Repentance

Not Repentance (PT3)

In my life, I’ve come across a lot of repentant people.  I’ve seen a copious amount of tears.  I have seen people pleading and promising to never do it again.  Begging for a mercy, asking for another chance.  Yet the truth was none of these people were truly repentant.  Oh, there were all sorry that they had been caught.  They were afraid of the punishment for their crime.  Yet given a chance each would return to the trough from which they had come.  

A sinner terrified of his just punishment is one thing and yet a truly repentant person is quite another.  If pain and suffering were all it took for true repentance then would not the damned in hell be most penitent?  Repentance requires a change of heart.

“Repentance is a grace of God’s Spirit whereby a sinner is inwardly humbled and visibly reformed.” 

Thomas Watson

True repentance comes when we see sin for what it truly is, an affront against God.  

“Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say, and your judgment against me is just.”

Psalms 51:4 NLT

Here David sees the true light, yes his sin had hurt others.  David had killed a man, and yet he says his sin is against God alone.  You see the greatest affront is our sin when viewed by a Holy God.  All else pales in comparison.  The closer we come to Jesus the more we see the horror of our sin.  At the end of his life, Paul declares that he is the worst of all sinners.  Not because he was so bad but because he had glimpsed the perfection of God.

“But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.”

1 Timothy 1:16 NIV