Kyrie Eleison
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

"Now the serpent was more cunning than any of the beasts of the field." The devil has more tricks than treats in his little bag of goodies. That is, he spends more time confusing us than he does tempting us, more time shaping our hearts than tugging at them. One of his more common weapons is the push-me pull-you. From the beginning there has been this tension among God's people between law and grace. We toss accusations of "antinomian" and "legalist" at each other as if they were water balloons. The devil delights to push law, to the exclusion of grace, and in turn, he pushes grace to the exclusion of law. As we walk the razor's edge, he is pulling on us from both sides. The Biblical answer to the law/gospel question, of course, is a simple "Yes." We love His law, and are amazed by His grace. While there is tension among God's people between law and grace, there is no tension between law and grace themselves. The one doesn't diminish the other. In fact, they feed each other.

He plays much the same game with repentance. Here he pits Mars against Venus. A friend recently told me about a family he knew that suffered from the Puritan disease. Their daughter, at the time grown, reported to her family of professing Calvinists that she had been born again, that she had embraced the gospel, and was rejoicing in the Lord. Their somber advice? "Seek godly sorrow." In the face of grace the call is raised for more law. To these folks the call of the gospel is the call to sorrow rather than joy. Which, sadly, isn't all that unusual. Those whose scale is tipped toward the emotional tend to see repentance in terms of a good cry. The call to repentance is the call to proverbial sackcloth and ashes. What we need is a broken and contrite heart. (And in turn, the devil works this into a work as well. Like the anguished faces of the fasting Pharisees, we pantomime our anguish to earn God's favor.)

But we manly men think of repentance in different terms. Any system that requires a show of emotion, we know prima facie must be off base. First we men demonstrate the depths of our scholarship and point out that the Greek word translated "repentance" means a "turning." No sackcloth there. No one weeps over a turning. God, we reason, is less concerned about the blood of emotional trauma and hand-wringing, and is more interested in obedience. True repentance is no longer committing the sin. It is being obedient. We need to quit our crying and get on with the business of doing the right thing.

Once again God commands two things, and the devil pits them against each other. Because the devil is reactionary and not creative, because for him dirt is just dirt, and not the stuff of magic, everything is for him a zero sum game. If one should increase the other must decrease. But the God who gives us both bread and wine calls us to contrite hearts, and obedient hands. And while we're at it, we not only must feel right and do right, we must think right as well. We must, after all, love Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. Which reminds us of what repentance really is—a total ceasing of rebellion against the King, and a total service to the King.
Before, however, the ghost of Wesley past begins cheering me on, I don't mean that we have only repented when we sin no longer. That joy is found only on the other side of the Jordan. Rather, I mean that each time we repent, we give

everything back to Him. We repent not just that we have broken this rule or that, but that we have rebelled against the High King. And we affirm our desire to serve the High King not by obeying this rule of that, but by wisely, joyfully, heartily, doing, feeling and thinking whatsoever He commands. We are confused on this because we're confused about our whole lives. We don't understand that repentance is a life of doing God's bidding because we think life is doing our own bidding, while trying not to break God's rules.

This is our modern syncretism. We blend together the worship of personal peace and affluence with the worship of God. And here is how we divvy up the pie. We set the agenda, and God sets the rules. While trying to grow our bank account we cheat on our taxes. Guilt gets the best of us, and we "repent." But what we hold on to is the consuming desire to grow that bank account. We confuse obedience to the second commandment with obedience to the first. God tells us first that we must worship only Him. Then He tells us second how to worship Him. We are not free to worship mammon, so long as we don't build a statue out of it.

Just as virtually every problem would be better understood if we begin our study with "Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field," so virtually every problem is solved if we would begin with "Repent and believe the gospel." This ought to be our continued counsel to one another, even within the camp. It fits inside the camp not for the sake of gleaning every last piece of wheat out of the briars, not because we're Baptists, but because we must remove every bit of chaff from the wheat, because we believe in growing in grace. That is, we call one another to repentance not because we doubt the grace of God in the lives of our brothers, because we're afraid they might not really be saved, but because we believe that they are saved, and so are called to manifest the grace of God in their lives.

Repentance is not only not something you do to cover your most recent glaring sin, it is also not something that you do only once. We are called to a lifetime of repentance, because we are called to a lifetime of obedience, both ethically and teleologically. We must not only live in obedience, but live for obedience.

