The Repentance of God in Christ Jesus!

“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.

So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.” – 2 Peter 3:8-14 NIV

Don’t we wish to see our lives are being fulfilled by our desires, whether we are followers of Jesus Christ or not? Because of this, we often see that our ways are much better than God’s, due to the fact that we often realise that God is being slow in fulfilling our desires. Furthermore, whether we are Christian or not, we often feel guilty, shamed and condemned when we did something wrong accidentally or purposely. Thus, we are trying to keep fix our actions and think our “good” actions may be overcome every mistakes. If we are part of the religious side, we tend to do these and repent all of our sins at the age of 99 or right before we die, in order to enter  the kingdom of heaven.

I am not a religious person in doing all of our “good” routines and works to get into kingdom of heaven, and hate to be one. However, I do not like to repent before God, to be honest. I think I am kind of more of a fixing person. The main reason for this is when I repent, I want to do the same and exact thing over again that I have repented of so I eventually do it. The one of my main points of repentance is about idols. Since I like to be an “extreme” Christian and a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ, my passion has been Him as He is centre of my life. Hence, I tend to be holy in everything that I do but if my mind is full of theology and get a headache for some reason like having naps, I need to watch television, in order to relax my mind. Apart from thinking that television is a tool to get the peace of God, watching television like Korean dramas and entertainments makes me very tired because of my concertration to television. In addition, watching my childhood cartoon, such as Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, makes me want to wach them more and more, that I want to download games of them. These are the reasons that television has been kind of my idol. I am able to ban from watching television for the sake of Christ but I do not know what to do if I get a theological burden or a headache. A part of me wants to not ban television unless I become addicted. This is because I think that just watching television is not sin unless it becomes an idol. Idols are programmed by the evil power that disturbs and distracts us from having a relationship with God. Hence, I am going to try to sleep early rather than staying up late. I also am just going to not swear to God by having oaths when I repent, for I think that having oaths between us and God is sin as what Matthew 5:33-37 and James 5:12 say. I am going to temporary or permanently stop watching television whenever I think the passion of Christ is going away from my heart. I truly want to become spotless, blameless, and one of God’s righteous children. One of my favourite Bible verses for this are Colossians 1:15-23, due to the fact that they are speaking to me that everything is through Jesus and for Him. God was so pleased in Jesus to crucify Himself on the cross for our sins and to reconcile everything back to Him. Because of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God sees us blameless, spotless, and righteous-especially if we continue in our faith firmly and really hold the hope of the Gospel of Jesus. In addition to this, Ephesians 2:8-10 declares, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Because of these I am really thankful.

Nevertheless, I also believe that repenting before God is important. The main reason for this is that the true repentance of God influences us to be more blameless and more holy. The angels of God rejoice over this (Luke 15:1-10). I wish that we are allowed to go to the kingdom of heaven whenever we feel that we are completely spotless and perfect in Jesus. On the contrary of enering to the eternal home right away, it makes life more interesting as we are developing ourselves into more of the image of God (2 Corinthians 3:16-18), for God has created us in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Not only that, but He also has created us to be His children forevermore (Ephesians 1:4-6). Furthermore, when we are fulfilling our lives according to our natural passions, desires, pleasures, and will and come to the age of 99 or to the end of the physical death, we would repent very intimately and humbly before God. However, if we do this routine, He probably would put us into hell rather than the kingdom of heaven unless in the end of our physical lives, we really get the sense that we are sinners and we acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Saviour and the Lord. This is because God is the Ultimate Judge (James 4:12) and He is going to judge us according to how we lived on the Earth. In addition to this, Hebrews 4:13 states that nothing can hide from God, which means everything is visible to Him. Because of these, we should be filled with the Spirit of God with completely openess to Him (Ephesians 5:15-18).

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (2 Corinthians 5:1-10)