Devotion for February 11, 2016

            What does your repentance earn you? That’s a legitimate question. After all, it sure seems like repentance is a necessary prerequisite of receiving forgiveness. First, we repent. Then, we are forgiven.

            Two things need to be said against such a view. First, we need to pay attention to the language of repentance. Sometimes it would seem that repentance is our work, a contrition that we produce. A more nuanced approach understands that repentance is the work of God. God, through His word of Law, reveals, convicts, and condemns our sins, and the resulting brokenness is repentance. It’s not like that famous scene in A Christmas Story where Ralphie “whips up” some tears. So, we need not to think about repentance like it’s some human work. Second, we need to think seriously about the language of prerequisite or earning. The last thing we’d want to do was give the impression that our forgiveness depended on some human effort, even if that effort sounds as noble as repentance. We Lutherans talk about objective justification, the fact that Jesus’ death on the cross atoned for every human sin in all times and in all places. This is what Paul was driving at in Romans 5: While we were sinners, Christ died for us. Forgiveness was earned long before we were around to need it, and freedom was given when first we heard the word of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit worked faith in our hearts.

            There’s simply no place for human effort in the matter of salvation. During a week in which we wear our repentance on our foreheads, that seems an important reminder.