Repentance and Forgiveness

Preface

Sin is essentially the creation of distance and disunity where there had been closeness and unity. It is the fracturing of relationships. In the catechism of our denomination, there is an implicit assumption that the human being has four fundamental relationships: with God, with other people, with the created world, and with herself (if in fact it makes any sense to speak of a relationship with yourself). All those relationships are broken to some degree by sin. We are out of harmony with God, and, consequently, with other people, and with the world at large. And we are fractured within ourselves, the principal sign of which, arguably, is our divided will. Wretched man that I am! exclaimed the Apostle, contemplating his failure to do what he wanted to do and his doing that which he did not want to do. Or one thinks of Augustine beseeching the Lord to unite his fractured self, to give him a whole will, and thus, in particular, to give him chastity . . . but not yet!

To restore closeness and unity, to bring reconciliation, is the heart of Christianity. It is the cosmic business of the incarnation, the cross, and the exaltation of Christ: that all people be drawn to God, and that it be possible for all people to be drawn to God, and thus for the brokenness in all its dimensions to be overcome. But to be reconciled is not a matter of the snapping of the divine fingers. It is not, for us as doers or as thinkers, a simple matter. It is in fact a call, a summons to repent and to be forgiven, and then, concomitantly, to forgive. And that is one reason why, instead of calling the conference where these essays originated one on, simply, Reconciliation, we were more specific and called it Repentance and Forgiveness.

We gathered to reexamine these fundamental Christian claims, so easily stated, so easily relegated to the background noise of our lives, so easily ignored, and yet so difficultly plumbed. It is a good thing, a sort of public witness, for Christians to come together around a subject that, one would think, is so obvious. This volume says, in effect, that Christians need, today as perhaps always, to return to their roots, to put their hands again on the heart of Christ, repentance and forgiveness.

Matthew E. Burdette

Victor Lee Austin

1

Repentance and Forgiveness: Biblical Foundations

Stephen Westerholm

Repentance and forgiveness in the Bible is a huge topic, far beyond anything that can be covered in one paper; so let’s begin by making the topic even bigger. I want to begin with a brief look at the general framework within Scripture for its summons to repentance, then look at some implications of that framework for our topic. After that I want us to think briefly about a curious question indirectly but importantly related to our topic: Does God repent? Then we’ll get to the nitty-gritty: specific texts, first in the Old Testament, then in the New, in which our theme plays a significant role.

The Framework of Scripture’s Summons to Repentance

Before we begin our look at repentance and forgiveness in Scripture, something should be said about the framework within which the summons to repentance has its necessary place. I hope not to labor the obvious; I do want to make sure that the obvious is not overlooked. Before the cosmos came into being, before (if you will allow the expression) time itself had begun, there was God: Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God (Ps 90:2).¹ But in the beginning of time as we know it, God created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1). And God created humankind in his image (Gen 1:27, NRSV) to exercise dominion over the earth (Gen 1:28; cf. Ps 115:16) and to enjoy both its goodness and fellowship with its Creator (Gen 2:9, 16; 3:8), while acknowledging, through obedience to a single command, their place as created beings and mere recipients of all that is good (Gen 2:17). That, sufficiently for our purposes, takes us through Genesis 1 and 2.

So we are only as far as chapter 3 of the Bible’s 1189 chapters (or, if you prefer, 1334 chapters) when all this is spoiled; and the story of the rest of the Bible is about how God puts things right again. It is not right that human beings—made by God in God’s image, their every breath and heartbeat dependent upon God, their every good a gift from God—should refuse to acknowledge God or render God due honor and thanks. This fundamental sin, this capital S Sin, lies at the root of all particular sins, all small s sins, since those who refuse to acknowledge their Creator go on to express that refusal by transgressing the created order as well. Paul spells out the process in the first chapter of Romans. Although [people] knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. . . . Therefore God gave them up to sins against nature itself. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct. They were filled with all manner of wickedness—and Paul proceeds with a list of small s sins: full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, and so on (Rom 1:18–32).

In short, sin is not simply wrongdoing that calls for punishment; sin is rooted in an embraced falsehood that cannot be sustained. It is the attempt to live without God, though God is the source and sustainer of all life. It is the attempt to live as though God did not exist—when all our contingent existences are derived from, and dependent on, his necessary existence: All that borrows life from Thee is ever in Thy care (Isaac Watts). If God in his mercy sustains life-denying life for a time, it remains the case that life-denying life cannot go on forever. The day will come when the God by whom we live will no longer be denied, when the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea (Hab 2:14).

