Sharing "Journey to the Cross" by Paul David Tripp.
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Lent is not about what you will give of yourself to God, but about what he, in grace, has so bountifully given to you.
The husband had been caught in adultery. It was humiliating for him and devastating to his marriage. He didn’t confess until he was caught. Jerry and his wife came to me for help. They both seemed to want to save their marriage. He spoke words of brokenness to me and seemed to be repentant. Mary was willing to hang in there as long as Jerry was turning from the entanglements of sin and turning toward his Lord and her with new commitments of faith. But as I continued to meet with them, I began to be concerned. Truly repentant people are overwhelmed with the rebelliousness and destructiveness of what they have done, while at the same time, they are blown away by the magnitude and consistency of God’s mercy and grace. They tend to experience the love of God in deeper and fresher ways as they tend to embrace in new ways the truth that they could never do anything to earn that love.
But when I would meet with Jerry, the thing Jerry talked about the most was Jerry. He talked about all the things he was giving up for the Lord, the length and depth of his new devotional life, the Christian books he had purchased, and the new ways he was serving his wife. He kept telling me how he was “all in” for the Lord. The more he told me, and the more he patted himself on the back, the less I believed it. It wasn’t, “God, be merciful to me a sinner,” but rather, “God, look at what I am doing for you.” He had an attitude of the heart that the grief of real confession and the humility of true repentance would never produce. When I began to write this devotional, I thought of Jerry, and here’s why.
The season of Lent is about offering yourself to God in new or deeper ways. It’s about new submission and deeper devotion. Lent is about mourning the ways your heart has wandered. It is about confessing the hold the world still has on you or the places where you have succumbed to temptation’s draw. It is about identifying places in the heart where you need to give yourself more fully to God. There is a necessary self-focus to Lent because you are examining your heart, your life, your relationships, and your daily decisions to see where God is calling you to give up something or to take up something in devotion to him. Lent is about willing self-sacrifice as you pursue the one who made the ultimate sacrifice for you. Lent isn’t a formal season of temporary sacrificial devotion, but rather an opportunity to address things in your life that need to be addressed but that often get lost in the busyness and distraction of everything else you’re doing. But here’s what is so important to understand about Lent: it is not about what you are doing or are committing yourself to do for God, but about what he has done and is now doing for you.
The story of Lent is the world’s most important and most wonderful generosity story. Lent is about one who not only lavishly gives what is desperately needed, but who also offers himself as the ultimate gift. But the story of Lent is not just about generosity; it is the one story where the giver and the gift are the same person. The hope and security of Lent is not to be found in the size and consistency of what you give to God; it is about the stunning gifts of grace he has given and will continue to give you. It is God’s generosity that is primary and transformative, not ours. We love because he first loved us. We give because he first gave to us. We lay down our lives because he first laid down his. We are willing to suffer for his sake because he first suffered for us. We obey because in his obedience we are given hope. We fight temptation because he fought it and defeated it on our behalf. We are willing to humble ourselves and serve because he left the splendor of eternity, humbled himself, and served up to - and through - the point of death. Everything we ever give of ourselves happens only because of the primacy of his gifts to us. He is the ultimate giver. No matter how great our sacrifices or how much we give, we will never give to him the magnitude of what he has given us. As we seek to give ourselves more fully during Lent, every gift we give is a celebration of the transformative storehouse of what he has given us. Lent is all about sacrifice: his, not ours.
Pride in the sacrifices you are making not only crushes the spirit of this wonderful season of spiritual reflection and growth, but it also quenches the work that the Holy Spirit would do in your heart as you open it up to him. Pride doesn’t mix well with the grief over sin that propels confession. Pride doesn’t sit well with the humility that fuels true repentance. A self-congratulatory attitude turns sacrifice into a reason to convince yourself that you’re pretty righteous after all, and righteous people don’t need the divine sacrifice that this season is all about. Pride flips the Lenten season on its head.
Now, here’s the struggle. Whenever you focus on yourself, even in examination and confession, pride lurks right around the corner. It is so tempting to take credit for desires, choices, and actions that you would never have taken if you had not been rescued and changed by God’s grace. If pride is self-congratulatory, then it is also self-reliant. But the whole message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that you and I were not created to be self-reliant, and in our struggle with sin, we have no ability on our own to defeat what needs to be defeated. This is why the sacrifice of Christ was essential. He came to do for us what we could not do for ourselves, even in our deepest moments of sacrifice and devotion.
So in this season of new and deeper sacrifice and devotion, resist the temptation of turning the tables. That is, don’t make the lavish gifts of another become about what you give. You can’t stand at the foot of the cross and consider the magnitude of what was done there and hold onto the pride of personal sacrifice. Pray for grace to make every sacrifice, every gift given, a celebration of both the ultimate gift and the most generous giver.
GOING DEEPER
Reflection Questions
1. Jerry’s story illustrates an important test for genuine repentance. Would you pass the test? Is your repentance more about what you have done or what God has done?
2. In what ways does Lent often lead to pride?
3. What are some practical ways to guard yourself against the tendency for the Lenten season—and spiritual disciplines any time of the year—to become a source of pride?
Read James 4:6–10, and let it lead you to genuine sorrow over your sin.
6 And he gives grace generously. As the Scriptures say, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
7 So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. 9 Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.
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