Both the Mars and Venus approaches are bound for failure. Bootstrap, buck-up, teeth-gritting repentance leads to bootstrap, buck-up, teeth-gritting failure to obey. The answer is almost never "try harder," for you have already tried and failed. But the softer, gentler Venus version fails as well. For before your tears begin even to dry, you will find yourself needing to repent again. No matter how profound your sorrow, it cannot be profound enough. Your repentance, even with the deep, heaving sobs, still needs to be repented of, for it is not deep enough. You cannot plumb the depths of your sin, for the finite cannot plumb the infinite. And after you have repented for your half-hearted repentance, then you must repent of that as well.

Here then is where gospel-joy trumps all else. After a few layers of repenting for your repenting for your repenting, you can, as C.S. Lewis points out in The Screwtape Letters, do nothing but break out laughing. Nothing can trump the weakness of our repentance but repenting and believing—and believing, rejoicing.

And no place does this joy break through repentance more powerfully than at the Table of the Lord. Of course we come in repentance. As our teeth mash the bread into smaller and smaller pieces we remember that it is we who broke His body. He was crushed for our iniquities. But we cannot weep long in sorrow, for it is not only He who died for the feast, but He who feeds us. That we are invited to His table means that we have His peace. And so we drink the wine in joy. The tears continue, but now we have moved from mourning to dancing.

The Table is that place where we repent and believe, each and every Lord's Day. We come forward because He calls us, and we obey. We acknowledge His authority over us. We leave behind the battle, ceasing to be His enemies, and eat where He has prepared the place. And then, because we eat Him, we become like Him. He is the one true sacrifice, but in Him, our bodies become living sacrifices. We are now His soldiers—indeed, His kamikazes. He laid down His life for us, and so we in turn lay down our lives for Him.

Repentance, then, is simple. It, like the law of God, like God Himself, cannot be broken down into constituent parts. It is of a piece, a single unity. We can no more repent in part than we can have Jesus as our savior but not as our Lord, or embrace the Father but not the Son. If we would repent, we too must be simple. We do not need to puzzle over how much is enough. We do not need to measure our tears in our spiritual beakers, to see if we are truly His. Nor do we leave our hearts at the door and simply do the right thing. Rather we surrender all, acknowledging that nothing in our hand we bring, and simply to His cross we cling. And having surrendered, we obey whatsoever He commands. We no longer need to plot strategy, or guess outcomes. We need only to repent and believe. Lord have mercy on us, and incline our hearts to keep this your Law.

And this alone is what would separate us from the world around us. Do the heathen sorrow over their sins? Of course they do, for they yet have the gift of conscience. They too weep and lament over their sins. But these sorrow as those who have no hope. There is no joy at the end of their tether. Do the heathen try to do better? Of course they do. They even have their own heathen brand of evangelists to help them get a better grip on their bootstraps—they're called "motivational speakers." Our call is to be distinct. We weep but for a moment, before we are surprised by joy. And our labors for obedience are decidedly not bootstrap. The same God who forgives us empowers our obedience. The same Spirit that births the repentance, births the obedience. Lord have mercy on us, and incline our hearts to keep this your Law.

We must also deliberately seek to not be too deliberate. When we spend too much time checking to see if we are repentant enough, we prove that we think our sorrow atones for our sins. To be sure, all who repent and believe will be saved. And none that do not repent and believe will be saved. But all who will be saved, will be saved by the work of Christ. Better still, we must be deliberate about what we are repenting for, remembering that every sin, from large to small, is in the final analysis cosmic treason. With each sin we defect, not only joining the army of the serpent, but joining in his folly, thinking we are gods. But in His grace we are His soldiers again. Let there be no debate about that, but let us deliberate on it, from here to eternity. Lord have mercy on us, and incline our hearts to keep this Your law.

Herein is the glory of repentance. By it we declare, "Not my will, but Thine be done." By it we bend the knee. By it we sing, Non nobis Domine—not unto us, O Lord—sed nomini tuo da gloriam—but to You the glory. By it we confess that He is Lord, to the glory of the Father. As we repent and believe, we are soldiers of the King, we become the host over which He is King, the Lord of glory. By it we give ourselves, all that we are, over to the only end which is worthy of our mean means, that His glory might be known, and that His reign might be shown. This is why we cry out, in a passion born of the marriage of sorrow and joy, Lord, have mercy on us, and incline our hearts to keep this—repent and believe— Your law.