Vain Repetitions

Last night, my family attended our nephew's preschool graduation ceremony from a school sponsored by a local church. The five-year-olds were adorable in their blue or red graduation caps and gowns, and they sang choreographed religious and patriotic songs, recited short Bible verses, and told everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up: policeman, fireman, soccer player, doctor, artist, rock star. Each of the dozen students received a diploma and achievement certificate as the program concluded.

The hour-long program also contained three prayers and a devotion. The opening and closing prayers and the devotion were given by teachers and administrators of the school, but the third prayer was recited by the whole graduating class. Of course, the prayer that they rushed through—as all kids normally do—was what is normally called "The Lord's Prayer," found in Matthew 6:9-13. Most people who consider themselves Christians can recite it at will; it is probably one of the most memorized passages of Scripture.

Similarly, when I played Little League baseball in the Columbia, South Carolina, area, it was the practice of our league to gather one team around first base and the opposing team around third base. All the players and coaches would take a knee and reach forward to grab part of a bat that someone placed upright on the base or stack their hands on top of it. Once everyone was situated, the head coach would say, "Take off your caps and bow your heads," and we would all begin to recite the Lord's Prayer in a rapid-fire monotone, hoping to beat the other team to the end. Once done, the players and coaches scrambled back to their respective dugouts, and the umpire called, "Play ball!" God had been invoked and all was well.

Did anyone at the ballpark ever stop to consider if the Lord's Prayer—which is a misnomer; it should be "The Disciples' Prayer" or "The Model Prayer"—has anything to do with baseball? The word does not appear in Matthew 6:9-13 or, in fact, in the Bible. The prayer that Jesus gave His disciples to teach them to pray is about God the Father, His holiness, His name, His Kingdom, His will, His power, His glory, and His eternity, as well as requests for daily providence, forgiveness, guidance, and deliverance. Nary a word about curveballs, double plays, or stealing second base.

Memorizing the so-called Lord's Prayer is a wonderful thing to do. Parents should make it their aim to teach it to their children. But unlike many in nominal Christianity, we need to go further and teach our children that the prayer is not one to be mindlessly repeated but a guideline for our personal, private prayers to "our Father in heaven." It maps out the general attitude and subjects of prayer that we should take to heart and cut deeply into our memory.

It is a wonder that so few who frequently use Matthew 6:9-13 both publically and privately know what Jesus says—no, commands—in the immediately preceding verses:

And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. (Matthew 6:5-8)

Christ plainly says that public prayers made expressly to be seen by others is hypocritical, and prayers that are repeated vainly (meaning "carelessly," "uselessly," or "thoughtlessly") are heathen! Obviously, this does not mean that He forbids public prayer; there are many examples of proper public prayer in Scripture (see, for example, I Kings 8:22-53; Ezra 9:6-15; Nehemiah 9:5-38; John 17:1-26; etc.). Public prayer is a necessary part of opening and closing religious services. What Jesus denounces is making a show of praying to enhance one's reputation as a "religious" or "righteous" person, as well as repetitious, canned prayers and overlong, tedious prayers.

Overall, Jesus warns us against two mistakes when praying: making them about us and making them meaningless. Doing either (or both) will ruin their effectiveness and actually work at cross-purposes to spiritual growth. When we pray, we need to remember that it is a formal conversation with the divine Governor of the Universe. We have not entered His court for our own gratification and glory. We certainly do not want to bore Him by endlessly repeating the same five words or giving Him the expanded War and Peace version of our pitiful lives. To the contrary, we are before Him to praise Him, to thank Him, to beseech Him for help both for others and ourselves, and to praise and thank Him. I repeat myself for emphasis.

What would we think of a friend who came to the front door each morning, and upon opening it to admit him, he said the exact same thing that he had said the past 532 straight mornings, droning on for half an hour without coming up for air? We might love him as a friend, but we would surely think he was a bit strange and wasting our time with his endless repetitions. We would soon tune out his robotic, one-sided conversation.

We are blessed that God is far more patient and understanding with us than we would be to such a bore. He listens to our petitions whether we are eloquent or mind-numbingly incoherent (see Romans 8:26). Yet, notice that Jesus tells the disciples—us—that the Father knows what we need before we ask Him. We are not springing anything on Him that He has not already figured out. So there is no need for us to meander, be vague, or employ some kind of rhetorical device that is "guaranteed" to convince Him that He has to intervene right away. There is no need to try to impress Him with our knowledge or persuasiveness or righteousness. He wants us to be ourselves and to speak with Him as family members do—with, of course, the proper reverence for who He is.

