I collect eggs from my chicken coop everyday.
It’s an opportunity to practice philosophy: Which came first? The chicken or the egg?
Philosophy is limited, however. It only leads full circle. If there weren’t any eggs, there would cease to be chickens. And if there weren’t any chickens, there wouldn’t be any eggs.
I found myself recently with the cart before the horse, to use another farm metaphor.
Which comes first? Repentance or knowledge of the truth?
I talk to people about spiritual truths everyday, and I often try to communicate the truth about Jesus, the Gospel, and the Christian life in way that they will understand. Without a knowledge of the truth, how will we learn about Jesus, accept the Gospel, or live a Christian life?
Too often, I trust in my own words, word pictures, and reasoning to convince someone (or myself) of the knowledge of the truth.
The Apostle Paul burst my proverbial bubble.
He writes to Timothy, “And the Lord’s servant must… correct his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth…”
Repentance comes first. There’s no question.
Jesus began his ministry by summarizing the Gospel with one word: “Repent!”
We can’t understand the truth about sin, our spiritual condition, who God is, or the Christian life until we have repented. Repentance is step one.
My children and I read a book that explained the commutative property of addition.
Commutative means that no matter what order you do things in, you will still arrive at the same result. For example, the order you eat the food off of your plate is commutative (Sure, eat your green beans first!), but putting on your socks and shoes is not (Socks over shoes wouldn’t work!)!
For subtraction and division, order matters. 5-3 will give a different result than 3-5.
This is the way it is with repentance. Repentance comes before understanding spiritual truth. I often think that if I just understand my sin and how corrosive it is, I will stop doing it. It is a clever way to avoid repenting, but it is not the prescription that the Apostle Paul gave.
He told Timothy that repentance must come first, that it leads to a knowledge of the truth, and he also told him the result: “They may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.”
Philosophy hasn’t helped me answer the chicken and egg problem, but theology has. I have chosen to believe what God says in Genesis, that He created the birds of the air just by speaking. He didn’t make their eggs first. He made the bird first and commanded it to be fruitful and multiply. The chicken came before the egg.
I must also choose to believe what He says about this Christian life- repentance must preceed a knowledge of the truth, and I can pray for an attitude of repentance in my own heart and in the hearts of my brothers and sisters in Christ so that we can all grow in the knowledge of the Truth.
Sarah Dixon Young uses stories everyday to share the love of Jesus with her family, friends, and neighbors. She lives in Fort Totten, ND with her husband, Paul, and their four children. She is the author of five books, many articles and more Sunday School lessons than she can count. You can follow her adventures or get in touch at www.SarahDixonYoung.com
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