The Freedom of Repenting

17 Jan The Freedom of Repenting

My moral train wreck

Many years ago when I was in seminary, there were two freight trains on the track of my life, rushing straight toward each other for a head-on collision. The first train was my study of the Hebrew language, the original language of the Old Testament. Hebrew is a difficult language to master. Rule number one in studying Hebrew? Never get behind! Period. If you do, you’re done for. It takes all the time you have to keep up, and you cannot keep up and catch up at the same time.

I was getting behind. Why? The other freight train on my track, money. In addition to having trouble with Hebrew, I was also having trouble with money. In fact, I had too much Hebrew and not enough money! So when I had the chance to work overtime near the end of a semester, I took it. I began working forty to forty-five hours a week just before final exams at the end of my second year. I knew it was a risk, but I didn’t know what else to do.

I was able to keep up with all my classes except Hebrew. I got behind and couldn’t catch up.

The course rule was this: No matter what your daily grades and other exam scores were, you had to pass the final exam or you could not pass the course. And you had to pass the course to graduate from seminary. It was offered only once a year, so if I failed this course, I would have to stay in seminary another year just to make up one Hebrew course. That was unthinkable. I couldn’t afford it financially or emotionally. To say the least, a lot was riding on this final exam.

When the fateful day came, the instructors herded all the sections of second-year Hebrew into one small room to take the test at the same time. The room was too small. The chairs were the old-fashioned wooden kind with a right-armed desk top. To get us all in, they had to push the chairs so close together that they almost touched.

Did you know that if you cup your hand on your forehead just above your eyes, you can look through the cracks in your fingers and see perfectly clearly, though no one can see where you’re looking? You can appear to be concentrating diligently on the paper on your desk, but you can see the papers on both sides of you if you switch hands. The guy on my left was a whiz kid. He was translating the Hebrew with little more effort than it would take me to read Dr. Seuss.

I wrote what he wrote, and then I double- checked his accuracy with the guy on my right, who was no slouch either. I even slipped in a few deliberate mistakes of my own, so my paper wouldn’t be exactly like anyone else’s. I wasn’t greedy. I didn’t need an A. All I needed was a C.

I thought I was saved. I would pass the course and graduate.

My cheating brought only minor twinges of conscience, because I felt my personal circumstances had backed me into an impossible corner. I told the Lord I was sorry (I actually was), and went on with my life.

My moral recovery

Several months later I had the profound misfortune of attending a seminar in which the leader talked about cleansing your conscience and how a clear conscience is the basis of all moral authority. My having cheated on the final exam took over my mind and heart as he spoke. I began to get uncomfortable. I began to fidget. My pulse accelerated. The Holy Spirit was putting me in a spiritual vice and cranking up the pressure: “If you want to be like Jesus, you cannot cheat your way out of problems! Christians’ lives cannot be built on dishonesty! You have sinned against Me, violated the standards of the school, and compromised your own moral authority!”

I was in big trouble, and I knew it. Again, I was faced with two impossible choices. Either I could spit in the face of God and reject His work in my heart, or I could go back to my Hebrew professor and confess to him that I had cheated. I felt a little of what David wrote about in Psalm 32 after one of his great sins:

When I kept silent, my bones grew old
Through my groaning all the day long.
For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;
My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. (vs. 3-4)

After an eternity of wrestling with God, hoping He’d let me off the hook, promising that I would never do it again – and having God stonewall me – I finally broke. I confessed my sin on a deep level, acknowledged my lack of trust in Him, asked for forgiveness, and agreed with God to make it right.

I made an appointment with my Hebrew professor to tell him what I had done. I didn’t know what would happen. At the least, I would fail the class, have to stay in school another year to make it up, and graduate a year late. At worst, I could be kicked out of seminary. Maybe my transgression would go on my transcript, and whenever I tried to get a ministry position, a letter from the seminary would say, “Overall, he was a decent student, but the little stinker will cheat if you let him. Keep your eye on him.” Maybe they would stamp that on my forehead?

I confessed the whole sordid affair and when I finished, my professor said, “Well Max, I think you have learned a lesson more important than Hebrew. Since your grades leading up to the final exam were okay, I’ll make a deal with you. Because there were extenuating circumstances, I will give you an incomplete for this course, and if you take the next required Hebrew course and pass it, I will give you a ‘C’ for this course. How is that?”

My first impulse was to clutch his ankles and weep quietly on his shoe tops. Instead, I merely said, “That would be fine. Thank you.” And I walked out of his office.

My moral freedom

I felt deeply cleansed. Pure. Holy. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. I wanted to run and jump and dance. The burden was lifted. The chains were broken. I was free!

I was so deeply grateful to God, not because the worst hadn’t happened. I was prepared for that. I was filled with joy because I was forgiven. God would not let me sweep my sin under the rug where it would rot like old cheese. He loved me enough to make me go through the pain of correcting it Jesus’ way. Now there was nothing between God and me (1 John 1:9), there was nothing Satan could use to manipulate me into falling deeper (Ephesians 4:27), and no one could ever say to me, “You sinned and you never made it right.”

We don’t always have to confess our sin to someone else. If the sin is just between God and us, we need only go to Him. But if our sin involves someone else, depending on circumstances, the Lord may ask us to confess it to make it right. If so, He will let us know (Revelation 3:19).

The Lord has used that experience deeply in my life. In fact, there have been times when the aversion to having to confess was enough to keep me from sinning in the first place!

If we don’t repent when we sin, we lose our moral authority and compromise our spiritual future. There’s freedom in repenting!

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