There are two responses available when relationships hit rocky ground: to avoid responsibility or to take responsibility. When one party engages in the former it ruins relationships, when both engage in the latter there’s life for the relationship. The former offers despair, the latter offers hope. But it takes two parties taking responsibility for a relationship to negotiate the inevitable rocky places relationships inevitably must negotiate.
The trouble is when either or both sides of the conflict gaslight the other into submission.
Such behaviour is a sure sign of swaying out of the way of personal responsibility.
Repentance on the other hand is each person’s opportunity of response in offering hope and peace to the strained relationship.
Now, of course, before I go much further, I need to attend to the elephant in the room that is abuse. Where repentance is inappropriate, because of the nature of manipulation, intimidation, and control in the relationship dynamic. When in relationships with abusers, it’s common to face the odious situation of being DARVOed, where they become defensive and reverse victim and offender. A worthy response to abuse is boundaries to ensure safety, and boundaries ought never be gaslit as “a refusal to repent.” The blurring of lines is what sullies all parties and those who really would have repented are categorised as bad as the abuser is. The heart of the one who would repent is steadfast — their nature is to own any wrongdoing, but the nature of the one spurning a rebuke is treason against the gospel of grace.
Repentance will never be something the abuser engages in, but it is the power of humility in a person who is concerned sufficiently for the truth, for the other person, for the relationship, that they’ll reflect on their own contribution.
Repentance is the biblical prooftext of salvation. Repentance is proof that God has opened the eyes of a person’s heart, that they truly understand that God’s chief interest for us in our earthly lives is that we “love one another” as God himself did in Jesus.
Repentance is the transformation of
behaviours showing a heart of attitude change.
Too many Christians, however, do not LIVE this doctrine. They would prefer to argue the point about how persecuted they are. They would rather defend their theology. They would rather stay in their ignorance. They would rather speak than listen. They prefer pride over humility. They insist on winning, and this is the world’s way. They do not LIVE the biblical imperative of “As much as it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”
There are people we cannot live peaceably with, but this is not before we’re tried to live humbly alongside them. They by their ways of insisting on being in control have pushed us into a position where we couldn’t bear the toxic relationship any longer. It was unsustainable.
I think I must have written a lot of these kinds of articles, and I really wonder what you, the reader, thinks. More of the same! Yet, repentance is the heights, the depths, the width, and the breadth of the gospel of peace and love.
There are too many people who still insist on having their own way rather than investing in the wisdom of reconciliation through the divine agency of repentance.
It’s as clear as this: only those who can and will repent of their wrongdoing are safe in relationships. Those who cannot or will not repent show their disdain for others (and God) by forcing their relationships to be built and based on the satisfaction of their own desires.
Those who will repent are those who are mature of character, having sufficient humility to get the log out of their own eye, staying focused on the internal locus of control.
Those who will not or cannot repent exemplify an obvious disregard for others, and they exert a non-negotiable power over the relationship. They make the relationship untenable.
Repentance is the right response for relationships in conflict, for even if the other person does not repent, you win in the eyes of God. Though it’s never good to be abused, it’s better by far to be abused than be the abuser. It’s better to have the right heart and ‘lose’ than to have the wrong heart and ‘win’.
In God’s economy, nobody gets away with anything. If we’re wrong in any way, best we admit it and get justice done as far as it depends on us. If the other person chooses to lie before God, they transfer their debt they have with us over to God. And they ultimately will be required to repay it in full.
When all is said and done, there is only one way to please God, and that is by a faith of repentance — a daily commitment to do justice, to love mercy, by walking humbly with our God.
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