This is an exciting message of grace. By
ourselves, we are incapable of reconciling with God. Our actions and attitudes
broke that precious relationship between Creator and creature, and we cannot set
things right even if we want to. The Good News is, God can set it right, and
through Jesus he has done just that. So now, when we come to him with empty
hands, asking for forgiveness, asking for new life, his yes is ready before we
even open our mouths. That is how great our need is and how great his love is.
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Repentance means coming to God with empty hands. You know you have nothing to
offer him. You come anyway because of your need. And he embraces you. Grace
means his answer is already determined and it is yes. But, grace also means that
you have to come with empty hands. I like the way Stanley Grenz describes
repentance in his book What Christians Really Believe and Why. He says: We
receive divine grace as we turn from. Specifically we turn from ourselves—from
our old way of thinking, feeling, and living. The turning from entails a change
of mind, an altered opinion of ourselves. We once thought we were basically
okay, basically good—not perfect, of course, but decent persons nevertheless.
And we saw ourselves as quite self-sufficient: We could handle life on our own.
Turning from self entails having one’s complacency shaken. We realize our
spiritual poverty. We know that despite our best efforts, we are simply not
okay. … What we sincerely desire is a change, a new beginning. [p. 118] God
cannot and will not accept us apart from grace. As long as you think you are
fine the way you are or that you don’t need grace or that you just need a bit of
grace to cover a few minor defects, you are cutting yourself of from God and the
life he gives. Everyone who comes to God must come with empty hands. Even nice
people. Even people the whole world considers good or saintly. Repentance means
recognizing your need, turning from your self-sufficiency, and turning toward
God. … I want to talk now a little more about repentance, because I suspect many
Christians have a narrow view of what it means or some anxiety about it. I have
known people who, when faced for the first time with their own mortality, began
to worry about their standing with God. For instance, a man has a heart attack,
and he knows now in a way he did not before that he is mortal. Suddenly he
decides he needs to be baptized again. He is anxious about his relationship with
God. When he became a Christian, did he get it right? Did he say the right
things? Do the right things? Was his heart really in it? It was a long time ago.
He feels a need to be sure. … Then he finds out that we never re-baptize anyone.
Why? Because grace is the important thing. You may not have known enough. Your
repentance might have been imperfect. Your resolve to live for God may have been
weak. Nevertheless, God got it right. He embraced you in baptism, and that is
what is important. When I was a teenager, I rededicated my life to God, in part
because I was so young when I made a profession of faith and was baptized (I was
8 years old; I grew up Baptist). I just wanted to make sure I had gotten it
right. Now, it is always a good thing to rededicate your life to God, especially
if you have not been serious about living your faith. And, in a way, we give
ourselves to God again every week in worship with our
Getting Repentance Right 4
prayer of confession, hearing his Word, and responding with faith and praise.
But, there is no need for anxiety. God wants us to be joyful. We cannot be
joyful, fruitful Christians if we constantly worry about our standing with God.
If you look back on your commitment to Christ—and maybe you were baptized as an
infant and confirmed, or maybe you made a profession of faith and received
baptism later—if you look back with worry about whether you got all that right,
whether you are really a Christian or not—that sort of anxiety—let it go. Be at
peace. Did you get it right? No, of course you didn’t. No one ever does. But it
does not matter. Jesus got it right for you. Before you were halfway through
your prayer of repentance or your vows of baptism, God had wrapped his arms
around you and was calling for the finest robe and sandals. … Some Christians
feel anxiety. Some live with guilt. Often the guilt causes the anxiety. It is
important, therefore, to realize how guilt fits into this picture. In scripture,
guilt doesn’t describe a feeling so much as one’s standing before God. It is
objective, not subjective. A person guilty before God may feel guilty or not.
Hopefully he or she does because that can lead to repentance. A person forgiven
by God and therefore declared by God to be not guilty may still feel guilty, and
that person must to learn to trust God’s judgment over his or her own. Jesus’
death removes our objective guilt. His purpose in dying was not to make us feel
better about ourselves but to bear our guilt so that we might be acquitted.
Christianity is not about making us feel better; it is about making us actually
be better. We are forgiven and given power to change and slowly brought along a
path by our Father in heaven until we are like Christ. Another issue I want to
address is the way repentance gets caricatured and misunderstood. Repentance is
one of those churchy words you do not hear much anywhere else because of its
religious connotations. Although, at its most basic, repentance happens all
around us. The announcer says of a bad pass in a football game, “There’s one
he’d like to have back.” And he would. That’s repentance. You buy something and
later regret it, because you find out it was overpriced or not what you had
hoped. That’s repentance. When you hear the word repentance, what image comes to
your mind? I can’t help it. I think of some scruffy guy holding a sign that
says, “Repent! The end is near!” And the voice of a fire and brimstone preacher
on AM radio rattling on about how sinful our society is and how we need to
repent and save ourselves from this wicked and adulterous generation. Turn or
burn. I suspect most people think of similar things when they hear the word
repentance, and it turns them off. That’s too bad, because repentance is more
and better than most people imagine. However, I will say this for the fire and
brimstone guys. John the Baptist was the same way, and Jesus said a lot of the
same things. You know that’s not my style, but I believe that in this great big
world there are people whom God loves dearly who are unable to hear his Word in
any other way. I am not one of them; you may not be either. But they exist, just
as there are many who need a softer approach if they are to hear and understand.
