Repentance is righteousness
I commit a crime and so I am a criminal! I'm subjected
to a punishment that is judged to be what the crime deserves and it
seems to be a fair judgment. While I am enduring the punishment I
cherish the crime and regret nothing, so not only have I committed a
criminal act I have the heart of a criminal. The heart that expressed
itself in opposition to society in a specific act continues to oppose
the righteousness to which society pays homage by imprisoning me. I may
acknowledge the justice of the laws and the fairness of the punishment
but that's as far as it goes—I am a foe of society and its laws which
express its conception of social righteousness. (James 2:9-10 has this
thought in mind.)
During the course of the imprisonment I have a change of
heart. I come to regret my crime and come to see it for what it is—an
unjustified act of criminal behaviour. But it isn't just the crime I now
denounce; I denounce the criminal heart that expressed itself in that
act. The change is a heart and attitude change as well as being a new
response to a specific past act.
In this change, I the criminal have crossed over to the
ranks of the righteous. I join with the judge and jury in support not
only of the punishment I now endure but in support of the reasons and
motivations that led them to establish the laws, find me guilty of
breaking them and punishing me for it.
The deeper and more passionate my conviction on these
matters grows the farther I am removed from the heart of a criminal. I
can't alter the fact that I have committed the crime but if I have a
thoroughgoing change of heart I am no longer the man who did. I now
oppose the man who committed the crime and I oppose the man who for some
time cherished it and had no commitment to justice.
The past act can't be undone but the past act can be
judged in righteousness and a commitment can be made to a love for and a
practice of righteousness from this day forward. As surely as the
heart that conceived and effected the crime is a criminal heart, the
heart that denounces and renounces the crime is a righteous heart.
The Christian in a biblical and religious setting would
speak of "sin" and "repentance" and it would be the case that more than a
single sin would be in view.
I commit a grievous sin (or one of the "respectable"
sins), I'm judged and in some shape or form I'm punished by the
community of believers. I sinned because I had the heart for it and
though I'm enduring the inevitable sense of loss I'm bitter enough to
feel no remorse much less repentance. If my crime is slander or adultery
and I have no remorse or repentance I remain a slanderer or an
adulterer (compare Matthew 5:21-23, 27-28). But if I have a change of
heart (2 Timothy 2:25) and now in a penitent spirit I acknowledge the
truth of God for which the assembly stood, I move from the sinner's camp
and become part of the righteous community.
It would be correct to say of me he committed slander or adultery but it would not be correct to now say of me that I am
a slanderer or an adulterer. Repentance is the form righteousness takes
in someone who has sinned. Jesus, for example, could not personally
repent because he had no sin to repent of so his righteousness was
always a positive holiness. The rest of us, though we are sinners, are
called to be righteous in our living (1 John 2:3-6 and 3:3, for
example). We are not to conclude that Jesus holds us as enemies of
righteousness because we sin for genuine repentance is
righteousness. It is a mind-set, generated in us by the gracious God and
in repentance we cross over to his side in the matter of sin (ours or
another's).
The deeper and purer the repentance the less we are like
the people we were when we sinned without caring. The deeper and purer
the repentance the more our heart is like the heart of God. Can you
imagine what we will be like as our repentance moves nearer and nearer
the ideal?
[These remarks on repentance take into account only one
aspect of the multifaceted riches of the biblical witness on repentance
but I'm certain they aren't a distortion of that richer truth.]