Repentance

I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. (Luke 15: 18, 19)

I want us to look at repentance today.

And the main thing I want us to focus on is the complete lack of entitlement in repentance we see as we study the Bible.

Second is the fact that we have no entitlement except a plea for mercy that we will give the offended the whole stick to do to us as he would.

It is preposterous to expect any mercy if you will set the terms for your forgiveness or reception. That is why I want us to start with the prodigal.

He had wasted his inheritance. He had defamed his father through his reprehensible living. He had shamed his friends when he ran off with harlots.

He had chosen to live his life contrary to everything he had been taught and had therefore disinherited himself completely.

Did his father love him? Of course.

Was he following him? It is very possible he had his tabs on him and was seeing him wallowing in that slough of sin.

The reason I say this is because we see him prepared for his comeback. The fatted calf, the robe, the ring, were all indicators that the father was expecting his son to come back.

Why then did he not go looking for him?

Doing so would have short-circuited the repentance. It would have dealt with repentance on the prodigal’s terms.

The son had to come back to himself. He had to see himself in the eyes of his father and his standards.

It is when he knew that he was unworthy to be called a son of his father that he qualified to be restored into one. That is the reason his father never looked for him.

I know about parents whose children die on drugs/ on the streets for that single reason. They are not given time to come back to themselves. They are not allowed to experience their lostness. Their parent’s love and care will supersede those whorehouses and sloughs.

This breeds entitlement since the prodigal knows that he will be rescued however much he shames his father. He therefore feels as if his father’s love has no boundaries and would stretch to infinity.

They go to prison and their father bails them out. If they were this father we are talking about they could have never allowed their son feed swine and even battle with swine for food. This because they have an abundant of food as we see the prodigal confessing.

But the father of the prodigal was not like that. He allowed him to sink to his lowest because he knew that intervening before then would not have created a chance for his son to repent.

No wonder his son came back to himself.

Look at what he says.

I am disqualified from being your son. Please just give me a job.

He was not negotiating any terms for his acceptance. He was not even reminding his father that he was his lost son. He was not pleading for any forgotten inheritance.

He was pleading for mercy; to be made a hired hand.

That is what made his father know that he had his son back.

Handling sin with kid gloves worsens it.

Spoilt children, or sons of Belial as the Bible calls them, are children whose sin was handled delicately. They were allowed to repent on their terms, making their repentance plastic and completely hypocritical.

Let me give a Biblical example.

Absalom killed his brother for raping his sister. I am sure he was angry with his father for not doing the killing. Since he knew that he was supposed to die for his crime according to the Bible his father believed, he ran away.

When he is brought back, it was not because he was sorry for his crime but because his father longed for him. Now that breeds entitlement.

He burns the farm of the person who negotiated his coming back to be able to see his father.

Then he starts plotting to overthrow his father, something he almost succeeded in.

All because he was not given time to repent before being received.

Anyone who has dealt with addicts will confirm this since they deal with this aspect of repentance every day.

You see, true repentance is very humbling. No wonder it takes ages before someone can get there. Remember this?

When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. (Psalm 32: 3, 4)

David was not battling conviction. He was fighting the acknowledgement of that sin since there were sure to have been decisions that would have needed to be made and actions that needed to be performed.

Saying that I have sinned is very easy. That is where rebellion thrives.

Facing my sin is the actual problem we have after we have sinned because I am not willing to face my sin head on. I am not willing to wear the gown of shame the sin made for me.

Like Saul we want our reputation to remain intact. We want our confession to return us to the place our sin snatched us from without dealing with the damages it caused. It might be the problem the prodigal had, to the point that he battled swine for food just because he couldn’t face his father in contrition.

The good thing is that he finally decided that enough was enough. He was able to empty himself of entitlement of any sort. He was not even pleading to be taken back because he knew that he had completely disinherited himself from anything and anybody his father represented.

