Many a person spends his life being right. He is frustrated that other people just can’t admit that he is right. Contacts with friends and family grow cool and infrequent. Despite his care to protect himself from dishonest business people, he has often gotten the short end of a deal. He is not happy, but he has never been the one who was in the wrong.

Often such a person, towards the end of his life, feels a great loneliness; not even God sympathizes with him. Sometimes that causes his to open his eyes and see that things have not been as he thought. Proving that he is right doesn’t matter any more. His problems were mostly all his own doing. What he needs is peace and fellowship with God and with his family and friends.

This is called repentance and when one repents without condition, God forgives. And when God forgives, people do too. Relationships are healed; peace and joy that were maybe a dim memory now warm his heart and guide his life.

Such a thing is wonderful to see. But it doesn’t happen to everyone, neither do we have to live in misery for years before it happens. We can make the choice much sooner, preferably in our youth, to abandon our pride and selfish desire to be right.

I believe that was what Leenaert Bouwens meant when someone came to him to request baptism and he replied “Go home and die first. I never baptize living people.”

Leenaert Bouwens was a sixteenth century Anabaptist preacher who baptized 10,000 people during the years of his ministry. He knew that we cannot be a Christian until our pride and self-righteousness die and are thrown on the bonfire of repentance.