Are You Repenting Enough? And Is it Sufficient?

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Well, another way of saying this is why else would we need a great high priest who is ever interceding for us day and night?

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Why else would we need that if our repentance was sufficient? Yeah, it's not work if we weren't always sinning.

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That's right. Our repentance is not adequate enough to maintain or Confirm our salvation or our right standing before God in a relationship with the

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Father This is why we are told that He prays for us in ways that we don't even know how to pray for ourselves

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So it's important for us to understand that repentance is not that a way in which we maintain our relationship with God.

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I would put it this way when you read Hebrews 4 and it says that we are to run boldly into the throne room of grace and Ask for mercy and grace in the time of need

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What you're doing is at that moment You are running where you're where you need to be because to receive mercy means you failed and to receive grace means you need strength

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To believe in the mercy. Yeah, so That's it. It's important to understand that repentance is for our benefit

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First John 1 9 right when we confess our sins We are we have the confidence that every time we do we are met with mercy mercy mercy

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What I love about James is he says but there's more grace but there's more grace

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Repentance is our exposure to the grace of God every time we acknowledge we have failed him.

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Yeah. All right So let me say this I'm just gonna throw it in now because I may as well because somebody's out there is gonna be like, okay Well fellows you guys you guys are in churches where you practice church discipline

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Yep, and you guys will remove people who are quote -unquote unrepentant. Yep from your fellowships, right?

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So you would say yes we do So what's at stake here if you're telling me that repentance is for my benefit Then why is it that I would be removed from the church if I'm unrepentant am

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I not the only one that suffers to which we would say no a Person who is living in unrepentant sin is in danger.

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You are in spiritual peril. Why? Because you have ceased to agree with God. That's right. That's the issue.

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Here's the thing. So what happens with us in our sin? We become litigators We enter into litigation with God to debate with him about whether or not what we're doing is wrong

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Need a fire that lawyer and we take and we take our side. That's right Because we decide that either through twisting and manipulating the scriptures or disregarding them all together

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That we're gonna do what we want to do and it's okay That will ruin us. That's right.

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And that's why as a tool of God's love and protection He says when people are doing that when people are celebrating immorality or when people are defending just heinous behavior

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Because well grace or whatever like we need to say no no No, you can't do that because that'll destroy you and you need to be sobered and you need to be restored

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And so we're actually removing you This is not a podcast about church discipline But I just wanted to answer that objection because the issue there in Being unrepentant is that you have ceased to agree with God and that's a dangerous place to be it is and I think this is a good transition

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Justin to the idea of Repentance not being this permanent turn from sin because if we

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Permanently turn from sin that would mean that eventually throughout our lifetime. We could repent of all sin

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Like the sin of pride. I now repent of it. Correct the sin of anger. I now repent of it the sin of lust I now repent of it. Well, that's not that's not the case because if that was the case

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Then there would be a limit on the amount of times that you could go and ask for mercy The cup would not be overflowing the cup would have its limit

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I think it's important to understand when you're making this Statement that the sinner agrees with God about his sin what that means now is that the sinner is at war

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This is the way Paul describes it right where our flesh is at war with our spirit James 4 1 says are you not quarreling and fighting because your passions are at war with you?

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So we are in this constant war with our flesh waiting the resurrection of our bodies, which is what makes repentance

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So special, you know often repentance is used as a billy club to beat people with and it shouldn't be it

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Should be the kindness of the Lord leads us to what exact repentance Romans 2. Yeah.

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Well and immediately I'm thinking about Galatians 5 Romans 7 you've already mentioned James Galatians 5 17

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Paul says that the spirit and the flesh are opposed to one another To keep you from doing what you want to do in Romans 7 famous passage

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Beautiful passage Paul as a Christian is writing about the fact that he doesn't do the good that he wants to do and he often engages in the evil that he doesn't

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Want to do and how whenever he wants to do good evil lies close at hand and how he sees that there is another law

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In his flesh waging war against his mind and against his spirit and he cries out to God, you know

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Wretched man that I am who will deliver me. Thank you for Jesus Christ effectively Thanks be to God and we are therefore now not condemned all of us who are in Christ Jesus There's no condemnation for us.

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I mean that that's a beautiful flow of thought but the obvious pieces in all of this is that There's no war

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There's no war if your spirit is agreeing with your flesh That's right If your spirit if you were if you were saying

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I can just do what I want to do in the flesh and it's of No consequence. There's no war anymore and By definition the spirit and the flesh are opposed to each other.

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And so like that's a big deal I mean, I think that needs to be acknowledged in this whole repentance piece But let me say this because this is where we got a few minutes left in the regular show and this is

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I Think gonna be controversial mate. I don't know. Maybe it is. Maybe it is I'm just saying so a lot of times in the church the implication when somebody is

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Caught in sin when they're mired in sin. There's this habitual sin problem in their lives and They're called rightly.

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Okay, brother sister. You you need to repent Galatians 6 1. Yeah, okay That's appropriate but then what occurs is this we start to gauge and evaluate repentance and we start to gauge and evaluate the quote -unquote fruits of repentance and where this often goes is we're looking for changes in behavior that are of Enough significance that we could then stamp the thing and validate it and say genuine repentance

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That's the scenario happens all the time We're not seeing adequate fruits of repentance is stated a lot and of course we understand what is meant here

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I mean if there's no if there's just no acknowledgment of the wrongdoing if there's just no desire at all on the part of the

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Center to not, you know break God's law, then, of course, we need to have a different conversation.

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Yeah, but here's the thing people struggle because of various factors pietism

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Revivalistic, you know emphases on moral transformation and the like people struggle with this conversation and this issue in the church and there are a lot of people a lot of saints who are

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Mired in the battle against the flesh who are discouraged to no end because they are terrified

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That they have not repented well enough and that they're not even maybe repentant at all and that God is against them

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Yeah, and I'm just gonna say it this way In the battle against the flesh and in the battle against habitual sin

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You can be still sinning in the way That you're sinning and be repentant.

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That's right. All right Why because how right because I'm sure people out there be like, well, okay,

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I explain this to me Justin John help me out here. What do we mean? You can be still engaged in the sin and doing it and Be repentant

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Here's how because in sinning you're agreeing with God. That's right.

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You are still agreeing with God. You're saying it is wrong I know it's wrong. God's law is against such things. I and my inner man don't want to do this

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I'm doing this because I'm weak. I'm failing to do the good. I want I'm failing to abstain from the evil

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I don't want to do I because of the corruption of my flesh and finding myself doing things.

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I don't want to do Who can rescue me right you're saying the words of the

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Apostle Effectively in the midst of the fight and so you are a repentant sinner

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That's right And we want to encourage the Saints in the fight against the flesh this way Rather than beat people to death because they think oh, well if I was really repentant,

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I wouldn't be doing a B or C Yeah, it's like no like brother sister. Do you agree with the

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Lord? And are you fighting have you taken God's side and if the answers to those questions are yes, then let us help you carry this