Why Read the Bible: To Learn Why the Season of Lent is Necessary

Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone. At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.

–Titus 3.1-8 (NIV)

In today’s passage, Paul identifies the crux of the issue regarding why we need a Lenten season. It is the human condition. Echoing the account of the Fall in Genesis 3, Paul reminds us that before the gracious intervention of God in Christ, humans and God were alienated against each other. We are foolish and disobedient, enslaved to all kinds of passions and pleasures.

We needn’t look very far in our world today to see that things have not changed since Paul’s day nearly 2000 years ago. Wars and unspeakable cruelty remain rampant. At least in western culture, we appear to be obsessed over sex, money, and power. We are fearful of each other and move with ruthlessness to protect our own little fiefdoms when we think they are being threatened by others. There are extremists who are bent on killing us and who would not hesitate to use weapons of mass destruction on us if given the opportunity. It is not a pretty picture and these are all manifestations of the human condition. When sinful and rebellious people reject and/or ignore God, all hell breaks loose. Literally.

But it is the glorious Good News of Jesus that God has not given up on us. Despite the massive folly that is produced by the human condition, God has acted decisively in our history to end our alienation and exile from him. He has done this through the cross of Christ and he has poured out his Holy Spirit on us as a down payment on this great promise.

For those whose eyes the Spirit opens to God’s Truth in Jesus, this is a wondrous and life-changing process. Powered and animated by God’s Holy Spirit, we realize our desperate and dire straights. We are horrified over our alienation from God, in part, because we realize that when we are alienated from him, we are dead people. There is no life apart from God. Period. That is why the Good News of Jesus is such a mind-blowing and wondrous thing. We realize that despite who we are, that despite our folly, our brokenness, and our rebellion, God loves us and wants us to have a relationship with him starting right here and now and lasting forever. He wants us to have a relationship with him that not even our physical death can break and that is partly what Paul is trying to get us to see in today’s passage.

But we have to do our part to bring about reconciliation to our broken relationship with God. When, by the help of the Spirit, we are able to see the real and terrifying facts of life without God, this typically causes a reaction in us. We want to do something about our fallen nature so that we can respond to God’s gracious love and invitation to us to have life. Part of what we have to do is to tell God we are sorry for all that is in us that is hostile to God and we must really mean it. In biblical terms this is called repentance, the beginning of a real season of Lent for us. But we don’t (and can’t) do any of this by ourselves. We need the help of Christ’s Spirit living in us because only Jesus can change us and help make us become the creatures he created us to be.

This, of course, requires a very healthy dose of humility because the Good News of the cross of Christ has always been an affront to human pride. We bristle at the idea that we cannot fix ourselves, that we need God’s wisdom and power expressed in the cross and through the Holy Spirit to fix us. But if we ever hope to be fixed, if we ever hope to have a real basis in which to enjoy a life-giving and life-changing relationship with God, we must acknowledge that the cross is absolutely necessary, that God has done for us in Jesus what we cannot do for ourselves. In other words, we must indeed humble and deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. These are the rules God has established and the conditions to which we must submit if we are ever to have any real hope of having life as God intended for us.

But when we do our part, when we submit to the leadership and guidance of Christ in us, our hope of glory (Colossians 1.27), everything changes. When we choose to become disciples of Jesus we have the hope of the glory of the New Creation, when Christ returns and God sets everything aright. You can read about the New Creation, in part, in Isaiah 55, 65-66 and Revelation 21-22.

But there is another dimension to having Christ in us, our hope of glory. St. John’s gospel reminds us that one dimension of Christ’s glorification was his going to the cross and anyone who follows him must likewise take up their own cross. What his means is that if we want to follow Jesus, we must humble ourselves and seek to follow Jesus through our sacrificial and self-giving love and service to others, and Paul gives us a glimpse in today’s passage of what that can look like.

Like Jesus, we are to live peaceable lives. We are to seek healing and reconciliation with our enemies because we understand our human condition and acknowledge that we too are capable of doing wrong toward others. We are to be sin-bearers who are not resolved to take vengeance on those who wrong us. We must not insist on always having things our own way because we understand and acknowledge that we are not the center of the universe. We are quick to forgive and slow to condemn. We are to work to implement God’s Kingdom in the context of our daily lives and situations by embodying Jesus and bringing his healing love to those in need whom we encounter.

And in doing so, we also proclaim  the Good News of Jesus. By our actions we proclaim that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not. By our actions toward others we declare to the powers and principalities of this world that we will not play by their rules, that we are the Lord’s and therefore play by his rules, not theirs. Make no mistake. This is hard work and it will cause us to suffer because the powers and principalities do not like rebellious people and will seek to get us to resubmit to their will for us. But we have the Spirit of Jesus, our hope of glory, living in us, strengthening us to do his will and preparing us to share his glory, both in our suffering and humble service to him and ultimately in the New Creation. Consequently, we needn’t fear suffering for the sake of Jesus, precisely because he reminds us every day that it is through our suffering that we find our glory in him. Cool.

None of this is possible until we get our minds right and acknowledge the plight of our human condition,. None of this is possible without the Power and Presence of Christ in us (the Holy Spirit), our hope of glory. And that is why we need the season of Lent–to help us begin, with the help of Jesus, to get our minds right so that we can start to enjoy life as it is meant to be lived.

When that happens, you will find joy, purpose, and meaning beyond your ability to comprehend or explain. How can you possibly find any of that when you deny your desires to act selfishly? How can you find meaning, purpose, and joy in confession and repentance, in suffering and selfless love and service to Jesus and others? Everything in our culture screams at us that this is impossible, that if we want to be really happy we have to do the things that bring us instant gratification, and it doesn’t matter who we have to hurt or what we have to do to get it.

But that is not what Scripture says. That is not what the Holy Spirit living in us says. And so who are you going to believe? The Lord Jesus or the culture in which you live? Who has the power to raise you from the dead and give you life, both now and for all eternity? Who has demonstrated his jaw-dropping love for you, even when you were ugly and unlovable in his eyes? Who promises you a real hope for glory, the kind of glory that never ends and points others to the Lord Jesus? Who offers you the awesome opportunity to be a Kingdom worker for Christ to be the very embodiment of his love for his broken and hurting world?

Being a disciple of Jesus is hard work, but it is the kind of hard work that you will love doing. You have the very promise of God and the witness of countless other disciples that you are part of something much bigger than you, and which has the ability to satisfy the deepest and best desires of your heart.