By myself I have sworn,

from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness

a word that shall not return:

"To me every knee shall bow,

every tongue shall swear."

Only in the LORD, it shall be said of me,

are righteousness and strength;

to him shall come and be ashamed,

all who were incensed against him. (Isa

45

:

23

–

24

)

Put differently: If God is all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful, we can explain the temporary existence of evil by saying that God saw fit to make creatures with minds and wills of their own, creatures who then misused the gifts they were given. What remains inconceivable, in a universe created by an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God, is that God’s purposes should finally be frustrated, that evil should have the last word: rather, at some point, God in his goodness, wisdom, and power will see to it that goodness, beauty, and truth prevail, and that all that is evil, deforming, and false is done away. However we understand Scripture’s various depictions of how that transformation will take place, the transformation itself is inevitable.

So far, then, the general framework for Scripture’s summons to repentance.

Implications of the Framework

Four implications critical to our subject may be drawn from the general framework I have just outlined. First, repentance has its place, its necessary place, throughout the whole period from the sin of Adam and Eve until the day when God’s name is universally hallowed, his kingdom come, and his will done on earth as it is in heaven. It is true that BC, in the period before the coming of Christ, the summons to repentance was generally directed to the people of Israel, the people God had chosen for himself and for his redemptive purposes. Paul in Athens, in Acts 17, can speak of God overlooking the times of [pagan] ignorance, though he now commands all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30). In Lystra, in Acts 14, Paul speaks of how God in past generations . . . allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways, though he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good and gave [them] from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, satisfying [their] hearts with food and gladness (Acts 14:16–17). Yet even BC, even before Christ, the heathen people of Nineveh were delivered from prophesied doom when, at the preaching of Jonah, they repented of their evil (John 3:1–10; Matt 12:41). To Israel before Christ, God sent all [his] servants the prophets, sending them persistently, saying, ‘Turn now every one of you from his evil way, and amend your doings, and do not go after other gods to serve them, and then you shall dwell in the land which I gave to you and your fathers’ (Jer 35:15). That was BC, before Christ. In the present age, as we have seen, God commands everyone everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30). God has exalted Christ to his own right hand to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins: so Acts 5:31. A few chapters later on, the Jerusalem saints, to their surprise, come to recognize that to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life (Acts 11:18). That God has granted repentance suggests to some that repentance, like faith, is a gift given the elect by irresistible divine grace; but since, according to the narrative of Acts, Israel largely proved resistant, the divine gift must be that of the possibility, the invitation, the opportunity to repent. That possibility, that invitation, that opportunity is now extended to all, Israel and the gentiles alike—for the time being. The heavens must receive Christ until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old; in the meantime, summons is given to repent and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out (Acts 3:19–21).

Many have labeled the present age the age of grace. It is that, to be sure: Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation (2 Cor 6:2). But we could designate it equally well the age of repentance. Scripture makes it clear that God allows the anomaly of a world rebelling against its Maker precisely in order to give opportunity to repent. Jesus speaks in a parable of a barren fig tree spared for yet another year in the hope that it may yet bear fruit (Luke 13:6–9); Israel’s repentance is in view. Paul writes that God’s kindness and forbearance and patience are meant to lead [sinners] to repentance (Rom 2:4). Second Peter explains the apparent delay of the day of the Lord in similar terms: The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance (2 Pet 3:9).

This first, then: the present age—and, indeed, the whole period from Adam until the eschaton—is the age of repentance: the age where repentance is needed, called for, and still a possibility.

A second implication that follows from the general framework I described above is that true repentance necessarily involves a return to, and acknowledgment of, the God against whom all small s sins are ultimately committed, and against whom capital S Sin, the refusal to acknowledge God, is essentially directed. Individuals, groups, institutions, corporations, and societies all have cause for repentance. They may find it self-servingly prudent or even a matter of conscience to confess wrongs done to others and to speak the language of repentance. But unless God is acknowledged as offended by our sins, and unless repentance includes a turning from sin to God in prayers for mercy and a commitment to obey and trust God, then repentance, as Scripture speaks of repentance, has not taken place. The fundamental Sin has not been addressed. The message Paul brought to Jews and Gentiles alike was one of "repentance to God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21). He declared first to those at Damascus, then at Jerusalem and throughout all the country of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and perform deeds worthy of their repentance" (Acts 26:20).