The Gift of Repentance Podcast Episode

It may be more helpful for us rather than thinking of buckling down and repenting by doing something as to think of letting go of control and allowing God to reorient us back. And again, that may be 180 degrees. Absolutely. Repenting is turning around, changing your mind. But it may be just a few degrees correction and ongoing.  

Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. Excellent as always, to have you along. I’ve got Chad Lehman here in the studio on the show. Welcome, Chad. Great to have you here. Thank you. Good to be with you. Brian Sutter is with me as well. Yeah. Glad to be here. Our topic today, brothers, is repentance. Let me give you a little bit of background and a little bit of the brain train that got me to this point. You know, here at ACCFS, we are really in the business of helping people. 

That looks like a variety of things, right? But certainly, deep human change is part of it. The poor thinking patterns we have require another way to think or maybe to change the way we think and at the core is the definition of repentance. Changing your mind, right? 

And so, yeah, that got me thinking about this idea of repentance and how core it is to human change, how core it is to human health and our posture and alignment with God. So, this very quickly gets in the deep end of the pool in terms of theology. I mean, repentance is a Bible word, and we would pull from the Bible more than anywhere for a frame of reference and context for repentance. 

And so I, I want to, I want to own that as well. And so, Chad, I’m glad that you’re here and let me do a brief introduction. Chad Lehman works on our Elder Teaching Resource team with a few other brothers, and we really benefit from the deep Bible work that your team does. And so, I thought before I get too deep and can’t tread, I should probably bring in some help. So, Chad, thanks for being here.  

Great to be with you and Brian. Certainly, the shallow end of the pool is not the case for you. Brian, you’ve been in the business of people change and people helping and I would imagine repentance has a part to do with that. Oh, sure. So anyway, that’s how we’ve gotten to this point. So, I’m really looking forward to this. Yeah, me too. Thanks both of you for that introduction with the biblical context. 

So, Chad, I’m going to turn to you right away and ask you to form up repentance in terms of a definition, maybe how we think about it. How do the Scriptures posture repentance? Start there. Yeah. Well, I’d go right back to the beginning in the garden, and I think of our core problem as humans is eating from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

And not only our propensity to do wrong and to choose wrong, but to actually reframe for ourselves and redefine good and evil. And this matters very much when we think about changing our mind. Repenting is the Greek word metanoia, which doesn’t matter to remember, except that we could think of it as an after knowledge. So, it’s something that’s after the fact. It is too late. It has that sense of being too late. We’ve found out, we’ve discovered that we’ve made the wrong choice and it’s too late. So just thinking about repentance is meaningless if you have not done wrong. Yes. Or doing a U-turn and correcting your course doesn’t make any sense unless you’re going in the wrong direction. 

The same type of thing. Right. And that it’s God-oriented, I think, is just super helpful as I make sense of the Scriptures to think about how repentance fits in. That first, maybe capital R time when we repent and we turn to God and cry out for help and admit that we’ve been wrong for maybe many years. And then, maybe a small R repentance where we realign ourselves with God. So, just thinking of it in terms of God-oriented instead of oriented around us.  

So, you’re really highlighting God’s place in repentance. He’s central. Yeah. Both in terms of orienting ourselves to him and in the fact that it’s his gift to us and his power. And so, understanding maybe in two phases, away from a thing and towards a thing and that being Christ or the Father, would be a nice way to hold repentance to movements in a sense. Yeah. Right. Think of it like a magnet, the power of the God who’s created us and knows what will make us truly thriving. 

I mean, we’re not talking about the Disney style of following your heart and just let it go. And there is a real sense where we’re created to be in God’s presence. And so, when we let go of control that there’s a magnet that swings us oriented toward God, and in fact it, it may be more helpful for us rather than thinking of buckling down and repenting by doing something rather than to think of letting go of control and allowing God to reorient us back. And again, that may be 180 degrees. Absolutely. Repenting is turning around, changing your mind. But it may be just a few degrees correction and ongoing. That’s really interesting letting go and finding the corrective work of the Holy Spirit. 

It was our usurping control that got us into the jam. So, letting that go is key. Brian, I would be glad for your perspective with both capital R, small R repentance, as Chad has brought about. But certainly, it brings itself to bear in the counseling room, right? Oh sure. And not in every situation. Right. What does it look like to walk people through repentance?  

