What is repentance?

In upcoming posts I shall show how God responds to the believer – all the blessings he showered upon you when you believed; but before that, there’s one more aspect to what’s involved in opening your heart to Christ in faith: you also make a decision to repent. This decision may or may not have been accentuated in your thinking, but it is part of the Christian commitment of faith and conversion as announced by the first apostles: “Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3.19).

Coming to Christ involves and leads to a profound change of life. We come to him for forgiveness because we are sinners. We will consider later what that forgiveness is, as it is important to understand it. But it is obviously illogical to expect to receive forgiveness of our sins while we continue to sin as much as we want! We must play fair! “Sin no more” was Jesus’ way of putting it (John 5.14, 8.11).

So as believers ask Christ to save and forgive them, they also commit to repenting, which means turning away from sin, to follow Jesus and obey his teaching.

It is good, wise, and proper that you should tell the Lord in prayer that this is indeed your decision; you will need (and obtain) his help to overcome the pull of sin that we all feel.

Repentance is involved therefore in your decision to follow Jesus. It means taking a stand against all evil in your life. It may well take time for you to understand that you are habitually falling into sins of thought and desire, but the amazing and wonderful thing about receiving Christ in your heart is that his Spirit begins to pin-point those areas, habits, sinful reactions, and deeds that you are used to doing without your conscience complaining. But the new presence of Jesus within you alerts you when you do things that displease him. This means that new converts, to their surprise find all of a sudden that they are not as good as they thought they were. This can be disconcerting, but don’t worry – it’s quite normal. It is how God begins (and will continue) to clean up your life.

So initial repentance at conversion must be followed by regular self-checking and confessing to God and repenting before him of any sin you may become conscious of having committed. The more conscientious and honest you are in your heart before God, the better your life as a Christian will proceed. I can scarcely emphasise that enough!

You don’t have to confess all the sins of your past life, because conversion wipes them all away: they are “blotted out” (Acts 3.19). But it is helpful to realise that you are called now to a new life.

“Sin no more” is, of course, an absolute high standard, and no Christian reaches it perfectly in this life. The important thing is that our heart’s commitment is henceforth not to sin, but rather to live a life that Jesus would approve of. And that’s a whole life-long programme!

We do, however, benefit from God’s gracious help. He gives us the Holy Spirit when we receive Christ by faith. Jesus comes to indwell us by his Spirit. The Holy Spirit, the third member of the divine Trinity, is the Spirit of Christ and it is thanks to his ministry in us that we are changed to become more like Jesus.

So, welcome to your new life, learning to follow Jesus and “walking according to the Spirit” (Galatians 5.16).

Clive Every-Clayton

June 24, 2024 0

What is this new Life in Christ?

The Bible says we are to welcome those who are not yet strong in the faith, and as a mature believer I would welcome you if you are starting out as a Jesus-follower. New believers require help in reorienting their lives, both to understand what it’s all about, and to discover the steps towards spiritual growth.

A new believer, returning into her habitual milieu, was asked after a while, “What’s happened to you?” She didn’t need to say she had turned to Jesus, but it became evident to her friends by a certain joy and peace that now characterised her life. But how would she – or you – answer that question: what’s happened to you?

Well, the first thing that I trust has happened to you is that You have heard the good news of Jesus.

Whether you heard it on the internet, in a local meeting, or read it in a book, you have come to understand that “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1.15). This is the essence of the Good News (which is what the word “Gospel” means). It is good news because we are all to some extent sinners and therefore we all need to be “saved”.

When Jesus’ mother Mary was still a virgin, Jesus’ arrival by a miraculous birth was announced to Mary by an angel. Joseph, Mary’s fiancé, was stunned and confused by the news, until he too had an angelic visitation. An angel appeared to him in a dream, explaining that it was God’s miraculous work that had made Mary pregnant: “she will give birth to a son,” said the angel of God, “and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1.20-21).

Jesus came, therefore, to save people from their sins. When you heard this message, you began to understand that in God’s sight you were in the category of “sinner”. Probably this was quite a humbling experience – no-one likes to be called a sinner; but the Bible is clear: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3.23). None of us is perfect as we should be; we all have a bad conscience and know we have done wrong.

Not only that, but you were made to realise that you were in a serious predicament before a holy and just God. You needed his forgiveness. Then you heard the Good News, the essence of what the apostles preached: “Christ died for our sins… and was raised from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). Though our sins deserved God’s just punishment, Jesus stood in for us and bore that penalty by dying “for our sins” on the cross. This is the message that Jesus wants diffused throughout the world: “preach the Good News to all creation”, he said, adding, “Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved” (Mark 16.15-16).

As you heard this message, you were encouraged to turn to the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. You opened your heart to him in prayer and faith, calling on him to save you. You put your trust in Jesus and he welcomed you as one of his followers, his “disciples”; this essentially means a learner, an apprentice in the art of good living. Your new life had begun, developing into a process of spiritual growth.

At Jesus’ school there is a lot to learn: spiritual growth, like physical growth, takes time; the important thing for you today is to say to yourself, the process has begun.

Clive Every-Clayton

June 24, 2024 0

Blog new orientation

Up until now on authentichopeforanswers.com I have sought to enlighten those in the darkness of secular materialistic thinking, to save them from their incipient hopelessness by pointing to the only True Source of valid, true, fulfilling answers – the One and only true living God, revealed in Jesus Christ. I thank those who have been following me and I hope you have found my writing helpful.

I have become aware of what seems to be a cultural movement away from empty atheistic answers; thinkers these days want something more serious and solid on which they can build their lives. I hope my posts add a small contribution to this fresh hunger for Truth to satisfy the heart as well as the mind.

Glen Scrivener comments on this new openness to the Christian worldview, that people are more open to wanting to check out the Bible, find out more about Jesus, and some have started attending church. A friend locally has typified that movement from discontent with superficial answers to grasping the life-giving truth of the biblical Story, and it makes me think and hope that out there in the blog-reading world there may be others who, having found the Christian answer more satisfying, desire to become followers of Jesus.

I want for some time to come to reorient this blog therefore, so as to help such new believers who may or may not have much background knowledge of biblical things. Having turned to pray to Jesus for light and salvation, these believers have set out on a new path; but for many it is unknown territory. There is a lot to learn as a new believer, and it takes time to assimilate all the blessing we receive through faith in Christ and what exactly is the life that Jesus calls us to when we trust in him.

As I give thought to the forthcoming posts, I envisage maintaining the orientation of giving authentic answers, but no longer so much addressing those still in the mists of vain relativistic ideas and scientific materialism; rather I will seek to deal with the questions of those who set out on the new path of faith in Jesus. I will seek to answer the key question a new believer might ask: “What exactly is the new life in Christ?” I will share advice that helped me as a young believer, and some essential truths revealed in the Bible that will help the Jesus-follower to grow both in faith and in living as a child of God.

To live in harmonious relationship with God, as I have often mentioned in previous blogs, is the real purpose of our existence. To find this is to enter into the fulfilling life that God envisaged for us in his love when he created us. While the mass of humankind drifts far away from such a relationship, those who hear Jesus’ call, “Follow me” and respond with repentance and trust in the Saviour, start out on a life where at last they begin to find and fulfil the meaning and purpose of our lives.

St Augustine said it well long ago in a prayer in his “Confessions”: “Lord, You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in You”. Jesus invites everyone to come to him and learn of him, promising that rest of soul (Matthew 11.28-30). Through his saving work, and through faith in him, believers experience that rest of soul; they will enjoy it and develop it as they learn to walk with Jesus day by day.

Clive Every-Clayton

June 24, 2024 0