Blog
Jan 28, 2026
Preaching Lent 2026: Balancing Repentance and Grace
Do you detect a little discomfort in your congregation when it comes to Lent? Maybe you feel it, too? We dedicate a whole season to repentance, confession, and spiritual disciplines like fasting, leading up to the cross and resurrection. Does this undermine the truth that forgiveness is a free gift and that there is no way to “do Lent” so well that we earn Easter?
We feel that the TPW 2026 sermon series, At the Mercy of the Mercy of Christ, prepared for us by Rachel and Casey Clark, provides a powerful picture of the way repentance and grace harmonize in the life of Christians during Lent. Repentance is brought to the forefront with the theological depth to understand how repentance is a response to grace rather than a means of purchasing it.
In this post, we’ll explore the theological heart of this series. Whether you’re considering preaching through the series or just looking for some Lenten preaching inspiration, we hope this helps you embrace the themes of this season. For pastors who want comprehensive weekly guides — commentary, quotes, illustrations, discussion questions, and liturgy — the series provides everything you need in one place to start.
The Sin Problem
Most Ash Wednesday services include Psalm 51 as a reading. There are no deeper expressions of the shame and sorrow at sin in Scripture, but it is tinged with hope that God will restore the psalmist. This is where the series starts.
Starting with Psalm 51 instead of Genesis 3 begins in media res, with the story already underway (with the Star Destroyer shooting at the fleeing rebel ship, if you will). But this works for Ash Wednesday. We have come to confess and (narratively speaking) we start at the lowest point possible, with the conflict clear as day, and felt deeply as we read and pray David’s words. They are vulnerable. They bear his soul (and ours) as he acknowledges his fall from the path of righteousness. He is a model of authenticity with his visceral example of confession.
As Rachel writes of the psalm, it is almost a template for how we are to confess our sin:
The Psalm is deeply personal, but the specific event of David’s adultery is not mentioned in the Psalm itself, making it a model for prayer for all people in any circumstance. Its introductory text, the inclusion in the Psalter, and the last two verses of the Psalm (which make reference to temple worship) provide evidence that this Psalm was used long after by the worshiping community at large to express its repentance.
David’s presumption of unmediated access, the way the psalm looks forward toward Jesus, the trust, and even joy latent amidst the deep sorrow is a perfect beginning to Lent. Above it all, David recognizes that he is at God’s mercy — a position we occupy as well.
And as a powerful liturgical angle, this is a passage to pray corporately during your service. That adds another layer of depth to your lesson.
(Preview this Ash Wednesday guide for free →)
Casey’s guide to the First Sunday in Lent follows up with Romans 5:12-19, which layers on theological background for the practice of confession that we have already started a few days earlier. We learn that our sin-problem is bone-deep. Paul takes us back to Genesis 3 and the Fall: true to our heritage, we are unrighteous.
This is bad news. But the bad news is surpassed by the Good News. A new Adam surpasses the old: he brings us his righteousness as our new inheritance.
Paul allows you to underwrite the confessions from Ash Wednesday with the free gift of Christ, teeing up the next phase of the series.
(Looking for all our Ash Wednesday resources in one place? →)
God the Rescuer
We lose something powerful when we ignore the psalms. Rachel’s guide to the Second Sunday in Lent focuses on Psalm 121 and uses it to show us that God’s character as rescuer isn’t new. It is who he is. This enables us to move, in the Third Sunday’s message, to focus on Romans 5:1-11, where our unworthiness of rescue is used to demonstrate the breathtaking love demonstrated by Jesus in dying for us to achieve the reconciliation with God that we desperately need.
The free work of God through Christ for us is on display. You can emphasize and explore the way in which we repent and confess during Lent, not to earn the grace we are given — how could we earn such a gift? Instead, we respond with gratitude. As Casey writes,
Why is it that the love of Jesus is so incomparable? While God is incredibly patient, he is never waiting for us to be worthy of his love. And so it is with Christ, who did not wait for us to be worthy of sacrifice. If that was the requirement, the “right time” would never have come. The right time was not dependent on us, at all.
It was a choice of God to love people we might deem unlovable. People who were sinners and enemies of God. With a gift this great, how could we ever pay it back?
The Fourth Sunday of Lent shifts our gaze to the results of the rescue. We are now children of light — and we must live that way. This is the consistent Pauline message: grace is free, now you’re a child of the light, stop living like you aren’t! And the language of light allows us to explore confession. Confession shines a light into the places where we aren’t living up to our new nature and allows us to repent and change course — all the time relying on God’s help.
This is followed in the Fifth Sunday of Lent by Romans 8:6-11 where Paul contrasts the life “governed by the flesh” with the mind “governed by the Spirit. Commenting on the text, Casey writes,
Letting the Spirit of God take the lead and following after Jesus is the path for the Christian today. We are told it is the way to life and peace. But we cannot allow the ambitions of modern society to dictate how we understand what that will bring us. Somehow the mind of Christ, which surely is the direction the Spirit will leads us in, leads toward death…
His life was cruciform, cross-shaped, and ours should be, too. Humble, open and willing to sacrifice, full of love, and obedient to the leading of the Spirit. He was truly in this world, affected by those around him, caring for their needs. Jesus would not detach himself from the pain around him, instead he chooses to live for others.
In these middle Sundays, we have passed from understanding God as rescuer, Christ as the lover who came for us while sinners, our justification because of his work, and the sanctification we are called to, with confession and repentance at the heart of that joyful growth.
Imitating the Humble King
This series ends on Palm Sunday, not by putting the gospel account of the triumphal entry at the forefront, but by looking at Philippians 2:5-11. This is Paul’s hymn to Christ, perhaps one of the earliest pieces of Christian liturgy we know of. It is traditionally paired with those gospel stories because it gives a deep theological context for what is happening in the streets of Jerusalem.
(Looking for Palm Sunday resources?→)
All the grasping for power our sinful impulses drive us toward are contrary to the example of Jesus. Trying to dominate others, in our workplaces, families, relationships, churches, and national life is contrary to the life of Jesus. As Rachel writes in this last guide,
The life, death, and resurrection of Christ reveal something about the power of God that has been and continues to be strange and startling to the world. God’s power is disclosed through his self-emptying, through Jesus taking the form of a slave. Power is displayed through humility. God’s power is utterly distinct from our world’s view of power.
The lesson here is timely. This world tells us we have to make corrupt bargains and beat down our opponents. That’s not the way of Jesus:
If Jesus did not have to grasp, reaching for earthly power, then neither do we.
This brings us back to the beginning of the series. There is a cure for selfishness and grasping: repentance. When we repent, we don’t have to hide any longer, afraid of being “found out.” Our repentance doesn’t “buy” righteousness from God. We only have Jesus’s righteousness as a gift of grace. But when we acknowledge our brokenness, “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”