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Changing and Changes
Ever since mankind fell in the Garden of Eden and sin entered the world, God required men to change. Everyone needs to change through their life, which is growth. The Lord commands, especially believers, to grow. If they grow, they are changing.
When someone changes in and for the right and according to the truth, he will start with scripture. He changes in belief or practice because he sees the Bible teaches it. This means also submitting that truth to the challenge of godly counsel within the context of a true church. Then he will announce or declare this change.
Some changes are neutral. Those relate to Christian liberty. He has the liberty, based on scripture, to keep believing or doing what he is, but he changes to something else that is permissible. However, I’m writing here about changes toward or for the bad or toward or for the good.
In the last one hundred years, professing Christianity changed numerous times and in a multitude of ways. In general, these changes came gradually. Bad, unscriptural changes, especially to the culture, occurred in a small minority and then others tolerated it in greater and greater numbers. This influenced more change until a large majority changed to the bad.
Repenting Over the Former Wrong
If the change is scriptural, someone could explain the biblical basis for it. With that, he also repents of the former wrong. Repentance is the next and important step in the process of change. When someone changes from a belief or practice that is unscriptural to one that is scriptural, he repents of the former. Perhaps he held it out of ignorance. He still says, “I was wrong; this wasn’t what the God taught in His Word.” That is a sanctifying change, conforming to the image of Jesus Christ and letting the Word of Christ dwell in me richly, as Paul taught.
Most of the changes in the world are toward the bad. With those, most of the time, no one announced it, and even more infrequently did someone repent of the right thing that they believed or practiced before. No one tells a story like the following.
I had believed that or I had practiced that. I knew it was right, but I didn’t like it. It wasn’t anything I wanted to believe or practice any more, even though it was right. Instead of believing and doing right, I wanted to believe and do wrong. That’s why I have changed or am changing. Scripture is not the basis for the change, but my own lust. This new position will result in more popularity and a monetary advantage, so I changed to it, instead of the other one, which caused much more suffering for me.
Repenting Only Comes through Changing to the Right
If the new position is so right and came from studying the Bible, the changing person should express it. He wants people to know too, so that he can help them with the same change he made.
The person who needs to change in his belief has a wrong one. When he repents, he admits he was wrong and that he is now on a new path. Then a person, who changes for some other reason than the right one, just changes. He doesn’t admit he was wrong, because he was right before, and not now.
More to Come