RESTORATION AND REPENTANCE

The lamp of your body is the eye. When your eyes are sound, you have light for your whole body; but when the eyes are bad, you are in darkness. See to it then that the light you have is not darkness. — Luke 11:34-35

Jesus came so that men might have sound eyes, which we take to mean a clean conscience and a pure heart. If man’s heart is right, then his whole life is full of light. The good life depends on a good heart. The old hymn that asks Is thy heart right with God? is asking if the eyes are sound. Psalms 37:31 describes the righteous man as “The law of his God is in his heart, his steps do not falter,” while Psalms 112:7 adds that “Bad news shall have no terrors for him, because his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.”

One does not have to be a human being for long without realizing what can happen to the heart. One prophet assures us that “The heart is the most deceitful of all things, desperately sick; who can fathom it? (Jer. 17:9 ) The same prophet speaks of the heart as evil, haughty, whorish, idolatrous, and revolting. He equates sin to “the imagination of the heart” and describes the people’s heart as “departing from the Lord.” Jer. 3:10 reveals that it is pretense that God hates, that he rejected Judah because she did not “return unto me with her whole heart.” Again and again the Bible makes it clear that it is the heart that God wants circumcised. As Joel 2:13 puts it: “Rend your hearts and not your garments.” And so Paul writes: “The true Jew is he who is such inwardly, and the true circumcision is of the heart.”

This is the idea of repentance. The penitent man has sound eyes, for his heart is open unto the Lord. The eye is single for it sincerely seeks God, and it is stripped of all sham and hypocrisy. The penitent man is real on the inside, whatever external form his religion may take. Isa. 66:2 speaks of the penitent man when it says: “The man I look to is a man down-trodden and distressed, one who reveres my words.” God loves the broken heart, the contrite heart, the longing heart. This is repentance and repentance is the basis of restoration. It is when man realizes his brokenness and his fragmentariness that God can reach out and restore him to Himself.

We err when we leave the impression that repentance means a change of mind, for it means so much more than this. Repentance means turning from sin just as faith means turning to God. It means realizing one’s own helplessness and relying upon God’s grace. It involves an entire reorientation of the personality, a true restoration of man’s life to God. It means that one becomes a part of the new humanity, a new person.

Neither is repentance adequately defined as sorrow for sin, for it implies a completely changed attitude toward sin and all of life. When Jesus is asked about the greatest commandment and answers with “Love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength,” he is talking about the penitent life. Love God with all your personality, with all that you are! This is what it means to repent, to experience reformation, to be restored to God.

There is an important sense in which repentance is to be viewed as a gift of God to the sinner, and not simply as the work of the one experiencing conversation. Acts 5:31 refers to God granting repentance to Israel, while Acts 11:18 mentions that he gave repentance to the Gentiles. Rom. 2:4 says that it is God’s kindness that leads men to repent. 2 Tim. 2:2 5 shows that it is God who leads men to repent and who shows them the truth.

This is why a good case can be made for repentance preceding faith, that man must repent before he can believe. We find the heart of Jesus’ preaching to be “Repent and believe the gospel,” while Paul spoke of “repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus.” The idea is that it is only the prepared heart, prepared by contriteness and brokenness, that can believe. Faith is not something that one turns on at will. Surely it is more than the acceptance of certain propositions. Faith is trust, an assurance that penetrates deep inside one, a conviction that all is well with one’s soul. The NEB does well to render Acts 20:21 as “repentance before God and trust in our Lord Jesus.” Through repentance, the will to be restored, is man led to a life of trust. God gives this spirit to the one who really wants Him.

Repentance can best be understood as a kind of life. This is the cry of John the Baptist at the outset, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” It is like saying, “Experience such a restoration to God as to become a new person, for God’s reign is on the horizon.” Surely John is saying more than Change your mind or Be sorry for your sin. He is inviting them to enter upon a new life by yielding their hearts to God. This is implied in Matt. 3:11: “I baptize you in water unto repentance.” He must be saying, “I immerse you into a new kind of life.”

The story of Zacchaeus shows us the nature of repentance. This little man was at first selfish and greedy, and perhaps even unjust’ in some of his dealings as superintendent of taxes. It is enough to say that he was not what he should have been before God, which is the story. with all of us. But meeting Jesus made all the difference in the world with Zacchaeus. We watch him with interest as he scales a tree in order to get a glimpse at the passing Jesus. Was it mere curiosity? The record tells us that “He was eager to see what Jesus looked like.” He could have been back at the tax office shuffling his receipts or out harassing some poor soul for not paying his taxes on time.

People like tax superintendents are not notorious for climbing trees in order to get a better view of Jesus. Usually such folk could not care less. While he still was not what God wanted him to be as he scampered up that tree, he was certainly drawing near to the kingdom. We might say that in that moment God began to give him repentance. There was an important relationship about the way Zacchaeus had come to think about himself and what he had heard about Jesus. Taxes could wait. He wanted Jesus, or at least he thought he might want him. Then there is Jesus walking through the crowd of people, many no doubt curiosity seekers. Surely there is an important reason why he picks out the little man in the tree to speak to. Jesus knew the condition of his heart. He knew that repentance was on the burner of his heart simmering. And when Jesus spoke to him, calling him by name, wow! It was Zacchaeus’ finest hour. Life would never be the same again. He had embarked upon the new humanity.

It is the story of a changed man, a penitent man. Even in the face of those who despised him Zacchaeus says to Jesus: “Here and now, sir, I give half of my possessions to charity; and if I have cheated anyone, I am ready to repay him four times over.” This is more than sorrow for sin and change of will however important these are. It is a case of a man being restored to God in body, soul and spirit. A revolution has occurred in a man’s life. He is completely changed and made new. This is repentance.

This is why repentance is not a once for all experience. It is not a step in some plan of salvation, as if it is done once for all, leaving one free to move on to the next step. Repentance, like restoration, is a lifetime experience, for it involves our aims, attitudes, aspirations. Repentance is not necessarily fast. Thoughts toward God may have long brooded in the heart of Zacchaeus before that day he encountered Jesus, and they no doubt continued, deepening and maturing, long after. Repentance is like conversion, if indeed it is not the same, in that for the believer it is a never ending experience. The apostle Peter was converted long before Jesus turned toward the cross, and yet the Master says to him in Lk. 22:32: “When you are converted, strengthen your brothers.”

The continual experience of repentance may be seen in both its positive and negative aspects. Repentance means to turn to God, and yet one turns to God more and more as he lives in Him. This is why we say that repentance is a kind of life, a life that grows sweeter and richer with the years. But repentance also means to turn from sin, and in turning from sin we come to hate it. There may be something wrong if in our Christian faith we are still attracted to sin, still really love it, even if we do manage to turn from it. When our penitent hearts grow stronger we will actually come to loath the sins that now allure us. The philosopher Montaigne was talking about most of us when he said, explaining how kids should be reared: “Children should be taught to hate vice for its own texture, so that they will not only avoid it in action, but abominate it in their hearts — that the very thought of it may disgust them whatever form it takes.”

The penitent mind is therefore the restoration mind. The only Restoration Movement worth its salt is that of the individual who so yields to God’s grace in his own personal life as to be restored to the beauty of soul that God intends for him. God does not view us as communities, congregations or movements as much as individuals. Jesus will look to you and call your name as he did Zacchaeus when you really want Jesus. You too can see what Jesus really looks like in your own life, and his image can be reflected in your own life. This is restoration. This is repentance. — the Editor