We Owe It to God

I almost started this by saying “Happy New Year!”  Why would I do that, you ask?  After all, it’s still September.  And that’s true.  But for churches, there’s a way in which the new year starts in September.  After all, that’s when we start church school again after a summer break.  It’s when we start youth groups.  It’s when we start confirmation class.  It’s when the choir starts again.  All kinds of things get re-started in September.  In many ways, for the church, September is the start of the new year.

One of the things people do when a new year starts, of course, is make New Year’s resolutions.  We look at our lives, we see things that need to be changed, and we resolve to change them.

That, of course, is a good thing to do.  It’s part of the definition of repentance, really.  What happens when we go to God to repent of our sins?  We acknowledge our sins to God.  We acknowledge the things about our lives that need to change, the sins we need to stop committing.  We ask for God’s help to no longer commit those sins, and we resolve to stop committing them.

But there’s one important part of repentance that’s left out of the process of New Year’s resolutions.  Maybe you’ve already figured out what it is.  It’s forgiveness.  In order to be able to stop committing our sins, we need to ask God for forgiveness for committing them in the first place.

Maybe you’re asking why.  I mean, if we’ve acknowledged that we’ve done wrong and we promise not to do it any more, shouldn’t that be enough?  Why do we need to ask for forgiveness?

Well, there are a lot of reasons.  I’m not going to hit them all here.  But here’s one we don’t think of sometimes.  We need to ask God for forgiveness because we owe that to God.  After all, when it comes to sin, that’s who we’ve really done wrong against.  We may have hurt other people, too, and we may need to ask for forgiveness from them as well.  But when we sin--when it’s not just a mistake, not just an accident, but is truly sin--we’ve wronged God.  And so we need to ask for forgiveness from God.

You see, asking for forgiveness from those whom we’ve wronged is an acknowledgement, not just that we messed up, but that we truly hurt someone.  And it’s a statement, not just that we’re not going to do it again, but that we’re going to do what we can to make it right.  We may not be totally able to do that, but we’re going to do what we can.  What it is, really, is a sign of respect for the one whom we’ve wronged.  And that, simply put, is the right thing to do.

We owe that to God.  We owe it to God, when we sin, to do what we can to make it right.  We owe God as much respect as we can give.  We actually owe God more respect than we can give, but all we can give is as much as we can.  God is worthy of that respect.  Simply put, it’s the right thing to do.

So, even though it’s not the new year, let’s take a look at our lives.  Let’s acknowledge our sins, and ask God for forgiveness.  Then let’s resolve to change and ask God for help to change.  It’s the right thing to do.