Forget me as a son. I am not making any demands on you. I am just pleading for one thing. Just give me the most menial job so that I can at least have something to eat.

Which father can resist such repentance?

I am sure that if he had met his elder brother and approached him like this he could also have softened.

This because his repentance went beyond saying sorry. He humbled himself completely as he faced his fallenness head on.

He was not ashamed to call himself worthless and useless in his father’s economy.

But assume with me that he came like most approach repentance.

Father, please listen to me. I know you will not understand. But you see I am your son and had to do what I did. And we can always look for some more things to replace what got lost.

What kind of grace could he have expected?

Nobody is interested in knowing how you fell or even why. Nobody cares what made you live contrary to everything you knew was right. Nobody cares to know, let alone understand, the temptation that brought you down.

Seeking to take them there is akin to causing them to revisit the pain you have caused them in that fallenness and sin.

I will repeat. Nobody wants to know why you fell or even how you fell. In fact, you can only be sure of one thing; no mercy or understanding can be accessed this way. No grace can be extended your way from the offended if you pursue that path.

You see, the father and elder brother knew what the prodigal was doing with his inheritance. And they also knew how short that experience was going to be.

Explaining that wastefulness would have been reopening those painful wounds. That is the bitterness we see with the elder brother because he had been absent when the confession was made. He simply thought that his father had been involved in the coming back of his brother.

There are two dangerous camouflages rebellion uses to feign repentance.

The first I have mentioned earlier being the explanation of the error and seeking to be understood so that you are then received on favorable terms, simply saying, terms that suit you.

We see that with king Saul when Samuel confronted him.

The truth is that it will harden the offended and make it harder for them to ever accept the genuineness of any repentance on your side.

The other one is the back door type.

In this someone seeks to reverse the damage in their spirit with good works. Allow me to use the prodigal to explain.

Imagine him sneaking to his father’s compound and swearing the servants to secrecy so that he can slowly try to rectify the damage he caused by becoming the best servant. He trusts that his father will discover that that most hardworking servant is his prodigal son. Then he could have repented when the confrontation occurred.

Do you think that ruse could have worked? Wouldn’t it have hastened his complete banishment by blocking any chance of restoration?

You see, it is the offended who has all the keys to restoration. Only the offended has any olive branch to offer the offender.

Yet how many times do we see ourselves or others doing that sneaky backdoor repentance?

About thirty years ago in a church I served, a young man became so engrossed in ministry, almost everywhere. From teaching Sunday School to choir to evangelism.

But he had been in church all along and so it was a sudden burst of zeal all of a sudden.

We didn’t think much about it except appreciating the new worker God has challenged.

But in a short while we came to learn that he was running away from the impact of his sin. He wanted to cover up his sin by being serious with God. He was seeking to cover his need for repentance by serving God.

Sadly, this repeats itself so frequently one wonders why repentance is so difficult while sin was so enticing, probably pleasurable that you were ready to trash what God says to enjoy it.

The truth of the matter is that for repentance to happen, there must be a complete absence of any entitlement, any respect, any personal worth or value in the repentant.

I must empty myself of myself to be able to truly repent.

Let me get us to this verse we very frequently quote.

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18)

God is not asking us to explain our sins and fallenness. He is simply calling us into repentance, promising to forgive us if we do so as we see in subsequent verses.

Allow me to wind this up by saying in summary that repentance, to be acceptable, presents the repentant at his most vulnerable, requiring only mercy.

It is that mercy that has any capacity of extending forgiveness.

Going it any other way is counterproductive as it worsens the pain the sin had created. It actually reopens the wounds someone had been trying to heal after your injury (many times knowing about your sin).

I am sure probably all of you have dealt with that fake repentance at one time or the other. I know very few will confess to being culprits in that fake repentance.

But what is wrong with examining our hearts afresh so that we can deal with whatever God shows us concerning our repentance(s)?

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139: 23, 24)