#3
Yet its meaning is not restricted to repentance in one’s heart; for such repentance is null unless it produces outward signs in various mortifications of the flesh.
The mortifications of the flesh… sounds so gruesome doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t nearly as bloody as you might think. He’s using Paul’s language of the self here. The “old man”, the “old self”, the “sinful self” is this “flesh.” Paul writes “for I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out (Romans 7:18.)” True repentance leads to the mortification, literally the “making dead” of our “old self.” “Flesh” isn’t used in just the broad sense of humanity’s selfishness and fallen nature, it is also used for specific sins: “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these (Gal. 5: 19-21a.) It is our “fleshly” thoughts and actions we are to kill! Neither Luther, Paul, nor Jesus asks us to brutalize our emotions or our physical bodies in order to truly repentant! What they do ask is that we truly repent – that is the sign that our old self is being destroyed.
The people of God have wrestled with repentance since the beginning of time. People wanting quick forgiveness with no change to their lifestyles is as old as the line of people waiting to be baptized by John. Too often just being “sorry” passes for repentance, so next time you grieve over your actions try to delve a little deeper and maybe work out what is really going on inside of you, and then work to experience a deeper cry to God… a cry of repentance.