Pete and Repeat

Dear friends of atonement, we’re talking about repentance again tonight, and we have two pictures of repentance in the verses we just read, and both of them point to a truth that repentance isn’t just a one-time thing; it’s an everyday thing. The first, we’re gonna look at both of the pictures and then do a little, well, how do I put this into practice? And finally, at the end, a couple tremendously huge comforts that are implied in these pictures, all right? So, our first picture is this continuing debt. We can picture our repentance as paying off our debt to God. He says, “Let no debt remain outstanding “except the continuing debt to love one another.” When I think about a continuing debt, I think about a white envelope I have next to my desk, at home, and in it are my mortgage slips. Every month, the slip tells me I have to pay such and such amount to Summit Credit Union to buy a little bit more of my house from them. I am pretty sure I do own the first floor and the second floor, but they still own most of the basement, so maybe nine or 10 more years, I’ll own the whole thing. I think this month, I bought the floor underneath the washing machine, so. That’s my continuing debt, right? When we bought that house, that wasn’t a one-time thing. That is an every-month thing. I’m buying more of that house from the bank. And I think it’s helpful to compare this continuing debt that God is talking about with something like a mortgage. One of the biggest differences is when we pay our debt to God, we’re paying a debt that in a tremendous way has already been paid. So often, we have defaulted on our debt to God. We have missed payments on our debt to God. Every time we have ignored our neighbor’s need or, even worse, harmed our neighbor directly, we are failing to pay what we owe to God. And so Jesus went to the cross to pay a debt he did not owe because we owe the debt we could not pay. And Jesus teaches us that every single day we can pray to him, forgive us our debts, and we can know that God in heaven, our Father in heaven, does just that. He cancels our debt, a tremendous debt that we could never pay, completely cancel. And yet, we want to pay it all the more. Out of gratitude for this payment that Jesus made on our behalf, we want to do more and more for God. That’s so different from a mortgage. I really have no feelings towards Summit Credit Union. I don’t pay them out of love, but for God, it’s very different, our debt to God. A second big difference is, of course, how we pay this debt. To pay Summit Credit Union, I write a check once a month, and I take it to the credit union, and that’s that. But to pay this debt, I love my neighbor. The continuing debt to love one another. So how do I pay this debt to God? By loving my neighbor. We know Jesus says the tremendous thing, that when I love my neighbor, when I meet my neighbor’s need, when I reach out to my neighbor in their loneliness, or to help them in trouble, Jesus says it’s like I’m helping him. He counts that as if I have brought him relief, as if I have eased his pain or met his needs. We think back, maybe you know the verse from the beginning of this section of the book of Romans. This section begins at chapter 12, verses one and two. And there, Paul says, in view of God’s mercy, do you know this verse? In view of God’s mercy, let us offer our bodies as living sacrifices. Let’s not conform anymore to the pattern of this world, but with our minds renewed, we’re now gonna test and approve what God’s will is, his perfect and his pleasing will. And those verses, too, talk about how do we pay our debt to God. How do I need to love my neighbor? I need to offer my body as a living sacrifice. I need to lay down my life in love for my neighbor, like Jesus laid down his life for me. This is how I pay my debt. And the third difference between our debt to God and my debt for my mortgage is what days of the month we need to pay the debt. My mortgage is due the 23rd day of every month. And when I pay it, I owe the credit union a little less than I did before. But for God, every day, I owe him more and more. Every day, I owe God for another day of forgiveness, for another day of my health, for another day of my sanity, whatever is left of it, for another day of the support of my family and my friends. For another day of grace on top of grace. And so, every day, I have a bigger debt to God than I had before. What days of the month should I pay my debt to God? Oh, only the days that he’s good to me and puts me in his debt. Only the days that I have a neighbor who needs to be cared about and loved and protected from harm. Only the days when God gets to make the rules because love is the fulfillment of the law. What days should I pay God his debt? Only the days when I want nice things because I should want them for my neighbor just as much. Love your neighbor as yourself. What days should I pay this debt to God? What days of the month? Only the days that end with the letter Y. That’s our first picture of repentance. Repentance is when I stop ignoring my debt to God, when I stop ignoring my debt to love my neighbor