I think a core aspect of it maybe is that our tendency of ourselves is to trust ourselves, to trust our thinking, to trust our emotions, to trust our desires. And when we do, we end up in the same place that Adam and Eve did. But if we can say, okay, wait, God is the definer of good. He is good. If we can turn and pursue him. In some places, that might be pretty natural and in other places it will be very unnatural. Who is God? What is he calling me to? What does he say is good? That tends to be a really foundational starting point. 

Would you say that this is a central effort in doing the good work that we all need to have, whether it’s emotional, mental, or relational work. Yeah. This brings itself to bear. Oh, I think so. If we think about what’s going to be good for me, and we start there, we end up in a bad place. But if we say, hey, what does God say is good? And I move towards that thing. That’s a good thing for me as well. Yeah, I love that word. Trust. And that’s not always a pleasant experience. So, we go back to eating the rotten fruit. The poisonous fruit, and just thinking of the fact that, oh, I realized too late that this is something I shouldn’t have done. 

It takes a great deal of humility to go back and admit that and say, you know, I think it’s too late to do anything about it. I really need help. But here it is, and each family has a different way of talking about. The analogy I’m about to make, when we were growing up, we called it throwing up. 

So, I apologize for that unsavory metaphor. But when we perhaps ate something that wasn’t good for us and we were laying on the couch with our stomachs rumbling and we were just miserable, we needed to trust our mom when she said, you know, you really just need to visit the bathroom. And you’ll feel better. Trust me, you’ll feel better. That’s not what we want to do. Right. We want to carry on, like you said, defining for ourselves, and we’re so used to writing the rules.  

And to just say. you know, it doesn’t seem like it’s what I want to do, but that’s what God says is right. So, I’m going to get up and head to the bathroom, okay? And that’s what God says is right. And so here, Romans two says, it’s the goodness of God that leads us to repentance. And so, a question I want to pose is, I think there is a caricature of repentance that we all shrink from and shudder. Right Matt, you need to repent. Right. I have an aversion to that. Right? And yet the Scriptures present the goodness of God as something that’s leading us. Your metaphor really brought that out. Say a little bit more about that, Chad. How is it the goodness of God? And maybe we should be framing repentance differently in our own lives. 

Right. Yeah. So, in my life, when I’ve had to work at something repeatedly and make attempts at getting a result, if you asked me, what does Chad believe about exercise you might benefit a little bit from sitting down with me and saying, Chad, what do you believe about exercise? 

And I could tell you something that is maybe mentally what I agree to, but you might be a lot better off just to look at my track record in the last month. Go on Strava and see how often Chad has actually worked out. Or how much has he actually run? That’s going to tell you more about what I believe about exercise. What does the record show? 

And so, this thing of repenting in a way brings that about. Fruit is, we don’t always get that right. Sometimes we are remorseful and there’s not much of a change that comes about. So, in my experience with repentance, is it good? It is very good and God is very gracious when you’re in that place where it’s like, here I am again. 

God, please help me. But his immense goodness to receive us in our worst possible condition is truly a gift. And that doesn’t fail. I mean, I’ve never known God to turn away a repentant heart in my own experience and in others. I really appreciate that. And going back to your initial definition of repentance as being regret for something that’s happened. For repentance to be pertinent, we’re not in a good place, but for God to be gracious and leading us, he must be there with us. 

Yeah. That’s a mile apart different view of God than him being in some distant place saying, all right, get your act together and win. Tell me when you’re done. Right. Yeah. And it also makes me think there are actually two Greek words that are often used for repentance and one of them is like Judas repenting. And so, he’s stuck there, I think, in sorrow, but that’s all. Whereas the other Greek word indicates there’s a combination of the sorrow and faith, so there’s the sorrow for the wrong. 

So, repentance is a painful thing, but then it moves us towards the goodness of God that we are relying on. We trust that he is as merciful as he says he is, that his work is sufficient. And then in time that hopefully brings about the fruit. And not that that’s always the outcome, but over time there’s more and more that we become changed beings by this process of sorrow that moves on into faith and trusting, which is such a hopeful picture in my mind. Yeah. And Bible scholars have noted that the word repent is often paired with believe. If we see one of those words by themselves, we can just fill in the blank and say, repent and believe. 

There is that initial feeling that I’ve done something that I need to change, but what is it that I’m going to swing towards? What is my belief? And so, the helpful change doesn’t always feel like that. Patience over perhaps a long period of time is a great help in repentance. 

It’s also paired with baptism, isn’t it? Yes. Repent and be baptized. Baptism is symbolizing death and resurrection. Right. You’ve got two movements there. You have a death and you have a resurrection.  You have death and you have life. In much the same way, repentance has that two movement inhale, exhale type of thing. Right. So that’s what we’re stepping into because I think sometimes, we can get just on the practical piece as you sit with individuals. One of the things I’ve noticed, it seems like you can get stuck on one or the other. And it needs both. 

If you don’t have both sides of the story, if you have the cross without the resurrection, you’re in trouble. That’s right. Worse than trouble. Right? Exactly. And for some of us, the way God’s knit us together, I think, is that you tend to have a propensity towards one or the other. 

And so, one of those might take more effort and more cognitive work and support from others. But we need both sides of that. So, let’s take each of those movements one at a time. What would be some of the benchmarks or the artifacts that would go along? Let’s do the death first. The cross, the exhale. What would be a part that would help us think through whether it’s capital R or lowercase R? I like how you said that. What do I need to think about there? Well, I think at one level is just being able to have a good sense of what God has defined as good and just being on the lookout for that. 

I mean, because even just the other day I was noticing in my prayer, like one of my frequent prayers is I want to be thankful. And that’s a good prayer. And I noticed in the midst of praying that I would be a thankful person, I thought I had spent the last hour being very unthankful. 

And so, if that doesn’t register, then we miss it. That’s what happens with David apart from the Prophet Nathan. That’s what happens with Peter in denying Christ. Until he had met eyes with Jesus, he was not aware of the sin, of the death. But once it came to awareness, that was huge. Those are huge important things that we often miss. There has to be a marker that says we’ve gone too far, or we have transgressed. Back to your point, Chad, that you made early on about regret. Yeah. And I want to highlight what you said about just that sense of having been very unthankful and to recognize that as the goodness of God leading us to repentance. 

And I think about what the opposite of repentance is. So, when we’re aware that we’re in a bad spot, we could justify ourselves. That’s perhaps what you could have been tempted to do, Brian, is say, I’ve been unthankful. No, well, you know, I really haven’t been that unthankful, or it’s not so bad and I might carry on with this attitude. And so, the ability for us to continually recognize our weakness I think is where it can become part of our daily rhythm to say, I don’t want to have sin show up on my calendar and maybe that’s where we get a little nervous as a Christian saying that I repent daily. 

That comes awfully close to saying, does that mean you plan to sin daily? But as we’re all transparent before God. We say when we look, not on our calendar, but on our diary or in our journals, we find sin. And so, when we just recognize that when that happens, when I have that feeling of being in a bad spot here to welcome that and say, yeah, let’s just accept that and not whitewash it or sugarcoat it or turn away from it. 

That would be to justify ourselves and what I’m hearing here is a brutal, raw honesty. And I’m hearing confession and God is right there with us in that moment, sitting with us in that confession. And also lamenting with us. Good. Yeah. See, I think those are helpful benchmarks, right, yeah, that help us see what this movement of the cross is in repentance. Anything else that comes to mind? I think it aligns with what’s already been said, but just that I think we live in a world today that is geared towards telling me what I think and believe is right. 

And so, exposing ourselves to something that would say the opposite, like the Scriptures, is fundamental, but to see it as such, if we read the Scriptures as finding ways to justify or defend ourselves, we’ve moved out of a place of repentance into wanting to make sure I’m okay in an unbiblical sort of way. 

So, in order to be honest, a prerequisite for that honesty to be any good, it needs to be based on truth. Yeah. And you’re saying that truth source is the Scriptures? Yes. And paying attention when we’re there. That’s good. Yeah. So now let’s go to the resurrection side of the movement of repentance. 

Yeah. What would be some of the artifacts of that then? Yeah, I think the resurrection is just this sense that if we go on in meaningless repentance, to go back to my metaphor, we go back to throwing up every day and that is our practice of eating and then bringing it back up. That’s not a very changing experience doing that. 

