Sins, Sin, And the Only Way to Redemption, Part 2

Getting the Real Point of Ash Wednesday and Lent              

                There is a sense in which God’s ultimate goal is not to deprive us, but rather to replace our current state with something far greater.  Yet in order to experience His superior life, we must let go of our old, sinful, one; not piecemeal, but by renouncing it altogether (Mark 8:33-35, John 12:24).  You may notice that these verses specify our need to indeed “die” (a reality I will further address).  Since how-ever, these words were spoken before His death, Jesus was using a metaphor that was yet to be fully unveiled.  Yet beginning soon after with three successive events: 1) His resurrection from the dead at Easter, 2) His Ascension into heaven forty days after that, and 3) on the Day of Pentecost ten days later still; now that He returned to earth in a transformed manner, Jesus comes NOW to dwell spiritually in the lives of all who receive Him (Revelation 3:20, John 1:12).  Put another way, in the Four Gospels, Jesus “in the days of His flesh” (Hebrews 5:7) related to everyone in a localized manner, while the New Testament (NT) Epistles by contrast speaks of Jesus – in terms of His relationship with us – in a spiritual manner.  Notice that the uniting point of the Gospel’s is God’s giving-ness in Jesus Christ!  Consider also that God will not do His work along side us, but (Praise the LORD!) only by Himself in and through us.  So Jesus’ prior calling disciples to “come after” Him (Mark 8:34) is now replaced with the new concept of our yielding the throne of our hearts in surrender to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.  The single best place in the New Testament to encounter this teaching is in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans chapter 6, where he lays out our relationship with the living Christ in light of our baptism into Him.  In addition to the word “into” (eis Gk – 6:3) in service of this reality, Paul also employs the words, “crucified with” (6:6), and “united with (6:5),” which, I add, are words in the passive form, with God as subject.  So these truths share the common theme that Holy Baptism is a work of God upon our lives in a sacramental sense. 

On the other hand, this is not to say that we have no choices to make in this matter.  Notice that several of St. Paul’s summary statements are both in the imperative mood: “So you must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (6:11), and “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions” (6:12).  Since God created us with free-will, He has conse-quently restrained His capacity to force us to obey His will.  At the same time, however, ask yourself who ch. 6 identifies as the saving agent.  Although the text is not explicit, the answer is “God the Father” through the death and resurrection of “Christ Jesus,” His Son (6:3-6).  In summary this means our singular choice pertains to whether or not we receive Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:6) as both our Savior from Sin and as the Lord of our life.  Anything short of this measure  (temporarily renouncing certain pet pleasures for a season, going to church, claiming to be less-sinful than our neighbors, etc.) misses out entirely on God’s purposes for our lives (Romans 3:23a).  The word translated “repent” in the NT (metanoia GK) means having your mind changed.  The word translated “confess” (homo-legoumena Gk) likewise literally means to agree with God both that we are sinners and that He is the rightful Lord of our lives.  To “repent” does not mean, as popularly imagined, that we force our lives to be moral (we can’t!); neither does it demand tear-filled groveling.  What it does entail is the total surrender of our lives to Christ by agreeing that we need His salvation.  Failing to do so conveys a denial both of His claims and the cost that He paid to redeem us back to Himself in salvation.  Finally, since it was out of His love (John 3:16) and good-will (Romans 8:31-32) that He saved us,, we can be assured that surrendering our life to Him is no losing proposition at all; but rather unspeakable gain!  Why then settle for renouncing a single pleasure as our chief goal in the Season of Lent?  Of course confronting our personal vises is has some importance.  Yet it fades in importance when contrasted with “the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ [our] Lord” (Philippians 3:8), who not only saves us but will also make us new (2 Corinthians 5:17).