Renewing Our Repentance

Reading in the Ash Wednesday service in the Book of Common Prayer, I am taken by these words: “…and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.”

The admonition to renew our repentance continually is striking. We could construe this to mean a series of acts of repentance, occasioned by acts of sin. This understanding is of course true as, however regretfully, we will certainly sin against God and neighbor from time to time. In this sense at a minimum the admonition is true and compelling.

At the same time, I believe we can understand the admonition more deeply, strikingly, and compellingly if we go further to locate repentance not solely or even chiefly in the act but in the posture of being, the posture of spirit. Understood and lived most profoundly and essentially then, continual renewal of repentance consists of the core disposition or quality of our being, our person.

This corresponds intimately and inextricably with the nature of faith and the continual renewal of faith. For surely faith, while including and motivating acts, signifies most deeply the basic disposition or posture of our self in relation to God.

Repentance then is not merely something we do occasionally. Repentance is something we essentially are in this world. Hence, it is something we are continually.

What then does it mean to live in a posture of repentance? Much could be said here, but let me point to a few principles which should characterize living in a posture of repentance.

• Whenever we identify sin in another, we must in the same moment acknowledge and regret our own implication in sin. In general we stand implicated in sin, and in particular we often stand implicated in the specific sin we have identified, at least in potential and sometimes in fact.
  

• Indeed, we are far more ready to see our own sin first, before we ever see sin in others.
  

• We do not presume our own immunity from sin, whether sin in general or sins in particular. The language of confidence in our own purity is strange and alien to us.
  

• We do not presume mastery over our own sin, whether sin in general or sins in particular.
  

• Because of our frailty and perversity in relation to sin, both potentially and actually, we live continuously in sheer dependence on the gracious mercy of God. We do not presume to stand in God’s presence with confidence in our own rightness.
  

These are but a few spiritual and moral principles which will mark our lives to the extent we take to heart the admonition of the need we have to renew our repentance continually. Yet if we can live them in the very posture of our being, in Lent and all seasons, they will take us far along the path that leads from the garden closed behind us to the city of the Lamb awaiting us.