I mean, that’s not what we’re talking about here, falling into those patterns and if there’s to be good repentance that will bring a change that is really helping us and causing us to thrive. So we’re talking about in some level, good works. I mean, it sounds a little scary to say, okay, now it’s about me and my good works again. 

But if repentance truly is having its effect, and again, patience, we may be talking about years, but to have its good effect, it will bring about a visible change. There’s no sense in the Christian doctrine for repentance that doesn’t affect us. There’s no sense of following Christ and not being made more like him in his image. 

But I think there’s a sense that, again, if we go back to it’s about God, it’s about us. Even if it’s only a few small degrees, we’re going to reorient every day. And allow that to align ourselves with God, we agree with his Word, it’s about us aligning ourselves with his plan, his goodness for us. 

I really like that phrase, agreeing with God and coming to that place of agreement is really the fruit of repentance, which always will make a difference. And so, you know, for example, if I really agree, forgive me for the political analogy, but if a person really agrees with candidate A and yet they vote for candidate B, we’ve got no context for that. 

You really agree with candidate A, but you vote for candidate B, like nobody does that, right? I don’t think one person on the planet has done that because we don’t treat our agreement like that. What would it look like if I agreed with God? Now you take an issue, many issues. 

What if it I really agreed with God in the way that he views me? Yeah. What if I really agreed with God on the way I should treat my family? What if I really agreed with God on how I should love my spouse? What if I really agreed with him? Now I can see that I’ve got lots of refinement in my agreement with God, right? Yeah, that’s good. And I think on that side of it, we’re talking about the resurrection. To be able to trust what he said has been done there and just to spend time agreeing with that and saying, oh, okay. Because I think, again in the counseling office, there are so many that would say, yes, I agree. 

God has done that. Or that’s who he is or that’s what he has done for someone else. But the thought of when that comes personal, that’s where it tends to get pretty tricky. Like, wait a second. I don’t know how that can be, but that’s where we tend to agree with our emotional experience more than agreeing with this is what he said right here. We can read it together. 

And trusting that and moving forward in that agreement. And that is hard work, but that’s glorious work. So, that’s interesting. You mentioned in the counseling room on the resurrection side of the equation. So the fruits are sometimes the difficulty for someone to agree with God. 

And do you find that it’s sometimes when we get something so good and so life-giving as forgiveness and repentance that we’re a little bit untrusting about that. Oh, for sure. And why is that? Yeah, well I think the gospel doesn’t operate on the same operational level that everything else in life seems to. You know, you get what you deserve. 

That is the way we tend to see life and the gospel just doesn’t work that way. So, then for some of us at least, we’re really skeptical. So, wait a second, I’m supposed to believe and then I’m granted forgiveness. You’re given righteousness, that’s not your own. Like how can that be? I don’t deserve it. Right, exactly. You don’t. But that’s part of agreeing and trusting and believing in what’s been said. No one’s trying to say that you’re good enough. If that’s our goal, we’ve moved away from repentance into a whole different realm. 

Let’s just acknowledge that and note that. I really like how you set this up, Chad, with capital R and lowercase R repentance, and I think we’re talking about human change in a lot of different ways. Right. Which I think is really helpful. But I like this death and resurrection metaphor. 

Would you say, then, that we can get better at this? That’s my question. I don’t even know sometimes is that even a Christian question? Can we get better at this? Because, boy, I hope the answer is yes and I hope I can do it. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. 

And I think this is one of those examples, at least in my opinion, where the answer is yes and also no, in the sense that we would say we cannot do this apart from the Spirit’s work. So, it has to be the Spirit that is getting us better at this. And yes, we can get better at it even if we switch the context to helping my 10-year-old repent. 

I think I’m helping her get better at repentance. But is that a different thing that we’re talking about here? I don’t know exactly. By teaching her the motions. Right. The, I’m sorry. And heart state, you know? Yes. Like, you have not done the death part of this correctly, right? Yeah. Saying, sorry, but I don’t think that’s actually, sorry. 

