Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Introduction

As the Len­ten peri­od comes to con­clu­sion, the Gos­pel read­ings become more intense and more demand­ing. To end the lent without repent­ance is a ser­i­ous spir­itu­al offence. The fif­teenth chapter of the Gos­pel accord­ing to Luke con­tains spe­cial epis­odes that dwell on repent­ance. Tax col­lect­ors, Sin­ners and the youth who squandered his own share of his father’s prop­erty are all examples of people who erred and desired to repent and come back to the right path. While Tax col­lect­ors and sinners.…

Practical repentance

The apostle Paul notes that godly sor­row pro­duces an earn­est­ness, an eager­ness to clear one’s name, indig­na­tion, alarm, long­ing, con­cern and a read­i­ness to see justice done (cf. 2Cor 7:11). While Paul records many sep­ar­ate instances of repent­ance, the single most prom­in­ent bib­lic­al source of images of repent­ance is Psalm 51, which provides an ana­tomy of the sinner’s (in this case, David’s) souls and emo­tions after the proph­et Nath­an con­fron­ted him with the enorm­ity of what he had done in com­mit­ting adul­tery with Bathsheba and mur­der­ing her hus­band (cf. 2Sam 11–12). Psalm 52 expresses a pro­found sense of both the depth of evil pos­sible in the human heart and the con­fid­ence of one who has exper­i­enced the effects of authen­t­ic repent­ance. That is, for­give­ness, and recon­cili­ation with God. Again, the Psalm also under­lines four facets of genu­ine repent­ance: comprehension/acknowledgement wrong done; earn­est desire for justice; desire for the pres­ence of God; and changed action.

Conclusion

The par­able of the once lost son makes us think about the strange beha­viour of the fath­er. Ordin­ar­ily, we might think the fath­er is fool­ish by grant­ing the request of his son. We ima­gine our first response to the auda­city of a son who asks for his inher­it­ance his fath­er is still alive. Indig­na­tion would cer­tainly be a jus­ti­fi­able response to such a request. Yet the fath­er in this par­able agrees to hon­our the son’s request and divides his prop­erty among his two sons. This is God’s atti­tude towards us. Let us remem­ber that this is a par­able. And in this par­able, the fath­er is God while the two sons rep­res­ent our atti­tude towards God and His grace.

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the 4^th Sunday of Lent © is found in vol. III pages 182–194. See also vol. I, pages 132–149. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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