Tim Keller has a new book called The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith . I just finished listening to his sermon “The Prodigal Sons” from Luke 15:11-32. In it he has a wonderful observation about the repentance of the Pharisees whom Jesus was telling the parable to.  Keller said:

You need to learn how to repent of something besides sins. The younger brother comes back and repents of everything he did.  That’s what a lot people think you should do.  You repent of your list.  But do you see how radical this parable is?  The elder brother is lost but he’s got nothing on his list…So how does a person who’s lost, who’s got no sins on the list, get saved?  And of course there’s no such thing as a sinless person.  We know that.  But here’s the point: When Pharisees sin, of course they repent and they feel terrible some times.  But when they’re done repenting they’re still Pharisees.  The difference between a Christian and a moralist is this – Christians also repent of what they’ve done wrong. A Christian is also one who has learned to repent for the reasons you did right…Christians recognize that the reasons for even the right things that they do is self-justification and the desire to control God and others.  And when that penny drops; when you begin to see that you desire to be savior and lord, not only of the bad things you’ve done but also over the good things, when you see that changes everything.  It’s called a new birth because it’s so radical.

How do we receive this new birth?  By placing our faith in Jesus who paid the penatly on the cross; the penatly that we sinners owed.  Keller said on the cross Jesus cried “My God, my God” instead of “My Father, my Father” because at that point he was not being treated as a son so that you and I could be.

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