What is Lent

“WHAT IS LENT?” Luke 18:9-14

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” the man says.
“But sir, you’ve just been in a terrible car accident. You’re bleeding and have some deep bruises. There may be internal damage!”
“There’s nothing wrong with me!”
“At least have a doctor check you out, sir. We have an ambulance right here – it wouldn’t take very long..”
“I told you, there’s nothing wrong with me!”
“But sir.”
Then the man walks away from the car accident. His wife picks him up and drives him home. Later he dies from internal bleeding.

“There’s nothing wrong with me” can be a dangerous thing to say. Spiritually, it is probably the worst thing a person could say. For a person to stand before God and say, “There’s nothing wrong with me” – is incompatible with Christianity and unacceptable to God. What is the opposite of “there’s nothing wrong with me”? Wouldn’t it be “there’s everything wrong with me”?

A Christian is someone who saw that he has a nature that is sinful; and that when he does things wrong it is because of that nature.  The sin is evidence that something in him is wrong.  When he heard the mesage of Jesus Christ - that through Jesus' death on the cross at Calvary that nature could be removed, destroyed and the sin washed away - He was willing to accept that grace and to overcome that old "sin nature".

What is Lent? Lent is being that man who stood in the back of the temple, and looked down at the ground, and prayed to God, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Lent is a time for us to be like that man. A time to give up our sinful habits and attitudes, and to stand before God and thank Him for forgiveness, for washing our sins away, and giving us the grace, through the empowering Holy Spirit, to be able to turn away from our sinful past and to live new lives that are dedicated to God.