Are You Repenting Enough? And Is it Sufficient?

The Sufficiency of Christ’s Intercession and the Limits of Our Repentance

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? Why else would we need that if our repentance was sufficient? Yeah, it's not.

If we weren't always sinning. 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 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.

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

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

First John 1 9, right? When we confess our sins we have the confidence that every time we do we are met with mercy, mercy, mercy. What I love about James is he says, but there's more grace, but there's more grace.

Repentance is our exposure to the grace of God. Every time we acknowledge we have failed Him.

Church Discipline and the Danger of Unrepentant Sin

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 fellas, you guys are in churches where you practice church discipline.

Yep, and you guys will remove people who are quote-unquote unrepentant from your fellowships, right? We 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 I not the only one that suffers? To which we would say, no, a person who is living in unrepentant sin is in danger. You are in spiritual peril. Why? Because you have ceased to agree with God. That's right.

That's the issue. 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. You need to fire that lawyer.

And we take our side. That's right. Because we decide that either through twisting and manipulating the scriptures or disregarding them altogether, that we're going to do what we want to do and it's okay.

That will ruin us. That's right. 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 because, well, grace or whatever, 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.

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.

Repentance as Ongoing Conflict Between Flesh and Spirit

It is. And I think this is a good transition, Justin, to the idea of repentance not being this permanent turn from sin. Because if we permanently turn from sin, that would mean that eventually throughout our lifetime, we could repent of all sin.

Like the sin of pride, I now repent of it. The sin of anger, I now repent of it. The sin of lust, I now repent of it. Well, that's not the case because if that was the case, 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 sinner agrees with God about his sin. What that means now is that the sinner is at war. This is the way Paul describes it. 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?

We are in this constant war with our flesh awaiting the resurrection of our bodies, which is what makes repentance so special. Often, repentance is used as a billy club to beat people with, and it shouldn't be.

It should be the kindness of the Lord leads us to what?

Repentance, Romans 2. I'm thinking about Galatians 5, Romans 7. You've already mentioned James. In Galatians 5 .17, 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, a famous passage, a 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 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 in his flesh waging war against his mind and against his spirit.

He cries out to God, wretched man that I am who will deliver me. Thank you for Jesus Christ, effectively. Thanks be to God. We are therefore now not condemned. All of us who are in Christ Jesus, there's no condemnation for us.

That's a beautiful flow of thought, but the obvious pieces in all of this is that there's no war if your spirit is agreeing with your flesh. That's right. If you're saying, I can just do what I want to do in the flesh and it's of no consequence, there's no war anymore.

By definition, the spirit and the flesh are opposed to each other, and so that's a big deal. 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, I think, going to be controversial.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I'm just saying. A lot of times in the church, the implication when somebody is caught in sin, when they're mired in sin, there's this habitual sin problem in their lives, and they're called rightly, okay, brother, sister, you need to repent.

Galatians 6 .1. 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.

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. If there's just no acknowledgement of the wrongdoing, if there's just no desire at all on the part of the sinner to not break God's law, then of course we need to have a different conversation, but here's the thing.

People struggle because of various factors—pietism, revivalistic 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 mired in the battle against the flesh, who are discouraged to no end because they are terrified that they have not repented well enough and that they're not even maybe repentant at all and that God is against them.

A Repentant Sinner Can Still Be Fighting the Same Sin

I'm just going to say it this way. In the battle against the flesh and in the battle against habitual sin, you can be still sinning in the way that you're sinning and be repentant. That's right. All right, why?

Because how, right? Because I'm sure people out there will be like, well, okay, 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.

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

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

Who can rescue me? You're saying the words of the apostle effectively in the midst of the fight, and so you are a repentant sinner. 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, I wouldn't be doing A, B or C.

It's like, no, like, brother, sister, do you agree with the 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. That's right.