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Summary
In this episode, Alan Wartes explores the concept of radical repentance, emphasizing its biblical roots and profound implications for believers. He discusses how true repentance involves a revolutionary, even violent, confrontation with our sinful nature, and the importance of dying to self to truly follow Christ.
Keywords
radical repentance, Christian faith, spiritual transformation, death to self, Jesus teachings, Christian growth, biblical repentance
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Personal Reflection on Consistency in Sharing
02:52 Introduction to Kathy’s Question on Radical Repentance
03:22 Defining Radical Repentance: Not a Different Echelon
04:01 Synonyms for Radical and Their Connotations
04:33 Jesus’ Statement on Bringing a Sword and Its Radical Implication
05:27 The True Nature of Repentance as Revolutionary
06:07 The Full Gospel: Beyond Salvation to Radical Calling
07:04 Repentance as Consent to Death and Transformation
08:13 The Power of Death in Christian Transformation
09:09 Following Christ Through Death to Life
09:32 The Cross as the Path to True Life
10:22 The Holy Spirit’s Role in Dead Self Transformation
11:28 Living Daily in Radical Surrender and Abiding in Christ
Transcript
Hi and welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. I’m Alan Wartes.
In this episode I plan to address a question posed by one of our subscribers. She wants to understand why I so often use the word “radical” to describe repentance. It’s a great question that really made me think.
But first I want to acknowledge that it’s been three weeks since my last dispatch. I admit that’s a long interval. Partly, I allowed myself to be distracted by other things, some that were beneficial in themselves and others, not so much. I suspect everyone can relate to that.
On the other hand, I always want to guard against the impulse to come up with something to post just because the calendar says it’s time. I think that’s where a lot of the empty, lukewarm teaching comes from that is so common these days in Christian circles. That’s especially true in the realm of social media. Someone who is chasing an ever-larger online audience feels they can’t afford to be quiet for even a day. In that world, momentum, or the lack of it is real and to be silent is to be invisible.
That may be why so much of what we see and hear on platforms like this one is just a thicket of platitudes. Such posts are placeholders meant to be seen but not much else. Under the relentless pressure to post it’s hard to blame people for that.
Over time, though, so much empty noise has a hypnotic effect that hardens our hearts and dulls our ears to the truth. That is the unspeakably rich and radical calling we have received in Christ.
So, there is a time to speak and a time to be still and listen. The only algorithm I care about is what the Holy Spirit can do, first to inspire a message and then to deliver it exactly where it is needed.
That means this may not be the last gap between dispatches. If you are a paid subscriber and that feels like less value than you expected, please contact me. I’ll be more than happy to refund your support.
Now, on to Cathy’s question. Here’s what she wrote:
“You’ve mentioned in your messages something you call ‘radical repentance.’ How do you understand ‘radical repentance,’ and what is the difference between repentance without the adjective, and ‘radical repentance?’”
Great question. First, I don’t use the word “radical” to imply there is a different echelon of repentance, something that’s above and beyond ordinary repentance. The word is there to remind me that there is no such thing as “ordinary” repentance. Seen from the world’s point of view —from the perspective of our sinful nature — all repentance is radical.
Here’s a list of synonyms for the word radical:
· extreme
· revolutionary
· ultra
· fanatic
· violent
· subversive
I’m sure you’ll agree that these words all have negative connotations by modern standards. I was even tempted to remove “violent” from the list to avoid objections. But for reasons that will be clear in a moment, I believe it does belong in the context of repentance. If nothing else, it helps to explain a statement of Jesus that sounds jarring to a lot of people these days:
“Do not suppose I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” Matthew 10:34-36
Sounds pretty radical to me. I believe repentance, properly understood, is the reason.
True repentance is extreme, revolutionary, subversive and even violent in the sense that it confronts and tears down the status quo of relationships and other ways of being in the world.
Jesus preached this. John the Baptist preached it. But we’ve lost sight of this fact in our time in part because we are tangled up in that thicket of platitudes I just mentioned. So much of that messaging is soft, reassuring and comforting. It’s about making us feel better where we are and makes few demands of us.
To be sure, salvation from judgment for our sins, freely available to anyone who believes, is a tremendous source of comfort and hope. It is contained in the message of “glad tidings of great joy” the angels delivered when Jesus was born.
But that’s not the only part of the message. The full gospel of our redemption as sanctified and glorified sons and daughters of the Most High God involves an unspeakably ferocious calling — to repent.
Yes, ferocious.
But repentance is not ferocious if we think it simply a confession of guilt and acceptance of salvation. Nor is it the resolve, after salvation, to “do better” or to henceforth live your life for God. The old covenant and the law proved once and for all that you can’t do any of that. What’s called for is something completely revolutionary. Something radical.
Here’s the key point: Repentance is radical because it is nothing less than consenting to your own death.
We all want to skip to the stage where we share in the glory of our risen Lord. James and John said that part out loud when they asked Jesus to grant that they be seated on His right and left in the coming kingdom.
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?” Matthew 20:22
Repentance is always radical because it escorts us to that question: can you choose to die to your old self?
There is no transformation in life more radical than death. You can’t be a little bit dead, or even mostly dead. Dead is all the way dead, or it’s still alive. That’s true of your sinful nature every bit as much as your physical body. Paul wrote in Romans 6:
“The death (Jesus) died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Jesus Christ.” Romans 6:10-11
To claim that new life, we must believe this and then follow in His footsteps. Late nineteenth century preacher Andrew Murray put it like this in his book “Abide in Christ:”
“There is no path to true life, to abiding in Christ, than that on which our Lord went before us — through death. At the first commencement of the Christian life, very few see this … They don’t yet know that nothing but death, the absolute surrender to death of all that is of nature, will suffice if the life of God is to be manifested in them with power.” Andrew Murray
Platitudes are stripped of this power because they attempt to steer us around the threshold we must all approach: the cross. The invitation — the command — that Jesus gave his disciples to follow Him did not end at Calvary.
If He had not paid the price for our sin that day, then their journey certainly would have ended. But His death and resurrection opened the door onward through which we must all follow.
The unimaginably good news is that when we consent to die with Him, then the process of putting to death our old self becomes work that the Holy Spirit completes in us. Our contribution is faith and the total surrender of any self-effort. Our part is to yield and to say “Yes!” Then what is dead is replaced by Christ himself living within us. In Galatians chapter 2 Paul wrote:
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live today, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20
But nothing about that is soft or easy or automatic. Drinking the cup that Jesus drank is the essence of radical repentance. It’s a solemn choice, a daily choice, to surrender our old self to death on the cross and then to keep it there by abiding in Christ in every moment.
There is so much more to say about this! Come back and let’s keep talking. Share this dispatch and leave a comment so your voice can be included in the conversation.
May God bless you and keep you as you learn to abide in Him!
