True Repentance Always Brings Reformation

The Love of God as the Greater Wrecking Ball to Sin

Yeah, I often think that the wrath of God is not the great wrecking ball to sin. In the Bible, it is a great wrecking ball. It's not the greatest. I think the love of God, if seen correctly. I mean, because there have been times in my life where I would have been willing to say to God before I was a Christian, Okay, I'm willing to take whatever consequence there is for this sin because I want it.

So whatever the payment is, fine. Take it. But I'm gonna get my sin. But after becoming a believer, that idea didn't cross my mind anymore because I thought, But John, you're sinning against the King that is loving you in the present moment that you're sinning.

You know, he hasn't become cold towards you. If he became cold toward me like I was toward him, it wouldn't bother me. I thought, well, come on. He's indifferent and he should be. But if he isn't indifferent, you know, my conscience would rise up and say, How can you continue to treat him this way?

And I would think to myself, but he should be indifferent by now. No, but he's not. And, you know, so sin, the wrecking ball, to me, thinking sin was okay, was the love of God. Chuck, let me ask you a question.

Fear of God, Self-Interest, and the First Movements of Repentance

If dread of God's wrath is not the great motivation for the Christian, you know, going on repenting and repenting, does it have any place in repentance?

Sure. It often is a starting place for us. We're brought to a sensibility or sense of our sin, God uses it maybe to awaken us to the terrors of hell and that there is a law and I am answerable to him.

And then to run us out of our hiding places, to look for mercy.

Yeah, in a sense we could say that self-interest is a good starting place for repentance. And we know that that's true, not because of Samuel Davies says it, but because it's scriptural. How many times does God turn his face toward the sinner and at the moment of the sinner's rebellion say to him something like, if you wish you could have, or if you wish to avoid, then.

And he's using our self-interest. But I think that Davies is right when he points out that if that's all you have, you know, if that's not just the starting place, but that's the destination, well, I don't want to go to hell, so I try to be a good guy.

I try to, you know, do that repenting thing. If that's the only thing that fills the mind when we think of sin, then probably it's because we have never been brought to love him who first loved us.

Repentance That Reaches All Known Sin

So what's the third point? The third point is that true repentance reaches to all known sin in you without exceptions. So not just that you hate particular sins, maybe the ones that are more readily noticeable, we've already kind of touched on that, that the heart of sin and not just the externals, but that you don't categorize any sin as being okay with God because they are all against God, or okay with you because they're all against God.

Yeah, and that really does flow just perfectly from the first two. It would be impossible to have the first two elements and not to have that third. You know, if you compartmentalize your life and you spare your favorite sins, your agags, you know, to use an Old Testament allusion, and you crucify the most embarrassing, life destroying sins, that is not repentance.

Repentance is when we do love the King, therefore we do hate the rebellion against the King that we see in our soul, in our life, and there's no area that it's allowed to live and have sanctuary. The fourth thing he says is true repentance always includes reformation.

True Repentance Always Includes Reformation

There are some very helpful passages in the Bible to help us to be thorough, to make sure that our repentance doesn't kind of just stay in the in the arena of concepts, like, wow, that, you know, I understand that now, so I must possess it.

No, real repentance must be thorough, and so it will work itself out into concrete actions. So, 2nd Corinthians 7, verses 9 through 11, Paul gives a number of evidences that the Corinthians have genuinely repented, and it's a great list for us to look at.

Thomas Watson's little book on the doctrine of repentance deals with those. Richard Owen Roberts' bigger book on repentance deals with those, and both of those books are really very helpful in keeping us from being casual and stopping short in our repentance.

If we love the King, we want the repentance to go beyond concepts. We want it to actually include real reform.

So, this repentance always includes reformation, but at the same time, it doesn't mean that we are perfectly reformed in this life, that we reach a point of sinlessness. And so, that kind of opens a question that he raises, and that is, do you view the inability to be sinless in this life as a relief or as grief?

Knowing that I will still struggle with certain sins while I'm attempting to put them to death, does that knowledge give you relief? Like, ah, I don't have to be perfect. I can't. Or is that a grief to your soul that I cannot be that?

Yeah, that is a really penetrating question.