1. The Heart of Biblical Repentance
2. True and False Repentance
3. Repentance - A New Testament Overview
4. Biblical Repentance is a Spiritual Medicine
1. THE HEART OF BIBLICAL REPENTANCE
Psalm 51
When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the castle door at Wittenberg
on the 31st October 1517, the very first thesis read: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said,
``Repent'' (Matt. 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers
to be one of repentance”. We
are going to say much about this.
Some context is needed here. The
years leading up to Luther’s conversion were an agonising exercise in trying to
understand how a just and holy God might forgive a sinner. He essentially
struggled with the question, “What is
effective repentance? How do I know that I am truly forgiven by God”? Now Luther,
an Augustinean monk, and a doctor of Theology had understood the essential
nature of God. He had understood that
God was righteous and holy. He had also understood the problem of original sin, and all the sin that
flows from that. His greatest problem
was that he did not yet understand how this holy and righteous God could accept
human works of repentance for salvation. He did not yet understand how God
could effectively justify sinners. He had not yet understood the ‘once and
for all’[1]
death of Jesus. What made it worse was that the Latin Vulgate, the official church Bible of the day had
misleadingly rendered ‘repent’ in Matthew 4:17 as, ‘do penance’[2], which is consistent with the works-based
teaching on repentance by the Roman Catholic church. It is a mistranslation and
misrepresentation of the Greek word ‘metanoia’,
which indicates a radical change of mind, that leads to a deep transformation
of the life[3]. Luther was stuck on the concept of a works-
based justification. When he finally understood “that the righteous shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:16,17), everything changed. He understood that by Faith
ALONE, in Christ ALONE, a sinner can be fully justified, by trusting
in Christ’s ‘’once for all work”. That change of mind is ultimately brought
about by the Holy Spirit, the Agent of our regeneration. And it is a Trinitarian work. God the
Father, by giving His eternal Son as a substitute for the sin of the
world, by means of the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, leads the sinner to a
life of true repentance. And so, we learn that repentance is firstly a gift
from God, BUT it is also a duty commanded to every person (Acts
17:30; Lk. 13:3). The gift enables
our duty. A true Christian is one who has repented of their sinful and vain
efforts to justify themselves. A Christian is one who continually looks to
Christ for justification. A Christian is one who turns their back on the old
life and follows God commandments in newness of life.
And so it is that we find at the
heart of Luther’s Theses this emphasis: Repentance is a characteristic of
the whole life and not the action of a single moment. I want to stress this
frequently: The believer in Christ is a
lifelong repenter. The Christian life begins with repentance
and continues in repentance (Rom. 8:12-13).[4]
Ongoing repentance is necessary on this side of the grave because sin is an
ongoing reality for us. In this regard we must work out our salvation with fear
and trembling, whilst leaning strongly on the grace of God. (Phil. 2:12-13)
REPENTANCE – THE PROPER RESPONSE TO
THE GOSPEL
Knowing this then, the great work of
the church is to preach the gospel - THE GOOD NEWS, because there is bad news.
The proper response to this bad news is repentance, which is to believe the
Gospel. This gives us vital perspective
on the work of the church. The most essential part of a church’s ministry, and
of a Pastor’s work has to do with calling people to repentance. This was essentially
the work of John the Baptist and of Jesus. You will remember that their
essential message was, “Repent for
the kingdom of God is near!” John and Jesus knew what was at stake. Guilty
people were perishing in their sins. And so, the church’s ministry ought to be built
upon this conviction: Without repentance a person cannot get to heaven. That is
a weighty truth! What is at stake if men, women and children do not repent? Answer:
The wrath of God remains on us (Romans
1:18ff). Therefore, we must repent! We must turn from sin. We must turn to
God. We must flee from the coming wrath. We must urge repentance! No
repentance, no heaven! Listen to how Thomas
Watson (c.1620–1686) puts it:
“After
Paul’s shipwreck he swam to shore on planks and broken pieces of the ship (Acts 27:44). In Adam we all suffered
shipwreck, and repentance is the only plank left us after shipwreck to
swim to heaven”.[5]
Therefore, the doctrine of repentance
is no theological side issue. It is cardinal. It is crucial. It is alarming that concerning the wrath to
come we hear little urgency from our pulpits. We hear little preaching that
urges repentance upon its hearers. Moral
Therapeutic Deism[6]
rules the day. This has become a
pastoral problem because we constantly battle with people who want to feel
good, but who have no inclination to be as good as the Bible calls them to be.
It has become a pastoral problem because this mindset is sapping the energies of the pulpit,
tempting pastors to become therapists, forsaking their prophetic callings. It
is a pastoral problem because the people that are walking into our evangelical
reformed churches are walking in with their heaped-up sins. They want our help
but very often they want feel- good- help.
How will we help them? Jeremiah asked
this question in his day:
“Is there no
balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the
daughter of my people not been restored?” (Jer.
8:22)
It is clear that people with heaped
up sins must turn to someone. And they do.
In this vacuum modern psychology has generally found a lucrative market
gap. In fact, Psychology is a ‘Johnny-come-lately’ in the attempt for the cure
of sin sick souls that refuse heavenly remedies. I am excluding here genuine
medical problems. Sadly, many pastors and churches have endorsed the dictates
of secular psychology. Psychology calls sin ‘sickness’ - something that happens
to you and which is beyond your control, and by implication therefore
repentance becomes irrelevant. The general remedy is psychotherapy and psychotropic
medication, which does grant some relief, but fails to deal with the heart. Sin, man’s greatest problem according to the
Bible, and its remedy, repentance, is hardly addressed. This is what the
prophet Jeremiah refers to when he says,
“They have healed the wounds of my
people lightly, saying ‘’peace, peace’’ when there is no peace” (Jer. 8:11 cf. 6:14).
