Considering some components of repentance in response to Daniel 9

I love the comics section of the newspaper. Some people remember getting the paper as a kid and skipping all the boring, adult stuff to get to the “funny pages.”

I did it as a kid, and I still do it now.

One of my favorite comic strips is Frank & Ernest, mainly due to the semi-regular character of “Malaprop Man.” Consider the following:

Malaprop Man’s superpower is grabbing a word that sounds right but isn’t and running with it. Hilarious absurdities result. As a logophile (lover of words), it appeals to my brain and tickles my funny bone.

Funnily enough, I think about Malaprop Man often church people’s use of words to express our faith. Words like “gospel,” kingdom,” and “salvation” are used, re-used, and over-used, often with a lack of definition or proper understanding.

This post isn’t the place to address all of those, but I want to look at a word that suffers a similar fate but is much less frequently employed in American Christianity: “repentance.”

There are likely many reasons this word isn’t as popular, but there’s one primary reason why it’s often a malapropism: we don’t like it but know that it’s biblical. We feel compelled to use it but feel convicted if we use it correctly, so we misuse it.

We use “repentance” to say we “feel bad” about our actions. We imagine that it means the same thing as “apologizing.” We might even think we intend to “never do it again.” But all of those fall short.

Pastor Sam Storms defines repentance as “a heartfelt conviction of sin, a contrition over the offense to God, a turning away from the sinful way of life, and a turning towards a God-honoring way of life.”

And if definitions don’t move us, there are many examples of repentance in the Bible. Daniel 9 is essential for clarifying our understanding. Daniel gives us a model for true, biblical repentance in this chapter.

A model isn’t a listicle: we should read and respond to the entirety of Daniel’s experience. So please, read the passage and reflect on it before reading here.

That said, there are three components of repentance that I want to highlight because they particularly challenge our modern misuse of the term:

Anticipation

First, repentance is motivated by the anticipation of something better. Daniel is reflecting on the words of the prophet Jeremiah and realizes that the seventy years of judgment that were prophesied are almost completed. Daniel knows that the Lord has promised to bring Israel back to their homes, to the Promised Land, at the end of those 70 years. That’s good news, and it motivates Daniel to repentance.

The same should be true for us. God has promised freedom, joy, eternal life, and more to everyone who repents of their sin. That’s incredible! But if we don’t believe that what waits for us on the other side of repentance is better than anything we could enjoy on this side of it, we will never repent. Anticipation of something better is what creates the desire for repentance in us.

Confession

The next component I want to highlight in Daniel’s example is his confession of sin, both his and his people’s. He confesses both sins of omission and sins of commission. It’s a litany of historical and present failures that must have been painful for Daniel to recount.

It’s always uncomfortable for us to name our sins. That’s why we often euphemize them as “mistakes” or “problems.” We try to minimize or excuse or ignore our sin or the sin of our culture. But true repentance involves honest confession.

Personally, if I lie to the customers who come into my place of business to sell more, repentance requires me to confess the sin of lying and greed. Corporately, if the nation I live in has made its place in the world by the violent theft of property and lives, I should confess our violence, theft, and injustice.

Many of you agree with my statement about personal repentance but balk at the second line about corporate repentance. Why should I confess my nation’s sins? Why should I take the blame for what others have done? Two reasons: first, it is biblical, as Daniel demonstrates. Second, such confession opens the door for the next element of repentance.

Rejection and Redirection

That is the rejection of rebellion and the redirection toward submission. Daniel confesses his people’s choices, and then he rejects that way of life. He highlights the problems that come from living a life ignoring God. He considers that way of life and its effects, turns his back in disgust, and heads in a new direction. It is a conscious choice, motivated by the honest confession that came before and due consideration of both realized and desired effects.

It’s like using a compass to navigate a course change: once we know we’ve gone too far South, we can head North. We can turn to the right way if we see that we are running the wrong way. But if we never take the cover off the compass, never consider which wrong direction we are heading, how will we ever be sure which way to go? We must both reject the wrong direction and start walking in the right direction.

What Now?

Again, I’m not saying that these three elements are all that are involved in repentance. But these three seem important to highlight as we look at our lives and the Christian church in America.

We need to be convinced that what we see is not the best that can be: we need to anticipate something better.

We need to open our eyes to the sin in our lives and our society: we need honest confession.

And we need to choose a different way: we need to reject the rebellion that led us into this mess and redirect into submission.

We will see incredible things happen if we do.