Repentance as a Way of Life

By Tim Hall

Tim Hall is an elder on session at Community Church and is one of the featured blog writers for Peak Reflections. Tim’s messages help us think theologically about our faith.

A little more than a week ago, I stopped at Robaire’s and picked up a half-dozen paczkis to share with my colleagues in the office in honor of Fat Tuesday. Even a guy as Protestant as I am can appreciate this little bit of Catholic culture each year! And not so many years ago, I also began developing a new appreciation of the season ushered in by Fat Tuesday and the day following, Ash Wednesday.

Many branches of American Protestantism, including the churches where I grew up, have never observed the Lenten season. I was often warned that observance of Lent was nothing more than an empty ritual or an outward show of piety performed in the expectation that it would pay off or serve as a counterbalance to some act of personal sin. This may be so for some people, and it is certainly true that any act of faith can turn to empty ritual if we do not cultivate a heart of sincerity as we practice it.

But the older I get, the more I seem to notice how often I find myself in the position of having to tell God I’m sorry, to confess having messed up again – “doing what I ought not to have done and leaving undone what I ought to have done,” to borrow from an old confession. I also have to repent, to change my mind or turn away from (or both) what I did or neglected to do. Lent was originally instituted to remind us of this universal truth about ourselves as well as to remind us of the remedy.



The Bible indicates that this inclination – to do what I shouldn’t and neglect doing what I should – has its origin in a condition of sin, separation from God, spiritual darkness, and mortal injury. The problem began shortly after God created Adam and Eve and placed them in a beautiful garden where they could live forever on one condition: that they not eat fruit from only one of its many trees. Yet in violation of God’s command--and against their own nature, as images of God’s “righteousness and true holiness” (Gen. 1:27; Eph. 4:23-24)--they ate the forbidden fruit.

At that moment, the Bible teaches that at least three things happened:

First, Adam and Eve felt guilt and shame, prompting them to try to hide from both each other and God (Gen. 3:7-8). Human beings no longer seek the living God on their own (Romans 3:10-12).

Second, their understanding was darkened in mockery of the serpent’s promise that the fruit would make them wise (Gen. 3:5-6; Rom. 1:21).

Third, they experienced death: spiritual separation from God, the gradual corruption of their bodies, and the “subjection to futility” of the world around them (Gen. 3:14-20; Rom. 8:22-23).

The Westminster Confession summarizes it this way: our first parents “fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all . . . parts of soul and body.” They also transmitted their guilt, death in sin, and corrupted nature “to all their posterity” (Rom. 5:12-14). This sinful condition that we inherit at birth produces all the sins we actually commit (Rom. 3:9-20).

The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus provided the remedy for this in his own death on our behalf. Jesus was “delivered over to death for our sins,” the Bible tells us, “and was raised to life for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).

When we acknowledge our sin, our desperate need of Jesus, and believe in him, we receive his forgiveness and the promise of new life. The Holy Spirit also takes up residence in our lives and begins a remarkable process of transformation. This transformation may have its dramatic moments. Many people do experience sudden deliverance from bondage to some terrible addiction or relief from deep despair. Yet everyone experiences many areas in which the transformation is much more gradual, sometimes almost unnoticeable for long periods of time. And every Christian experiences recurring defeat and struggle with sin in some areas of life.

Even the great apostle Paul experienced such areas of struggle and defeat. “I do not understand what I do,” he wrote, “for what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. . . . What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:15, 24.) He recognized the truth that the vestiges of sin remained in him–and in every other human being–until the day we see Jesus face to face.

If this is the case – that I will struggle with sin my whole life – then it also means that I will be repenting my whole life. Indeed, if I stop repenting, that will be a warning sign that I have become insensitive to God and the offense my sin causes Him. The way toward God is a way of repentance. Turning progressively toward God necessarily entails changing my mind and turning away from things that displease Him. That process will never fully cease until I see Him. Then, the Bible says, and not before, I “will be like Him, for we will see him as He is” (I John 3:2).

This is what I have come to appreciate about Lent. The 40 days of meditation and intentional self-denial are designed to alert us to how habitually we settle for a pleasure less or other than God. Even the act of giving up one small pleasure, one which is really no sin in itself, can give us the chance to cultivate a desire for God by taking a moment to pray or to commune with him when we feel the pang for the item we’ve renounced. And in doing so, it can help us to cultivate a habit throughout the year of intentionally turning toward God. Just maybe, by God’s grace, that habit can become a way of life.