What is most important—what He is looking for—is a "poor and . . . contrite spirit, and [one] who trembles at My word" (Isaiah 66:2). If the attitude is humble, focused on God's will and His plan for us, He will hear and respond. More importantly, we will be drawing closer to Him and taking on aspects of His character that are so essential to Christian life and the Kingdom of God.

Repentance: The Genuine Article (Part Five)

We can learn a great deal from the sore trial of Job, particularly what God did to bring him to the point of repentance. Notice Job 40:1-4, where we begin to see a marked change in the man:

Moreover the LORD answered Job, and said: "Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who rebukes God, let him answer it." Then Job answered the LORD and said: "Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer You? I lay my hand over my mouth."

Job is a different person now. Something had produced a change in him between his assertion of unimpeachable integrity in chapter 27 and his humble admission of vileness in chapter 40. In the speech of Elihu in Job 32-37, a new line of reasoning enters the argument, and God, speaking out of a whirlwind in Job 38-41, lays Job's self-righteousness bare. God exposes Job for what he really was, despite his careful lawkeeping. Job responds in Job 42:1-6:

Then Job answered the LORD and said: "I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Listen, please, and let me speak; You said, ‘I will question you, and you shall answer Me.' I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

In listening to God primarily, Job had entered the rā'āh stage, where he deeply considered himself and what he had done, and suddenly, he had an entirely different view of himself: He was not the man he thought he was. Now, in his own estimation, he was not righteous but abhorrent and vile—a wholesale change!

What we see in Job 38-41 is that God leads the man through a process in which He reveals Himself to Job. He does not directly reveal Job to himself, but He helps Job to realize just who and what God is—and this is a major key to true repentance. We truly recognize our need to change when we see, not necessarily how we are, but how we compare to and fall woefully short of the perfect righteousness of God.

A simple illustration may help us understand how this works. Since the United States dollar is the world's reserve currency, there is a considerable problem with counterfeiting here and around the world. U.S. Treasury officials who are specially trained to seek out and identify counterfeit money study, not the counterfeit notes, but the real U.S. currency. They study it until they know it perfectly. Once they do, it becomes relatively easy for them to distinguish a true dollar from a counterfeit: Any bill that does not exactly conform to the real dollar is a fake.

In a similar fashion, God says the same thing to Job as well as to us. If we compare ourselves with the true righteousness and holiness that is in God, we will recognize just how counterfeit—imperfect, false, and sinful—we are. If we are sincere, we will fling ourselves on God's mercy and repent because we do not want to be sinful but righteous and holy like God. We will want to prove to God that we have turned from our old, evil way and will henceforth live His way forever.

Notice that Job says, "I . . . repent in dust and ashes." His wording expresses ideas of humiliation, mourning, burial, and death. Donning sackcloth and ashes was a common Hebrew act of humility and grief (Esther 4:1; Isaiah 58:5; Jeremiah 6:26). In his affliction, the psalmist writes in Psalm 102:9, "For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping." When God informs Adam that he would die because of sin, He says, "For dust you are, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). The traditional funeral sermon from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer includes the memorable line, "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

Job's turn of phrase reveals the depth of his sorrow, shame, and determination to change. By saying this, he conveys his resolve to put the old, sinful Job to death and become a new man living a life of righteousness. We see this "old man of sin, new man of righteousness" in several places in the New Testament, including Romans 6:1-14, where the subject is repentance leading to a life of righteousness:

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

Repentance and righteousness are virtually inseparable. Without repentance, righteousness has no beginning. It is impossible for a person to be righteous while still on the old path that leads to death. One must turn away from that path and then begin living righteously. In the same way, without righteousness, repentance has no fruit, nothing to show for a person's contrition. Thus, one without the other is nothing. They must be done together.

This work in tandem is illustrated in the first occurrence of the word "repentance" (metanoia) in the New Testament, Matthew 3:8, in the preaching of John the Baptist: "Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance." What is repentance without righteousness? Nothing. True repentance is only verified by its fruit, right conduct.

We will conclude this series next time by briefly studying David's Psalm of Repentance.

Repentance: The Genuine Article (Part Four)

Now that we have considered the two main Old Testament words for "repentance," we can look at the New Testament Greek word metanoia. It literally means "an afterthought," and this can help us understand why the writers of the New Testament used this word to convey the godly idea of repentance. Simply, it is an afterthought because we do not repent before we sin, do we? A person cannot repent before he sins; that would be averting sin, not repenting of it.

