I was having a conversation about Family Worship this week, and the point was made (by someone else, but I thought I’d pass it on) that you need to have some structure in place in family life if you’re going to be able to do this regularly. Establishing a familiar and consistent routine around part of the day, into which this fits, makes life a lot easier in the long run!
There are two or three main ideas at work in this chapter, any of which could occupy your time as a family, or provide a focus for a conversation, or time of teaching, worship and prayer. The first two are deeply intertwined, and they are the idea of our growing to be like Jesus, and the place of ‘godly sorrow that brings repentance’. We can’t grow to be like Jesus (or as Paul puts it in Ch.7, purify ourselves…perfecting holiness…) without repentance…
I’d suggest that the most helpful way of talking about repentance is in fact as part of the process of change. It is one of the things we do, a habit, through which the Holy Spirit is at work to cleanse us. I suspect it is a forgotten art, and that this whole Chapter might consequently feel a bit morbid. That would be tragic, for it is meant to breathe an atmosphere of liberation and joy. And for Paul, the fact that the Church responded this way to I Corinthians is ample evidence of the genuineness of their faith, the reality of the Spirit’s presence in their midst, and the motivation for Paul’s own confidence and encouragement.
A key idea to get across is that there are places in our lives and characters where we are not yet like Jesus. These ‘contaminate’ us (7:1) – even as Christians, and Paul tells us here that we need to be active in purifying ourselves. One way of helping younger children to visualize this might be with a water-filter. There are a number of Youtube videos showing you how to make a simple filter. Here’s a short one…
It’s quite effective as a picture of what the Spirit wants to do in purifying us from all that contaminates us, so that we can be more like Jesus. How? as we (re-)learn the art of repentance. Paul gives us quite a powerful picture in vv.8-10. When we are ‘found out’ for something we have done wrong, we can easily feel sorrow. But Paul warns us that we need to be careful to distinguish between worldly sorrow and godly sorrow! Worldly sorrow is focused on ‘me’… it fears about consequences… how this situation will affect me, my loss of reputation, my own sense of shame or disappointment, my own grief at loss – either because of the impact of my behavior on others, or perhaps just the loss of my own sense of virtue? It leads to defensives, anger and resentment.
Godly sorrow will always lead us to take responsibility for what we’ve done, rather than shift blame; it will accept the truth about who I am, rather than seeking to justify myself; and most importantly of all, it will lead me to the cross, and to a renewed experience of forgiveness and grace.
Repentance doesn’t’ stop with that experience of forgiveness. It seeks to be different in the future. If you think about the Confessions we use in Church, there is always a section about being different going forward. We can have a different future, we can take a different path. The idea of repentance has its origins in changing our mind, or changing direction…
Our Catechisms do help us reflect on this:
My first books and more… Q&A 93-94 (p.199)
To Be a Christian Q&A 13 but you might find Q&As 357-364 more helpful in terms of the ongoing experience of repentance and transformation.
when our children were young we got the idea across by having them march in one direction, and at the call ‘repent’ they would pivot and make a U-turn, and start marching in the opposite direction! It’s a very simple way of getting the idea of ‘turning back to God’ and walking again in his ways...
another breaks the act of repentance into 5 steps:
1. listen to what the Spirit says through the Word of God
2. Say Sorry – don’t try to hide!!
3. Ask forgiveness
4. Make it right
5. Go and Grow… how can we make different decisions in the future.
You might want to adapt the idea. But one of the things I’ve found over the years is that as we teach these skills of discipleship in our family worship times, we can draw on them when the opportunity arises. If you have drawn a poster with those five steps on it, then next time your child(ren) is disobedient, or is doing something they know is wrong, you have a ready-made strategy for dealing with it.
And of course, if we model this as parents, our children will be able to see and imitate us in this as in so many other aspects of life.
The other emphasis in this chapter that we could focus on is the emotional lives of Christians, which is on display throughout this chapter. We are given insight into the Church’s emotional life as well as that of both Paul and Titus. We are used to thinking of our volitional lives (our will & the decisions we make) and perhaps our intellectual lives being redeemed (be transformed by the renewing of our minds), but what about our emotional lives? The fruit of the Spirit includes ‘…self-control’. It would be interesting to read through a Gospel (or part of a Gospel) and track Jesus’ emotional reactions to what is going on around Him… maybe print off a section, and use different coloured pens or emojis to identify different responses
Depending on our kids, and where they are with self-awareness, tracking our emotions for a day and seeing how they map onto Christ’s could be an interesting exercise.
but more specifically, back in II Cor.7… the coloured pen / emoji exercise would be a great way of reading this passage together. But look more closely, and see what provokes Paul’s reactions, and how he feels about the Church… Given the state of the Church at Corinth, how can you explain his relationship with it..? What can we learn about our own engagement with Church, and about how we should feel? …and respond to the life of the MIE?