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When we think of repentance we usually think about someone becoming a Christian.
There is always that first time you bow before God and say, “Father, I have
sinner against heaven and before you …” But, and here is something important a
lot of Christians do not realize, repentance is also a way of life. You do not
turn from self to God once and for all. You have to do it every day, constantly.
This is not a prescription for misery, as if you have to be down on yourself all
the time. On the contrary, it means receiving God’s grace joyfully. Repentance
is an attitude before God that hungers for his grace. You know you cannot
overcome your brokenness, your sinful nature, but you know that God can and you
are excited about his work in you. His power is real to you. So more and more
you give yourself to him. Little by little you clean out the nooks and crannies
of resistance to God that remain in your heart. You recognize that grace was not
a one-time event, as if you came to God, confessed your sin, asked for mercy,
and then he forgave you, so now you are exactly like Christ and morally perfect.
No, your need for grace is on-going. An attitude of repentance means you seek
his grace constantly. Another way of saying this might be: Your father’s
welcoming embrace when you the prodigal return home goes on throughout your
life. Paul makes an interesting case study in repentance as a way of life.
Before he became a Christian, he was quite satisfied with himself. He was a good
person, godly, devout—as he put it, “as to righteousness under the law,
blameless” [Phil 3.6]. Once he met Christ, however, his opinion changed. First,
he looked back on his old life and realized he had not been as pleasing to God
as he had thought. This was particularly painful to him because he had been so
religious and so sincere. But he had been wrong—about God and about himself.
After meeting Christ, he recognized his need for grace. He wrote to Timothy:
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst” [1 Tim
1.15]. He’s exaggerating, but you can see how he felt acutely his need for
grace. He realized he could not do it on his own. Second, once Paul became a
Christian, this was an on-going attitude, this dependence on grace. I have said
before that the closer you get to Christ, the more aware you become of your need
for grace. A person who doesn’t know Christ may think he is just fine the way he
is. Paul was that way. Once a person understands God’s truth, however, she will
invariably feel the magnitude of the gulf that separates her from God. Christ
bridges that gulf. Then, the more a person comes to know and experience the
presence of God in his life, the more he becomes aware of his own need. That was
Paul’s experience. All our lives we have to wrestle against our sinful nature,
what Paul called “the flesh,” meaning not our physical bodies which are part of
God’s good creation, but rather that part of us that wants its own way—the
toddler inside us all that screams “mine, mine, mine” and tells God “No! No!
No!” We have to let go of that. And it’s hard. We cannot do it on our own. God
helps us but the process is a lifelong one. I heard someone on the radio say,
“God doesn’t cook in a microwave. God cooks in a crock pot.” It’s true. God is
patient. God is free. God does things his way and in
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his time. We want holiness now. We want full peace and joy now. That’s not what
we get. We have to trust God, and we have to constantly and joyfully seek and
receive his grace. One final thing I want to say about repentance. True
repentance always takes the form of a changed life. John the Baptist told people
to “bear fruit worthy of repentance,” meaning that if they were serious about
choosing God’s way over their own, they would live differently. The proof is in
the living. If you constantly do the same thing over and over, then repent and
ask God to forgive you, but you never make a real effort to change and never
show any improvement, you have to start wondering if you are giving God lip
service. God values our repentance because he wants to see us change. He wants
to see us change because he loves us. C.S. Lewis explained this by talking about
a dog. A man has a dog he loves. He wants the dog to be lovable. He wants it to
be housebroken. He doesn’t want it to bite people. So he tries to train the dog,
not so that he can love it but because he already does. In the same way, God
loves us just the way we are, but he loves us too much to leave us that way.
This is a key place where liberal theology goes wrong. Liberal theology says God
loves us just the way we are, so we all must be pretty much OK. Not so. God
loves us despite a lot of bad things about us. And because he loves us, he wants
us to be lovable, beautiful, strong, and good. So God loves it when repentance
leads us to be more like those things. … Once a miserable young man returned
home with a well-rehearsed speech he hoped would sway his father’s heart, only
to discover his father’s heart needed no swaying. Once another young man went
out into the wilderness of Judea and asked a prophet to baptize him. “I preach a
baptism of repentance,” the prophet answered. “Why would you of all people need
that?” “Let it be so for now,” was his answer, “for it is proper for us in this
way to fulfill all righteousness.” He was repenting, not for his own sin, but
for yours. He made the eloquent appeal. He got it right, because you are not
able to. When you turn from your own desires and self-sufficiency, when you
realize your need and go to your Father in heaven with empty hands, you find his
heart does not need swaying. He wraps his arms around you, calls for the finest
robe and sandals, and gives you grace upon grace. Amen. January 20, 2008
rev_mauldin@yahoo.com