Rabbi’s Reflections – Sunday, November 10, 2024
Shavuah Tov,
“The Grace of Repentance-Part 3”
By Jerry Miller
“Or do you belittle the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience—not realizing that God’s kindness leads you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4, TLV)
I want to continue today in our consideration of the crucial concept of repentance. As I shared with you last time, repentance involves more than simply apologizing to God for our sins. Rather, repentance involves a turning from our own ways and an embracing of God’s ways. Remember, a transformed life is our goal. When we recognize that our ways have fallen short of God’s glory, we realize that a whole new way of living is necessary. We don’t just get forgiven, while remaining in the old realm of darkness. We’ve been transplanted spiritually into a new realm—a new life. Thus, repentance—turning from our ways to God’s ways—is necessary for us so we can fully enter into the new life into which God invites us through Yeshua. To provide an example, let me share with you from my own experience.
Growing up in a Reform Jewish family, I was taught that Jesus is for the Gentiles and not for us as Jews. I just assumed this was true until I was 24, at which time, I began to wonder about whether God truly existed. To make a long story short, as I was searching to know the truth about God, a friend of mine who had “found God” since our college days, gave me some material to read. I did not know what he believed, but I saw his life change. The book he gave me showed how Yeshua had fulfilled Messianic prophecy from the Hebrew Scriptures, and when I finished the book, I concluded that Jesus is indeed the promised Messiah for Jew and Gentile alike. At the end of the book, there was a sample prayer for asking Yeshua into one’s life, and I prayed that prayer. I believe that moment marked the beginning of my salvation experience. However, by that time, my friend who gave me the book had moved from area, and I didn’t know what to do with my newly found belief. Meanwhile, my friend had asked some people to “check up” on me after a few weeks, so they called and invited me to a Friday night service at Beth Messiah, a Messianic congregation not far from where I lived. I had no idea what a “Messianic congregation” was even about, but I went with them, wondering if this might be what I had come to believe.
What happened that night impacted me powerfully. The service reached the point of the rabbi giving the sermon, and I found myself riveted to every word. He talked about Yeshua, and His call for any who would follow Him to live from the place of whole-hearted commitment to the Lord. Hearing the message, I was totally convicted. Yes, I had prayed the prayer to receive Yeshua weeks earlier, but after having merely believed this message about Yeshua, now I was experiencing true conviction by the Holy Spirit. A month earlier, I had come to believe about Yeshua, because I came to an intellectual conclusion that He truly is the Messiah. Well, it was one thing to believe this was true, but hearing God’s Word proclaimed, now I realized I needed to repent. I didn’t use that terminology, as honestly, it was not a part of my vocabulary back then. But that is what I now know was happening, even though I didn’t have the language for it at the time. Having heard God’s Word with the Spirit’s anointing, I felt my sin being exposed to me. It wasn’t just individual sins, but it was my entire lifestyle being exposed. The deception of living my life based on my own preferences—that deception was exposed.
The rabbi never said anything about repentance, and my friends didn’t either, but I just inwardly knew that a response was needed. I can picture the ride back home as clearly as if it happened yesterday. I was sitting in the back seat as my friends were in the front, and I knew without a doubt that the only possible response was to completely change my life’s direction. What I heard that night left me realizing, there could be no turning back to life as it was before. Everything had to change. When I say “had to,” it had nothing to do with legalism or following a new set of “rules” for my life. It was a simple knowing within that the only appropriate response was to live fully for God, whatever that might require of me. This was revelation from the Spirit, though again, I would not have known to use that word.
What stood out to me from this whole God encounter and subsequent repentance is that, in spite of the discomfort involved in feeling my sin exposed by the Lord, in a strange way that I really didn’t understand, the exposing of my sin felt so good. Of course, the reason it “felt good” to put it in terms of feelings, is that when the Spirit convicts us of sin, He is stirring our hearts, Spirit to spirit. God is “connecting” with us Spirit to spirit, giving us a sense of the fact that, there is something much better that we can be living in, but it’s hindered by the sin that’s in the way. So, while there is discomfort in the exposing of sin, there is also an inward sensing that something good is happening. There arose a sense of hope and vision for the higher life of freedom and purity that every one of us longs for in our hearts. Somehow I knew that my response to the discomfort of conviction would lead to something really good. God shows us our sin as an act of His grace, because His intent is to lift up our lives from that sin and bring us into something far better and far more satisfying, as we discover and learn that life in God is what we’ve actually be created for. My life had been weighed down for years with so much sin and rebellion, but God’s conviction was opening my eyes to see the need to turn from those ways.
Looking back almost 50 years later, I realize that what I experienced that night was a deep repentance, bringing a cleansing and freedom that cannot be experienced any other way. While repentance can involve tears and a deep sense of grieving (godly sorrow), it is not something heavy and burdensome, but rather, cleansing and liberating. As such, we can see how it truly is the kindness of God that brings us to repentance. Only repentance can position us to fully step out from sin and fully pursue the Lord and the fullness of His ways. Only repentance can position us to embrace the glorious new life in Yeshua that God has planned for you and me.
I pray that the grace of repentance be something more and more real for each one of us, as we embrace the lifetime process of our lives becoming more and more a reflection of nature of Yeshua Himself.
Daily Bread, reading plan by Lars Enarson (https://www.thewatchman.org/)
Sun 10-Nov-2024 9th of Cheshvan, 5785 Yom HaAliyah
Ge 18:1-14 Jos 19-20 Ps 19-20 Mt 13:31-58 (1 Jn 1-2:11)