This is the season of Lent, where we focus on repentance and change. There is a hymn that we've been singing at RHVC over the last few weeks. It's called "Here is Love". It was written during the Welsh Revival in the middle part of the 19th century. Here's first verse.

Here is love, vast as the ocean, Lovingkindness as the flood, When the Prince of Life, our Ransom, Shed for us His precious blood. Who His love will not remember? Who can cease to sing His praise? He can never be forgotten, Throughout Heav’n’s eternal days.

There are so many competing visions of our Savior. If your vision tells you that God sent Jesus so he could take out all of his violent rage on him, and that he might do the same to you if you're not careful, then read this second verse of the same hymn.

On the mount of crucifixion, Fountains opened deep and wide; Through the floodgates of God’s mercy Flowed a vast and gracious tide. Grace and love, like mighty rivers, Poured incessant from above, And Heav’n’s peace and perfect justice Kissed a guilty world in love.

God sent our Savior not because he hates sin, but because he loves people and cannot bear to let us go.

There are so many competing visions about what our response to the cross should be. If your vision tells you that God tolerates you as long as you don't screw up, that you have to be really careful not to break the rules and make him angry, and that your response to him should be obedience out of sheer terror, then read this third verse.

Let me all Thy love accepting, Love Thee, ever all my days; Let me seek Thy kingdom only And my life be to Thy praise; Thou alone shalt be my glory, Nothing in the world I see. Thou hast cleansed and sanctified me, Thou Thyself hast set me free.

God accepts you completely, every single part, exactly as you are at this moment. When you are mired in the most revolting sin you can think of, that's when his love blazes with the most intensity.

Repent of your misconceptions of Him. Repent of the pain you bear because you think that you have to. Turn away from the life you've settled for and accept his best for you. That is the message of this hymn. That is the message of Lent.

Ignorance and Unbelief

The season of Lent begins today. We pass from Epiphany, where the focus is the mission of the Church in response to the gospel, to a season of Christ-centered repentance in preparation for the transformational season of Easter. The first day of the season of Lent is Ash Wednesday, a day where many Christians observe an imposition of ashes as a way of turning us back to the proper perspective: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. "From ashes thou hast come, to ashes thou must return."

τὸ πρότερον ὄντα βλάσφημον καὶ διώκτην καὶ ὑβριστήν: ἀλλὰ ἠλεήθην, ὅτι ἀγνοῶν

ἐποίησα ἐν ἀπιστίᾳ

"Though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor and a man of extremes; but I received mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief." - 1 Timothy 1.13

None of us are without stain. We err not just through ignorance, but because of unbelief. We don't believe the things that our Lord says about us, that we are accepted (Eph 1.3-8), secure (Rom 8.1-2) and significant (Eph 2.10); the result is deep woundedness, which we act out to the detriment of others and ourselves. We don't believe that he loves us, and so we accept tragically less than his best for us. We may not believe in the miraculous rescue of the cross at all, in which case we sin in ignorance; it's hard to blame someone who accepts stale water from a cistern when he or she simply doesn't know where to find clean water.

πιστὸς ὁλόγος καὶ πάσης ἀποδοχῆς ἄξιος, ὅτι Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς ἦλθεν εἰς τὸν κόσμον

ἁμαρτωλοὺς σῶσαι: ὧν πρῶτόςεἰμι ἐγώ

"This saying is reliable and deserves full acceptance, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners: of which I am foremost." - 1 Timothy 1.15

The emphasis on "sinners" indicated by the italics is provided by the Greek. Greek is not a word-order language like English; in other words, one can put the words of a sentence in any order, and one determines the subject and object through the use of case endings. Since there is so much freedom, the word order a writer chooses becomes very important with respect to what he wants to stress. In this case, Paul puts amartolous (sinners), before sosai (to save); Paul is saying that Jesus came into the world to save sinners specifically, so the fact that one finds oneself before the cross in a state of fallenness is no cause for self hatred. It's to be expected. That is, in fact, why the cross exists. Paul is not literally foremost among sinners; we all are. In the same way the pain each person suffers is all the pain there is in the world, the sin each one of us indulges is all the sin there is. No one is better than another. We all stand before the cross equally fallen and are saved on exactly the same basis: faith.

Tonight many (if not most) churches worldwide will observe Ash Wednesday. It is not a goal unto itself though; it's the start of a season. Ash Wednesday is the "start here" sign on the path that is the season of lent, a path that leads not to condemnation but to glorious resurrection life. The last words of the season of lent are "it is finished." After that a new season begins with the words "Christ is risen."