as much as I love little old me. And that is a continuing debt, a daily process. Our second picture of repentance in the verses is this picture of repentance as waking up. He says in verse 11, do this, do what? Love your neighbor, pay your debt to God, fulfill the law, do this. How? Understanding what time it is. It’s time to wake up. The hour has come for you to wake up. And he carries through with this picture through the whole paragraph. First of all, this idea of waking up reminds us that, naturally, we are asleep to love. We are asleep to the needs of our neighbor. We are asleep to our responsibility to care about anybody but ourselves. By nature, we are asleep to God’s law. Asleep to how he wants us to live. And every day, like we wake up our bodies, we need to wake up again to God. Wake up to love; wake up to our neighbor. And Paul talks about, yeah, when you wake up, that’s not just your eyes opening, but then you start to do your daytime things. You stop doing your nighttime things. Paul says, let us put aside the deeds of darkness, stop doing nighttime things, and let us behave decently as in the daytime. Now you have to do your daytime things. And when Paul talks about daytime in this paragraph, what’s he talking about? The night is nearly over. The day is almost here. Oh, it’s the day of salvation. Our salvation is nearer now, he says. When he talks about daytime, he’s talking about the day of meeting Jesus, the day of paradise, the day of resurrection, the day of being in heaven. And then he talks about behaving as if in the daytime, he’s saying behave like you’re in heaven. How much should you love your neighbor as much as you’re gonna love people in heaven? How generous and sharing and selfless should you be toward your neighbor as much as you’re gonna be in heaven? You think in heaven you’re ever gonna worry about having enough left for yourself? So don’t worry about it now. We wake up to our neighbor, we wake up to love, and then we start doing our daytime things. And the third part of this picture of waking up is, looks like you all did it today. When you wake up, you get dressed. Now, last week when I preached on this, it was funny because one of my own teenagers wore his pajamas until it was time to go to church. And so not everybody gets dressed when you wake up, but that’s the picture in our verses. He says, put on the armor of light. Clothe yourselves with Jesus, with the Lord Jesus Christ. What pictures these are that we could dig into, that our acts of loving our neighbor are also an armor for us, that they’re not just looking now for our neighbor’s needs and protecting him from harm, but living that way is protection for us from the forces of darkness, from the devil. Dig into that sometime. Or this other picture that we’re clothing ourselves with Jesus, that way we love our neighbors, what are they seeing? They’re seeing, oh, this is how Jesus loves me. That’s the way we want to be every day. This picture of repentance as you woke up your body this morning, now wake up your soul. To God’s will, to your neighbor’s need, to your debt, to love your neighbor and live like it. Do your daytime things; wear your daytime clothes. Clothe yourself in Jesus’ love. These pictures, both of them, that continuing debt, that daily process of waking up, both of these pictures of repentance show us it’s not a one-time thing. It’s again and again and again. Like the joke, two guys were fishing in a boat, Pete and repeat. Pete fell out; who was left? Two guys were fishing in a boat, Pete fell out. Who was left? Two guys were…. Right? the joke goes on and on. But this is no joke here. It goes on and on, but it’s no joke. This is stopping ignoring God and ignoring our debt to Him, waking up. A practical way you could apply this to yourself tomorrow and every day is you could take half a minute, 45 seconds, who are some people I need to wake up to loving. I don’t think you have a hard time thinking of some people. People, I need to wake up to loving them as much as I love myself. And if you’re brave, you could even write next to the name something that you could do to show that love. Not super complicated. What are you gonna do? Then, to finish, I just wanted to pull out two huge comforting thoughts that are hidden in these two pictures. First of all, when God talks about a continuing debt to love that every day I’m laying down my life in love for my neighbor, do you know what we can understand behind that is that God is never going to ask you to love people more than He’s gonna love you. He’s never gonna, or to put it positively, He is always gonna love you enough that you can love whoever He puts in your life. That’s a lot of love. Every day, He’s gonna love you that much. And the second picture in this waking up picture, the comforting thought, one of them at least, is this. If now we’re in the nighttime and heaven is the daytime, that means that your best day, the best day you ever have in your life, is like the darkest night compared to heaven. Because Jesus has paid your debt and He clothes you in Himself, that’s the day you get to look forward to. Amen.