So I ask again: How we help people that are anxious, guilt riddled, angry, bitter, depressed
- and who manage their days by living on endless pills, alcohol, drugs,
pornography, continual spending (and staying in debt) to suppress
their deepest problems?
A life of ongoing repentance is the
key! Jim Packer says,
“Repentance is the drainage system on the highway of
holiness on which God calls us all to travel. It is the way we get beyond what
has proved to be dirt, rubbish and stagnant floodwater in our lives. This
routine is a vital need, for where real repentance fails, real spiritual advance ceases and real spiritual growth stops
short.” [7]
And now as we have Psalm 51 before us, we must ask: What
is the issue here? Was David a sex addict in need of psycho-therapy and
medication, or was he a sinner in need of a fresh encounter with God – by way of a process
called repentance? We all know that in the midst of his years as
a God’s anointed king and as a believer, David fell under a dark spell of sin,
which he tried to ignore until he was convicted by the Holy Spirit, at the hand
of Nathan the prophet. That is when David repented of his sin. Psalm 51
is the result.
Psalm 51 is the profound statement of
repentance spoken by an adulterer - one who broke up the marriage of one of his
most loyal and committed soldiers. He even caused this man’s death! The context
is found in 2 Samuel 11 & 12. Nathan
was sent by God to expose David’s sin (2
Sam. 12:1). We find that upon exposure David’s confession is immediate. “I have sinned against the Lord.“ (2 Sam 12:13). No arguments. No denial.
No excuses. No - “the devil made me do it“, and no
pulling of rank, even though he was a
successful and powerful king in the
Middle East at that time. David knows
that he is guilty as charged.
And so, we have here the outpouring
of David’s heartfelt, godly sorrow for sin – and hence a meaningful Psalm of repentance. We know that
His repentance was genuine, for God accepted it (2 Sam. 12:13), even though it still meant that David had to face a
number of the grave consequences of his sin.
What Led To
David’s Sin, And Why Was Repentance Necessary?
Something went wrong in David’s heart before he took Bathsheba and before he disposed of Uriah her husband. David’s problem began with God. His heart had been drifting from God, and so he saw, coveted, and took. When he had understood this it amounted to a heartfelt sorrow, an owning up to his sin before God. His sin against God was the real cause, and the rest was the effect. And so he rightly says in Psalm 51:4:
“Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight”.
He expresses his brokenness
over that cardinal sin which led to every other sin he committed thereafter.
If the root
of sin is unfaithfulness towards God, then it is axiomatic to say that
repentance must begin with a look at our own hearts in the light of the God
against whom we have transgressed.
How Will The
Doctrine Of Repentance Help Us?
Biblical repentance includes, but it does
not begin by saying sorry and making restitution for having done a wrong to someone. Too often
repentance is only dealt with by way of saying ‘sorry’, or ‘please forgive
me’ to the person offended. But biblical repentance is far profounder than
that. It looks beyond the action to the heart of the problem – that
problem which underlies the action. The heart of the problem is the heart.
Notice then the genesis of sin in Genesis
3:6 which underlies your and my
fundamental problem: Eve said, “I saw… I took… I ate”. Or in
Joshua 7:21 - Achan said, “I saw … I coveted… I took”.
The sin of Eve and Joshua and David and every other sin begins in the heart. It is
essentially an expression of disbelief in God’s words and therefore in essence
it is rebellion against God and God’s law. So, if begins in the heart, and if
sin is not killed there, it will spread like a virus – and if unchecked, it
will kill you. John Owen famously said, "Be killing sin, or sin will be killing
you."[8]
Therefore, biblical repentance must
begin with God. We must begin with the God whose law we have transgressed, and if
this so then it follows also that we must begin by looking to Him for the forgiveness
of that sin. The biblical doctrine of
repentance is given us to deal with the heart of our most basic problem - the
ongoing sin problem. It is given for our good and it is a necessary chronic
medication to be used daily for our soul’s well- being.
IMPLICATION
From David’s life we see that it is
possible for true believers to sin – and even to sin grossly. Sin will not spare us for one day. The
difference between a true believer and a false believer is not that the true
believer never sins and the false believer inevitably sins does! No! The truth is that true believers may sin as
heinously as any non-Christian. So where do we find the difference?
We’ will wait for the next session!
[1] Hebrews 7:27, 9:12,26 ; 10:10,12,14
[2] The Latin Fathers translated metanoia
as paenitentia, which came to
mean "penance" or "acts of penance. Tertullian protested the
unsuitable translation of the Greek metanoeo
into the Latin paenitentiam by
arguing that in Greek, metanoia is not a confession of sins but a change of
mind. (Wikipedia)
[3] Sinclair Ferguson: The Grace of Repentance (2010), Crossway , p.14
[5] Thomas Watson: The Doctrine of Repentance, p.13, Puritan Paperbacks
[6] This term first introduced in the 2005 book “Soul Searching: The
Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers" by the sociologists
Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton. Based on interviews with 3000 US
teenagers, the following describe their common beliefs:
1. A God exists who created and
ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice,
and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be
happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be
particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a
problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they
die.
[7] J.I. Packer
: A Passion for Holiness, Crossway, p.122
[8] John Owen: The Mortification of sin : Puritan Paperbacks ,p.5
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