As my Jewish brethren are observing Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, this month, the weight of their sin will be heavy upon them. In some synagogues, the congregants will beat their chests as they proclaim their unrighteousness before God. The liturgy will include a detailed prayer listing almost every transgression imaginable. Guilt will abound.
But is the Lord really exalted by our admission that we have sinned and fallen short of His glory? Does He really want our repentance, teshuvah in Hebrew, instead of recognition of His love for us?
Unfortunately, the average Jewish person doesn’t have a grasp of God as a loving Father, a father like the one Yeshua described in Luke 15 who forgave his (prodigal) son in spite of his foolish iniquities; evenmore so, a Father who would sacrifice His own Son for the sin of the whole world.
So at Yom Kippur, the one day of the year when God forgave the sin of the whole nation of Israel, the required repentance for many Jewish people has taken on a works mentality. The thinking is, “If I fast, go to synagogue all day, and confess my sin, then I will have earned God’s forgiveness.”
While their repentance may be sincere, they are missing the fullness of God’s free gift of grace and mercy which Jesus provided by fulfilling key elements of this sacred day. Lev 16 details the requirement of two goats to be offered before the Lord, one sacrificed, its blood poured out for the sin of the nation, and one kept alive. The High Priest laid hands on the live goat, imputing into it all the sins of the nation, then sent it out of the camp, never to return.
Messiah Yeshua shed His blood and bore our sins (1 Peter 2:24) once for all, thereby changing the whole perspective of repentance. Because God has forgiven us, we don’t have to merit His forgiveness anymore. As the Jewish Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
Without this understanding, Yom Kippur repentance (or any repentance before God for that matter) is like constantly taking introductory college courses but never getting a degree. Yet the Lord desires for us to graduate into His glorious plans for us, unencumbered by the sin of our flesh.
However, that obviously does not exempt us from seeking to walk in the paths of righteousness. Again, Paul’s writings in Romans 6:1-2 make that perfectly clear as he admonishes, “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not!” But by acknowledging John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life,” we can approach repentance with a different perception.
Typically, the act of repentance was an effort to avoid punishment, biblically that would be the wrath of God. The Hebrew Scriptures are replete with calls for repentance, and so is the New Testament. Jesus even starkly warned His Jewish audience in Luke 13:3, “but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” However, as noted in John 3:16, believing in Yeshua brings salvation. That’s because proclaiming Him as Savior entails repentance, since we can’t get forgiveness of our sin unless we recognize our sin.
In Acts 2:38, the Jewish men who had just witnessed the out pouring of the Holy Spirit and were cut to the heart by the Jewish Apostle Peter’s oration, asked what they should do, he said “Repent.”
Now here’s the paradigm shift. Because Jesus paid the complete price for our sin, we are able to repent out of love, not obligation. When we have hurt someone we love, we have remorse and want to make amends. When we accept how much we are loved by God, we are compelled to repent.