by Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., www.rpmbooks.org

We often talk biblically about repentance. However, we seldom think about how to use specific biblical passages to help a parishioner, counselee, or spiritual friend to come to a point of specific relational repentance.

Such scriptural conversations are “trialogues” in which you, the person you are helping, and God through His Word join together in the process of breaking down idols of the heart (see Spiritual Friends, BMH Books, for a full development of these concepts). Consider the following sample scriptural conversations as examples of how to use the Scriptures in the relational repentance process.

• What would it look like for you to return home as the Prodigal did?
• Jesus commanded the lukewarm Laodiceans to open the door of their hearts so they could return home to eat with Him. What would that look like for you?
• When the floundering Ephesians left their first love, Jesus told them to remember, repent, and return.
• Can you remember your first love for Christ?
• How does that first love motivate you to repent of your current love for false lovers?
• How does it compel you to return home?
• Desperate, despairing, and depressed, David repented and then pleaded for rest in the presence of his forgiving God (Psalms 32 and 51). What would your prayer of repentance and return sound like?
• Hosea 14 provides a classic biblical picture of relational return. Building upon the imagery of Gomer’s unfaithfulness to Hosea as a symbol of Israel’s spiritual unfaithfulness to Jehovah, Hosea concludes with the words, “Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God. Your sins have been your downfall” (14:1). Hosea uses this same word “return” sixteen times in fourteen chapters beginning with Hosea 2:7a, “She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them.”
• How has your sin been like spiritual adultery? Like spiritual unfaithfulness? Like chasing after false lovers?
• What do you want to say to Jesus, the Lover of your soul, as you return home to His heart?
• What will renewed relational faithfulness look like for you?
• Something else in Hosea 2:7 and 14:1 may not be quite so obvious. Both passages present a recognition of our false lovers’ inability to satisfy. Our sinful lovers are our “downfall;” a word suggesting weakness, lack of strength, inability, and insufficiency. Gomer says it even more clearly when she realizes that she was better off with her true husband than with her false lovers. “I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now” (Hosea 2:7b). Relational repentance is always relational return and relational dissatisfaction. The Prodigal came to his senses realizing that even his father’s hired servants were better fed than he. Jehovah urged Israel to recognize the futility of her false lovers and to acknowledge that they could neither save her nor fulfill her (Jeremiah 2).
• How has your false lover dissatisfied your soul?
• How has your false lover been your downfall?
• How has your false lover been as despicable as eating pig slop?
• Given the horrid nature of your false lover, what do you want to say to Christ, the true Lover of your soul?
• We mortify our false lovers through relational contentment in God. Returning to Jehovah, Hosea offers us words to say to Him, “Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips . . . For in you the fatherless find compassion” (Hosea 14:2a, 3b). We return content and amazed by Father’s grace and compassion.
• Have you asked God to forgive your sins of spiritual adultery?
• Have you asked God to receive you back home again graciously?
• How could you offer the fruit of your lips in praise to God?
• How could you offer the fruit of your lips in praise to your Father, in whom the fatherless find compassion?

These examples highlight the simple yet profound truth that the Bible is totally sufficient and absolutely relevant for life and godliness. In the Scriptures, we have all we need to help our spiritual friends to turn from sin and to return to God.