Repentance

Now please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave, in place of the boy.

Let him go back with his brothers. For how can I go back to my father without the boy?

I could not bear to see the grief that would overwhelm my father. (Genesis 44:33-34)

With those words, Judah showed how much he had changed.

He was the one who had once callously suggested selling Joseph as a slave. (Genesis 37:26-27)

And when he saw the grief his action had caused his father, he ran away. (Genesis 37:33-34; 38:1)

Now his running was at an end. And in the face of the grief he knew his father would feel at losing Benjamin, he offered himself to Joseph as a slave in Benjamin’s place.

Perhaps he thought, “It’s only fair. I once sold my brother as a slave. Now I will live as a slave so that Benjamin can go free. Perhaps by doing that I can atone for what I did to Joseph.”

Repentance is not simply feeling guilty for your sin.

Repentance is not simply regretting the harm you have done to people.

Repentance requires facing what you’ve done, and if you’ve hurt someone, doing what you can to make things right.

That’s what Judah did.

Or at least tried to do.

The truth is, nothing we do can truly atone for our sins. No good work we do can ever truly blot out the stain of our sin.

But the good news is that there is someone who can.

As Judah offered himself in Benjamin’s place, one of his descendants, Jesus, offered himself in our place.

The ironic thing is that Judah, the guilty one, offered himself for Benjamin, the innocent one, that Benjamin might return to their father Jacob.

But Jesus, the innocent one, offered himself for us, the guilty ones, that we might be brought back to God the Father.

As Peter put it,

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God. (1 Peter 3:18)