This is what I think that might look like. Or, hey, this is the fruit that we would expect over time. Yeah. Or, hey, now let’s move on. Nobody’s mad anymore. Let’s celebrate. We’re on the other side of it now. Yeah. I think we’re, okay. Let’s go. Let’s walk forward in that. Like there’s lots of exercising that, I think. 

She will get better, has gotten better. So, it leads me to believe that yes, but also like this is something the Spirit brings up too. And he is the generator and operator behind the scenes too. Yeah. I think getting better at repentance perhaps is just skipping all of the calculus that we do as was I justified? 

And just skip all of that and acknowledge that we’re going to pull up short and say I was not justified. Yeah, let’s just skip all of that calculus that we do and say I’m here in this spot again, God, where I don’t measure up to Jesus Christ. And I see how he would’ve handled this situation so much better through his words and through his loving actions and through his righteousness. 

And just starting from the point of, I’m okay that’s where I’m at. Yeah. In a sense that God sees me there as well and he’s going to bring improvement in time. And I hear humility. And so, maybe this growth may be part of the maturation of this discipline, if we want to call it that, really runs along some of the same lines as humility, for which we also see a two-part movement in the Scriptures. 

Humble yourself and he will lift you up, right? So, we see that death and resurrection even in walking in humility. Let’s take a stab at humility then. How would you define humility, Chad, in a godward way? Yeah. Humility, I would say, is just an honest assessment of where we’re at. Neither too high nor too low, and I think to get better at repentance, we spend time in the Word to know the heart of God for us and his intentions for us that allow us to honestly and quickly and openly assess this is where I’m at. 

Yeah, and I think that’s exciting even in this place of repentance. You know, the truth is a safe place for us to be in the sense that there’s hope and there’s security. Whereas sometimes it’s scary too and unpleasant to come face to face with the truth. Yes, I was just thinking that I’m afraid of the truth about myself. 

Yeah. Okay. So, Brian, speak into that lots of us are afraid of the truth about ourselves. And now what? Yeah. Well, I think our human tendency is to move into this place of needing to hide because if anybody knows it’s going to be bad news. But rather to say no, the one who knows me better than I know myself already knows and he says, I’m for you. Yeah, I want reconciliation. I want closeness to you. Even though I can see all of that, I know all of that. And if we as humans can come to terms with that, agree with him on that, trust him in that opportunity for change and freedom.  

All of that, I think, comes as a possibility more so when we can come and just say, okay, you’re a safe place for me to turn because you know my ugliness Yeah. And still are for me Brian, repentance has a long history in counseling. Sure. I mean, think of the 12 steps, for example. Yeah. In alcohol and addiction. Yeah, it has. And I’ve heard it said that there’s not a judge in the United States that doesn’t respect the 12-step plan for an addict. Okay. Yeah. But it’s very embedded in Scripture, isn’t it? 

Oh, yeah. I mean the 12-step plan was created by believers and there are lots of biblical principles all the way through it. And I think that one of the things that gets me really excited about Christian mental health. We have such an amazing opportunity, I think. That, whereas the secular approach is don’t repent. That’s not what you want. Guilt is bad. Let’s get rid of those things and figure out other pathways. But we know that that’s key. That’s how we’ve been created, that we need something outside of ourselves to fix our problem. 

And that’s repentance. That’s being able to turn to God. They’re seeking an agreement in a different place. Yes. Yeah. And an agreement that won’t bring ultimate life. Good. I appreciate that. What I’m hearing you say, I think, is that there’s great hope in repentance. And for us to leave a part of the problem outside of repentance is for it not to be brought under the healing.  

I think Scripture would bear that out. Whatever remains self-justified, whatever remains in our stubborn arrogance against God, that piece of fruit remains in our stomach and it’s poisonous and it’s harmful to us. It remains outside of the healing. So, the greater the surrender, the greater the hope. You know, we exhale poison and we inhale life, don’t we? That’s just the pattern. Wow, it’s powerful. We can’t live without it. And so we have a frequency in our bodies, that has this death and resurrection, baptism and rising and maybe that’s an allusion to another rhythm that we have. And that is turning from disagreement with God to agreement with God in all of the places where that exists. So this has been helpful. I really, really appreciate it. Bless you, each one. Thank you each one for listening. It is the goodness of God that has made it this way and for him.