The secret to all the treasures of Christ is in repentence, the loss of the self. We desire love, the love of God, but we cannot love as long as we are trying to. Because love is of God, it is his business to love. The only way to have God in us is to live a life of repentance, losing the self to be filled by the spirit.

How does one even begin to repent? How does one acknowledge that before God one is absolutely nothing at all? We don’t like to think about this because we are ever desiring to “justify ourselves.” It’s what drives us in the flesh. We seek what we desire, for in its attainment we think it validates us in our existence and brings fulfillment. But we know that this pursuit is only death. As the Apostle Paul explains, since people did not want to acknowledge God he gave them up to their own sin as judgment, for sin is death. In its attempt to fulfill the self, the self is actually seeking to destroy itself for the only true existence and life in the Father of life and creator of all things

We recognize this if we are taught by the Word, and so we seek what is good, or atleast desire to seek what is good when it is shown to us in the Word. So we strive to love, or strive to desire to love, or rather strive to know what love is that we may strive to love! For we know that God is love and that he died so that we might have his life, the life of love.

But as scripture makes clear, we do not know how to love. That’s the problem! We are selfish and short-sighted, and even if we desire to love we do not have the wisdom to know how and so we mess it all up. What then is love?

God turns everything upside down, so also he does in this matter. To love we must stop trying.

In our striving to do good, is there not a presumption that we are able to? In our attempt to love another, isn’t there the assumption that in the attempt we have the ability to succeed? But what do we know of ourselves other than that we our flesh is bound by the law of sin and death, and even when the spirit produces in us the right desire the law of sin and death rules in our members and we constantly fall short?

For this reason nothing in this world works unless we are living in repentance. Again, what is it? To repent is to quit the striving in ourselves, to quit the anxiety, the preoccupation with self-examination, the self pity, the ‘can-do’ mentality, the self-help, and to live forever appalled at our corruption and in loath of our own efforts. This is not, let’s be very clear, asceticism, or a contrary consumption with self-deprecation. For the Apostle Paul makes it clear that asceticism and severity to the body are also “self made religion.” Rather, this is an acknowledgment of the fact that as people of dust, and as living in a body condemned to death, we have absolutely nothing and can do nothing of enduring worth.

This attitude is a loath of the self that immediately wants to stop thinking about it and find something better! This is the attitude of repentance. Not just turning away from our self and the preoccupation either of our abilities or the lack thereof, but a decisive turning to the source of all things, visible and invisible, in heaven and on earth, the source of our very being and the meaning of all creation.

The reason this is so important is because in God is the only place where there is found anything of good. All things find their origin in God, and when something is separated from God, it is called dead! Therefore love also, as the governing principle of all of God’s actions, is only in him, and not in us.

For this reason our strivings and our efforts to love, to understand love and to somehow learn how to express it are bound to failure unless we stop trying so hard to produce love, and rather live a life of repentance. People were made to be filled; either they are filled with who God is, or they are filled with the desires of the flesh which are death and hatred. So one does not express love, rather, one repents. And the Spirit of God which fills the penitent heart, broken and poured out, is the one who loves.

We know that “No greater love is there than this: that a man lay down his life for his friend.” The love is not in the effort but in the giving up! And Christ laid down his life not as a striving to please man, but as a submission unto the Father. He became a man and humbled himself and became a servant even unto death, even death on a cross! His ambition was the will and Word of his father in the complete lose of himself, and in that is love for man, not by his effort, but by the will of his father through his supreme penitent pouring out of himself, he who is God, as if he were nothing, becoming sin, that is nothingness, for us.

It is often said that the Christian life is one that seeks to suffer for others. This is true in one sense, for the life of suffering is the life of Christ, and is the expression of love on earth. It is also the effect on the body of flesh of repentance. On the other hand this can easily be an asceticism as well as one seeks for severity to the body or emotions “for the sake of another.” But we know that in this life we need not look for suffering! Rather the Lord knows what we are ready to bear and prepares each individual for the trials with which he desires to refine that individual.

Our perspective of repentance should be to forget even whether or not we are suffering! We are not concerned with ourselves, but with being consumed in the life of God and his service as we loath the preoccupation with the self, be it in its exaltation or its humiliation. And have no fear, the Lord will allow you your suffering, for he turns all things upside down, and in serving him with a humble and penitent heart no doubt the body will feel pain and the heart will break. For you are putting on the new self “being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” This knowledge is the knowledge that all creation is at enmity with its creator! Its creator is Christ and the knowledge is the knowledge that led to the cross. It is a knowledge of grief! Do you seek suffering? If your heart is penitent it will suffer every time you see a self-centered or ungodly desire manifest itself in your own self! We need not seek suffering; rather we need seek to put off the old self and set our minds on things that are above. Is not putting to death “what is earthly within you” brutal enough in one life time for anyone with a desire to know godly sorrow and benefit the body of Christ?!

Did not Abraham love Isaac when he went to sacrifice him? “How so?” you might ask. Love is not recognized as much in the act as in its fruit. Love is for the good of another. I can say I love all I want and believe that I feel love, but if it is not building up the other in a way that sanctifies him and presents him fully mature in Christ, then it is not the love of God! The only good anyone can have is to have God himself, and one only has God in the manner that his Word gives himself to us. Therefore the greatest good for Isaac was to receive God’s promise through faith. If Abraham had not sacrificed Isaac on the altar he would have failed the test (though we know that God ordained that Abraham not fail through faith) and Isaac would not have received the promise. So the greatest good for Isaac, was that Abraham sacrifice him. In this we see that obeying God’s command to sacrifice Isaac was the only way Abraham could love Isaac!

But arguable Abraham was not trying to love Isaac, rather he was living repentance. He was so consumed by God’s will, knowing full well that he was nothing and was of no significance in himself and his understanding–and had left home and comfort and personal ambition far behind because of this conviction–that he only sought to be a living sacrifice unto the Lord for his will. He lived and breathed by the words of God. In this he loved, though it was of no effort of his own to do so.

This is the spirit that knows that “you have died and your life is hidden with God in Christ.” This is the spirit that knows that we are not our own, but rather those who are “slaves of righteousness” who present their members to God for the production of his good. This spirit seeks in all things only the enjoyment of God in thanksgiving.

How then is there fear? For love casts out fear, according to the Apostle John, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. Fear only arises in an elevated view of the self and its ability to change one’s life in contrast to a world that seems out of control, or the preoccupation with the inability of the self rather than a recognition of the inability of the self that leads to faith in God. To love according to this world is to cling to others, and fear their loss. It also fears the loss of control, the strange emotions and lack of understanding. But the repentant heart says that nothing is mine, and that there is nothing in this world for me to hold on to. It says that I need not understand for this life is of God’s creation according to his will, and that I am not in control at all