“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
1 John 1:5-9 ESV
(In case you’re just joining us this week and haven’t yet read part one, feel free to catch up here)
Last week we talked about the practice of repentance and the choice it is to turn from sin and turn back to God. This week, I want to kick things off with a simple question- Why do we need to repent? As we shared last week, repentance is our way of acknowledging what we have done wrong by turning away from God and instead turns us back to him. After we have turned away we have two choices
- Keep going in our sin OR
- Acknowledge our sin, repent, and come back to Him
Repentance turns us from continuing in one direction and instead turns us back to God. Repentance is worth it, because it means restoration to the greatest relationship we’ll ever have. It’s a lifestyle of restoration in the face of rebellion.
The real hero of the story is not us because we have decided to acknowledge our sin, the real hero to focus on is the character of our loving Father, the completed work of our Savior, and the Holy Spirit, our faithful counselor. Take a moment to read through the passage (above) from 1st John. I want us to really grab a hold of two essential things:
- All of us sin
- We are forgiven when we repent. Every. time.
If you’ll recall from last week’s post, I was a bit of a childhood rebel when it came to name calling and the local riffraff. More importantly I disobeyed what my Mom asked me to do, and it jeopardized my safety and the safety of my family. Just as our sin puts us in danger of disconnecting from the Father, repentance restores connection. I don’t simply want to remind us of our choices, but the goodness of God that he calls us back to himself. He longs for us, he wants relationship with us, and the cost of our sin demanded a price we were unable to pay. Because of Jesus, we have open access to the Father and restored relationship with him.
The goodness of God is that he is always reaching, always willing and always longing for relationship with us. Think about it like this: if we’re talking to our best friend on the phone, sin severs the conversation by hanging up. Do we still have access to our friend even though we’re disconnected? Yes. Are we still besties even though the call ended? Absolutely. Do we want to call back so that we restore our access? You bet!
Instead of banking on and focusing on our behavior, it’s of greater importance to focus on the goodness of God. Not only does he hear us, but he loves us and repentance restores the connection every time. He hears us every time. He forgives us every time. There is nothing we can do apart from God, and with God he wants to draw us into a deeper relationship with his heart. As we learn, grow and yield to the authority of Jesus in our lives, we embrace repentance to remind us we’re continually called to lay down things that impede our connection to God, and cultivate things that help it.
May we all embrace the heart of repentance to lead us deeper in our walk with Him.
So much love,
Joy