Times of Faith Blog

Why Repentance Feels Hard and Why It Shouldn't Through the years, I’ve wrestled with the word “repentance” and its layers. Growing up, it felt like a scary equation: you mess up, face the consequences, and then desperately hope for God’s forgiveness. My young mind concluded the safest route was simply to never make any mistakes – thus, never needing to repent. I’m sure you can imagine how that turned out. In my late teens and twenties, I found myself in the thick of scrupulosity, an exhausting, never-ending quest for a flawless version of myself. Ironically, I even saw perfectionism as something I needed to repent of, leading to the absurd goal of being perfect at not being a perfectionist. Oh, boy! As I got older, I was introduced to the idea of repentance being like the Hebrew word teshuvah (תְּשׁוּבָה). I encountered the Hebrew word teshuvah (תְּשׁוּבָה), which offered a new lens on repentance. It shifted from a punitive measure for wrongdoing to a gentle course correction. ...

Jesus Christ: The Perfect Exemplar

Christians believe in and follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. We want to be just like him. But how? We can't all move to Israel, give no thought to food or shelter, and spend our days walking among others healing and blessing them. I think that in order for us to truly understand how we should be like Jesus Christ, we need to understand some key words including (a) exemplar, (b) follow, and (c) emulate. EXEMPLAR As the literal son of God, Jesus Christ has many names. One of those names is exemplar. An exemplar is defined as someone who serves as an excellent model to follow. Jesus explained why he is an exemplar when he said "I am the way, the truth, the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14:6). As I study the life Jesus Christ, my testimony grows that he truly is an exemplar and someone to follow. FOLLOW Christ said, "Come, follow me." (Luke 18:22). The word follow can have several meanings. One...

Jesus Never Asked You to Obey the Commandments

Pop Quiz! How times does the phrase “obey the commandments” appear in the New Testament? If you read the email subject line, you probably already guessed the answer, which is zero. Okay, how about “obey my commandments”? Still zero. Are you surprised? Doesn’t it seem like at some point Jesus said, “If ye love me, obey my commandments?” He didn’t. What he said was... “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” (see John 14:15, emphasis added) Note: I think there is a difference between obeying commandments and keeping commandments. After a year of pondering and studying what it means to “keep the commandments,” I wrote a blog article about my thoughts. I’ll include it at the end of this newsletter. If Jesus never asked us to obey the commandments, was Jesus obedient? I would say most definitely. When I brought this concept up in class recently, one of my students made this comment. “When my father was raising us, he would tell us, ‘We don’t obey commandments, we obey the Comman...

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