People always seek to justify themselves. It is easier to justify one’s self than it is to admit that one could be wrong. We have been this way since Adam and Eve. The whole description of the confrontation with God in the Garden of Eden begins with a scene of denial and self-justification.
But, if the denial and justification go far enough, eventually the whole structure of what is true about humans gets turned upside-down. The comic above points to what happens. Eventually, it is taken for granted that the normal human condition is self-serving, greedy, and selfish. Those who engage in “altruistic” pursuits are thought of as the strange people rather than as what should be our normal human response to tragic situations.
This is the reason why the word repentance means a turning away from sin. That is, in this topsy-turvy world a person who repents is a person who begins to look at life from the perspective of one who is right-side up rather than upside-down. We cannot begin to understand God until we are looking at life correctly.
But, when we go to repent, we are in the same position as the person on an inversion table or in inversion boots who gets stuck and cannot get back up. We decide to get right side up, but suddenly we find out that we are stuck in an upside down position. It is here that the Holy Spirit begins his work of regeneration in our lives. He begins to turn us right-side up and we begin to learn to look at this world from God’s perspective. It is a lifetime learning experience, one that goes on until the final change, after our death.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
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