When I was a kid I thought some pretty ridiculous things about life and the universe and the way things work:
- Blood is sometimes blue and sometimes red.
- Not wearing a hat in winter is how you catch a cold.
- The sun goes around the earth (Hey, even super smart scientists used to believe that!).
- There’s monsters under my bed and/or in my closet and/or in our basement.
As grown-ups we still hold wrong ideas. Spiritual ideas we think are true but are actually not what the Bible teaches.
- God helps those who help themselves. (Romans 5:6-8; Psalm 46:1).
- Follow your heart. (Jeremiah 17:9; Proverbs 3:5-6).
- Good people go to heaven. (Ephesians 2:8-9).
- What goes around comes around. (Galatians 6:7-8; Romans 12:19).
We have wrong ideas about God: About His justice, His power, His wisdom, and His will. We have wrong ideas about ourselves: About our basic decency, our good intentions, our perfect plans.
When the Bible tells people to repent, what it means is, “You’ve been wrong. Change your thinking.” Stop thinking the wrong things and start thinking the right things.
Christians believe that the Bible teaches what those right things are. Even if we don’t understand it or like it. We have faith. We trust. We believe.
And when we discover through the Bible that we’ve been wrong, we ought to admit it. Admit our ideas have been wrong. How we’ve been living has been wrong. What we’ve been saying, feeling, watching, consuming, reading, believing, teaching has been wrong.
That’s when we need the good news of the gospel most of all.
“The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.” (Tim Keller. The Reason for God).
Repentance is hard work. It requires faith to believe the Word of God over our own feelings and convictions. It requires courage to stop assuming we know best and examine what the Bible actually teaches. It requires humility to admit when we’ve been wrong and to choose to turn and believe the good news again and again.
This Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, a 40 day period leading up to our celebration of the resurrection on Easter Sunday. It’s traditionally a time of penitence. What a great time to examine our assumptions and philosophies and hold them up to the light of God’s word and, if needed, repent.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand;; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:14-15