All of Life is Repentance

Darryl Dash writing on Repentance:

One of the best things I learned in the past year is repentance. I suppose I always knew about repentance, but the learning that's recently taken place is about the continual nature of repentance: that, as Martin Luther said, all of life is repentance. Repentance is not occasional and traumatic. Instead, it's continuous and joyful, because I'm not surprised by my sin, nor am I overly discouraged by it. My acceptance isn't based on my worthiness or how badly I feel, but on what Christ has done for me.

This has allowed me to look at myself with much greater honesty. There's less to hide and less to prove. I'm still learning this, but it's made a huge difference in my life. It changes everything. As I say, I knew this before, but it's really become clear in this past year, and much more part of my life.

We sang a song last Sunday that had a strange contrast between tempo and theme. I joked with the worship leader about singing a "schizophrenic song." The tempo was fast and upbeat, like you would expect from a happy song. But the words were "God, we have sinned, we repent!" The conjunction of happy and repentance seemed very jarring to me at the time. However, the more I thought about it, and after reading the quote shown above, I've decided that the seeming tempo/language contrast in that song is really quite appropriate.

Luther was right that the Christian life is one of continual repentance. The comment above is also correct; true repentance is ultimately joyful. If we value being right with God, repentance is a joyful thing.