Will You be Observing Lent?

Are you observing Lent this year? If you are non-Catholic evangelical, you may not observe it. But many non-Catholics do. There is certainly nothing wrong with the purpose of Lent: the preparation of the believer — through prayer and self-denial — for Easter's Passion Week. Traditionally, Lent lasts forty days, thus imitating Jesus’ withdrawal into the wilderness for forty days of self-denial through prayer and fasting.

Yesterday, I mentioned Pope John Paul’s practice of self-mortification. Perhaps you are quick, as I was, to dismiss it as ‘human’ effort to attain righteousness. But the Bible does command us to deny the self, even, as Paul said, to die daily. The word “mortify” means to discipline one's body and physical appetites by self-denial or self-inflicted privation. Isn't that biblical? Paul tells us he “beat his body” into submission (1 Cor. 9:27). I don’t think Paul flailed himself with a whip but the word “beat” means “to beat black and blue.”

While Paul warns against those who teach “self abasement and severe treatment of the body” as a means to fight the flesh (Col. 2:23), he enjoins believers to suffer the loss of all things in order to know the fellowship of Christ's sufferings (Phil. 3:8, 10). At a minimum, “putting off the old self” means no longer living by your sinful flesh. But does it not also include denying ourselves ‘creaturely comforts’ that keep us from complete devotion to Jesus? We don’t deny ourselves these things to become righteous; we keep our appetites under control because it is our grateful heart’s response to the grace of God. We deny ourselves certain indulgences because we are afraid we may love them more than we love Jesus (1 John 2:15). Might that be what Pope John Paul was trying to do? Is that not the spirit of Lent?

Almost 300 years ago, Puritan writer John Owen wrote: “mortify your flesh and moderate your desires.” Now that sounds like a good standard to live by. And not just during Lent, but every day.