2023-03-16 A Meditation on Godly Grief

“For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.” (2 Co 7:10 ESV)

To have dealt with sin is to emerge from a war, scathed in some way, odd in another way, for either we are recognized as walking in the Spirit, or we are (more likely) seen to be uncouth. To be Spirit-led is to have marks on our soul, God-given marks, that question any convenient explanations or lazy thought. Convenience spells tolerance for things contagious and that the wise warrior fasts away from their center of being, that is, that the wise warrior repents of, and asks for God’s aid in. But this is no easy or instinctual exchange: when we give up sin, we are in the midst of the war; we emerge oddly touched, oddly awkward in word and deed in the locus of where that sin once dwelt. Our bodies and souls become a living witness (a burning man or woman, a woman or man conflagrant but not consumed, a woman or man representative of this new notion called liberation).

So we soldier ahead, remembering that God is calling for strong men, strong women, to juggle two sides of the coin, honestly to address flawed and errant and irregular life, but to do so with eyes on the prize, steadfast and strong, mighty for the battle. To be put on display is to cope with God’s non-simplistic race to our side. God sees how we are tempted to follow “plans” and “proposals” and in general any sense of “project” that reassures us we can work on our salvation. But this work meets the one speaking of it head-on: are they in denial? Is sin leading them to Jesus-denying convenient thought? To plans and proposals and projects? See instead the joyous faith that falls into unseen but trusted arms, no plans nor clutching hold on what shall soon be, but faith for the corner taken invisibly and in trust.

So apart from listening to each other, we discern in each other: this one is party-pooper because they have unrepented lust, or some personal gripe still not taken as license and occasion to glorify the One, Jesus, who fasted in His Lenten time of preparation, and who was from thenceforth strange and uncouth, who troubled disciples with refusal at times to accept food, who drew near to the opposite sex as friend not passionate desiring one. Who drew near to disciple as friend, not any simpler fleshy exchange. And the professional evangelical too is probably in need of healing from a Law-addled pulpit. To have courage to profess the unknown rather than the pat and known. To cultivate that type of personal qualms and personal compunction, to acknowledge the futility of the race-on-man’s-terms, and, liberated, to discern “Oh, yeah!” these nice ways of repenting once more, of actually again aiming High, Lifted Up, Magnificent, soldier in the mix and milieu, the one who “gets it”, the cause for celebrating new leadership, headship under that earned mantle: you were running well, but sin is this hour hindering your pronouncements. Repent, and begin to live once more into your calling!