What is Lent? Lent (coming from the Anglo Saxon word meaning “spring”) is the forty-day period (not counting Sundays) leading up to Easter Sunday, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus (and the great hope of eternal life for all who abide in him). The forty-days correspond to Jesus’s forty-days of temptation in the wilderness.
In the Christian tradition, Lent is a time of self-examination and repentance accompanied by self-disciplining spiritual practices such as fasting. It is a time for Christians to identify with Jesus in his suffering, death, and burial within the larger context of the great hope for future resurrection and new life. Once again, at the heart of Christianity is a paradox—life through death.
But why fast? Why go through a time of mourning? Isn’t that stuff gloomy and sad? Isn’t our faith intended to download all sorts of positive things into our hearts like eternal joy and peace? Well, the purpose of Lent, very generally speaking, is to remind us that our freedom from sin-guilt along with the power of sin over our lives came at a great cost—the death the Jesus. The practice of spiritual disciplines such as fasting, prayer, confession, and repentance reminds us of Jesus’s teaching to all his disciples that in order to follow him and inherit eternal life one must take up their cross. Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matt 16:24, NIV) He goes on to say that, “If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.” (Matt 16:25, NLT).
An obvious question that follows on the heels of this teaching is why must we suffer in order to follow Jesus? The answer is that suffering is a necessary part of following Jesus because every one of us has a rebellious heart (i.e., the sinful nature). We are, by nature, rebellious. We cannot help to be rebellious. All of us want things to go our way and we don’t want anyone telling us how to live our life because, after all, it is our life. This is true, it is our life, but God has gifted us this life and that gift is designed to be used a certain way, and when it isn’t, it’s lost in death.
Using powerful word-images, the New Testament calls this condition “the former man”, or “the flesh” (see Romans 8 for more details). This “former man”, or rebellious heart, is constantly fighting against the sustaining and empowering presence of God in our lives. It resists God every step of the way. It never stops the attempt to overthrow the reign of God in our lives. Thankfully, God gives believers his Holy Spirit to overcome it (again, see Romans 8).
It is precisely this struggle that is the cause of Lent in the Christian calendar. Lent is a time in which the believer accentuates concentration on cooperation with the Holy Spirit to put to death the former man and to prepare for resurrection with Jesus through the Holy Spirit.
John Wesley puts it well with this,
Vain hope! The child of Adam should ever expect to see the kingdom of Christ and God without striving, without agonizing first to “to enter in at the strait gate”! That one who was “conceived and born in sin,” and whose “inward parts are very wickedness,” should once entertain the thought of being “purified as his Lord is pure” unless he “tread in his steps.” and “take up his cross daily.” (John Wesley, “The Circumcision of the Heart”)
