God's Grace Always Precedes Repentance - Thesis #18
In my last thesis I touched again on honoring and valuing church unity and the historic church in general. Yet, part of the reason I’m writing these 95 theses is because the church needs a lot of reform, quite a lot!
Another key area needing reform is regarding some of the absolutely toxic ideas we’ve held about love, about God. We’ve already touched on several of those previously, but we may need more clarity on one in particular.
What is the connection between repentance and forgiveness?
Do we need to repent first?
Or… does God give Grace first?
Does God forgive us if we don’t apologize and make amends?
Our concepts of unconditional love have not been unconditional at all so many times!
Many, many churches of various denominations around the world misrepresent the Gospel completely by claiming, directly or indirectly, that God will only accept us IF we repent, do penance, clean up our life, and on and on and on!
Search through your commentaries. Search through the writings of your favorite Christians. Very few believers are willing to clearly say, “God forgives us long before we repent.” But, it’s super important that we hear the Gospel here! On this understanding hinges the nature of actual unconditonal love by which our subconcious decides whether it can rest in safety and security or not.
The Truth presented in Christ Jesus even goes so far as to say, “Everyone has always been reconciled to God in Christ from the foundation of the world!” God never had a forgiveness problem. A healthy person doesn’t need someone to change before they can forgive, certainly not our Abba.
“All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” - 2 Cor. 5:18-19
“Christ is the Lamb slain from before the creation of the world.” - Rev. 13:8
Trinity has never struggled to forgive or to give unconditional Grace. Christ taught us to forgive and bless even our enemies, and certainly He did not teach us to do something that He himself would not do! In fact, since all have been forgiven from before the creation of the world, God has never truly had enemies! Everyone has been forgiven from before the beginning.
We have been taught so poorly about this, due to misunderstandings of Matthew 6:15, Mark 11:26 (which isn’t even in some of the oldest manuscripts) and other passages. But, when faced with challenging scriptures, we always have to remember the overall whole of the Gospel message. The struggles of the old testament Law period have been completely reframed in light of the revelation of Jesus!
The Gospel is a declaration of what Christ has done, once and for all.
It’s an unconditional covenant that God has made with man, Christ being both God and man! The overall message of the scriptures is the Gospel of our inclusion in Christ.
And, the Gospel is NOT LIKE the conditional old covenant!
“Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.“ - Heb. 8:9-12
Notice there are NO CONDITIONS in this covenant. It is simply a declaration. In Luke 23, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” long before anyone repented.
And, this is massively important for us.
Most people live their whole lives tormented by the thought that they are not living up to some condition. We think we aren’t good enough. We think we don’t have enough faith. We think we have messed things up. We wonder if we are living up to God’s will for us. We wonder if we truly repented correctly, or if we were actually born again. You name it.
But, Trinity isn’t like that. The Gospel is not like that at all.
God speaks a much better Word to us in Christ!
We are always loved. Always accepted. Always forgiven.
We are always celebrated in God’s house! ALWAYS!
We forget what Jesus taught us in the parable of the extravagant Father. “And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” - Luke 15:20
Before the prodigal son could even say a word, the Father ran to him, hugged and kissed him!
John Calvin said this, “A man cannot apply himself seriously to repentance without knowing himself to belong to God. But no one is truly persuaded that he belongs to God unless he has first recognized God’s grace.”
God showers grace upon us unconditionally first!
God starts our transformation, not us. And, God completes it!
We have been so convinced that it’s up to us to secure the blessed life, to initiate relationship with God, to find favor with the Trinity. But, the whole point of the Gospel is that God took the initiative in Christ!
He didn’t tell us to reform first.
He told us of the unconditional favor… that will cause us to repent.
Karl Barth understood this. I LOVE how convinced Barth was of the efficacy of God’s transforming Good News.
“Barth was asked what he would say to Hitler if he ever had the chance to meet the monstrous man who was destroying Europe and who would ruin the whole world if he were not stopped. Barth’s interlocutor assumed that he would offer a scorching prophetic judgment against the miscreant’s awful politics of destruction. Barth replied, instead, that he would do nothing other than quote Romans 5:8 to Hitler: ‘While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’” (as recounted by Ralph C. Wood)
While we hated God, God gave everything He has to us. His very own life.
Trinity is not going to ever stop giving Themself to us.
And, in this is the heart transforming power.
Yes, we need to repent! But, not so that God will forgive or accept us. We will never stop being showered with Grace, as long as Jesus is Jesus!
As J. B. Torrance said, "Repentance is our response to grace, not a condition of grace. Forgiveness always precedes repentance!”
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Also, please watch the video version of this thesis where Matt shares more: