Repentance

Nancy and I have long had an intuition about why Lutherans have so much trouble with calling people to repentance and faith. Any thing that looks like it is a "good work" is suspect.

The problem can be traced to the Lutheran emphasis on God's grace. Now in general, this is a good thing! God's grace is sweet.

But to center on grace is to get stuck on the question of how God reaches out to us. The more important question is the question of why.

And the answer of why God reaches out to us is because He loves us! Just bask in that for a moment. He loves YOU!

You will find that if you do that, you will find yourself asking how did God show his love. And the answer to that question is that God sent Jesus to live and die for us. And why did Jesus have to die for us? Because we are sinners.

It is the central paradox of Christianity: God loves sinners. The holy, righteous God loves us who are sinners. Amazing love, indeed!

There is then nowhere to go except to repentance. Because God loves us, we repent of our sin. We turn to God and He cleanses us from our sin.

We are deeply thankful to have had grace baked into our bones. But we are thankful that God loves us and has brought us to repentance.

No more rubber grapes!

Jesus tells his disciples in John 15 that if he abides in them and they in him they will produce much fruit.

It is not clear what that fruit is. Is it the fruit of the Spirit or is it the fruit of new lives in the Kingdom? Both, probably.

Ever seen a bunch of rubber grapes? They can look just like the real thing. Makes a nice table decoration. You move them when it is time to put out the turkey the 1st grader made at school for a Thanksgiving decoration.

We spend much of our time making rubber grapes in our lives. By ourselves, that is all we can do. But that is not what Jesus wants. Rubber grapes can not produce real wine. Our efforts are not enough.

I don't want to make any more rubber grapes. I want real wine. I want the power of God to flow through me, a branch, and produce real fruit. Real fruit that will nourish me and those around me. Real fruit of changed lives, people brought into the Kingdom of God.

I won't settle for anything less.

Not anymore.