The popular saying, "Hindsight is 20/20," also comes into play in terms of metanoia. When we look back and realize what we have done, we are led to think deeply about our actions, which can lead us into changing our future actions. Our "afterthought" results in changed behavior.

Metanoia complements the Hebrew terms rā'āh and shûb quite nicely, and in fact, it combines the meanings of these two Hebrew words. A strict dictionary definition of metanoia is "a change of mind that results in a change of direction." Note that both actions are contemplated: both a change of mind and a turn away from destructive to improved behavior. A mere change of mind would be useless without corresponding positive conduct.

In II Peter 3:9, the apostle's use of metanoia helps us to understand its spiritual connotations: "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." Peter explains that God is patient with us, willing to work with us for a long while to bring us to the point that we leave the path that leads to death. A Christian does not just repent once and that is all that is needed. We must continue repenting throughout our Christian lives because, not only do our bad habits produce the same sins that we sought forgiveness for before, but we are constantly made aware of new sins too. Clearly, repentance is a long-term process, not a one-time decision, and God works closely with us for the duration.

Some have taken God's longsuffering to be slackness on His part—that He lets us linger in our sins over such a long time. However, Peter's argument is that those who think this way are looking at it backwards: It is not slackness but divine mercy! On the one hand, if He punished us for our sins with unyielding justice, we would all be decaying in pine boxes awaiting the judgment. On the other, if He did not require real change in behavior and character—just a quick and instant "repentance"—we would be no better for it. The kind of repentance that lasts for all eternity, the kind that leads to eternal life, is a life-long, deep-down, hard-won, blood-sweat-and-tears change in our way of living. It is an alteration in the course of our lives that we have felt deeply, considered deeply, and maintained rigorously throughout our lives. God's mercy allows us to take the time to do it right.

This kind of repentance takes us off the Satan-inspired path of death and puts us on God's path of life, on which we begin to think like, act and react like, and generally live like God as much as is humanly possible. Because this is the lofty goal of true Christianity, and as human nature is always battling to regain control over us, we must be in a repentant frame of mind at all times.

Not everyone, however, is receptive to repentance. Luke 5 contains the narrative of Jesus calling the tax collector, Matthew, called Levi by Luke, after which they go to Matthew's house.

Then Levi gave Him a great feast in his own house. And there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them. And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against His disciples, saying, "Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" Jesus answered and said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." (Luke 5:29-32)

The scribes and Pharisees, who lived in constant fear of spiritual defilement, ask Jesus why He spends so much time with sinners. His answer is simple: It is His mission to come to this world and to change people's minds so that He can change their lives—to bring them to spiritual health. Recall that all have sinned (Romans 3:23). Every human being—including the scribes and Pharisees—needs the services of the Great Physician. We all need to change our minds so that we experience a positive change of life.

Taken literally, though, Luke 5:32 sounds as if some people need repentance while others do not. However, Jesus never intended His words here to be understood literally. Remember that He is answering the scribes and Pharisees, so what Jesus tells these self-righteous know-it-alls is coated with a heavy layer of sarcasm: "Certainly, you, being so righteous, have no need to repent! I just go where I am most needed!"

The scribes and Pharisees did not consider themselves to be sinners; in fact, they had come nowhere near the point where they could repent. Their hearts were so hard and they were so convinced of their own goodness that they had closed their minds even to the suggestion that they needed to change in any way. They were blind to their own depravity. However, Jesus went to the ones who knew that they were sinners and needed and wanted His help, people He could work with.

God had to bring even righteous Job to this point as well. He held onto his integrity as if it were a bar of gold, and it took a great deal of effort for God to pry it from him. In Job 27:1-6, Job is speaking with his three friends:

Moreover Job continued his discourse, and said: "As God lives, who has taken away my justice, and the Almighty, who has made my soul bitter, as long as my breath is in me, and the breath of God in my nostrils, my lips will not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit. Far be it from me that I should say you are right; till I die I will not put away my integrity from me. My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go; my heart shall not reproach me as long as I live."

What a hard heart Job had! When he looked in the mirror, he saw a paragon of virtue, the ultimate in righteousness. In introducing him, God calls him "blameless and upright" (Job 1:1), but a deeper study into his character shows that, while he may have stuck fastidiously to the letter of the law, he was terribly proud of how righteous he was. He was so uber-righteous that he offered sacrifices for his children, just in case they may have sinned (Job 1:5).

All things considered, Job was indeed a good man, but when God looked at him, He saw something that Job missed. Next time, we will learn how God brought him to repentance.