More Souls are Destroyed By Their Repentance Than By Their Sins

The fifth thing, repentance implies a believing application to God for pardon only through Jesus Christ. And that's where we bring in the reality that faith and repentance are always linked. Two sides of the same coin, they are twin virtues, twin gifts that appear in God waking us up, you know, what we call the new birth.

God opens our eyes, He softens our hearts, puts a soft heart within. He breaks the chain on our will. So what Paul says in Romans 3 is no longer the case. Paul says nobody understands God, nobody wants God, seeks for God, and nobody obeys God.

There's not one righteous, no not one. And then the great work of the new birth reverses that. Now I begin to understand Him, and I long for Him, and I choose Him. But even though that's imperfect, it's real and it's begun, but that is always, that always includes the great gifts of repentance and faith woven together.

True repentance will always be a believing repentance, and true faith will always be a repentant faith. So that affects how, you know, that affects why, our motivation, and how. So if you were talking to a person that came to you and said, you know, what part does seeing Christ as my Savior, as my everything, what part does that play in repentance?

Like he says in number five here. When we think of this relationship of faith and repentance and faith's view of Christ, what jumps out to me, one is the motivation that if I see Christ being crushed for my sin, you know, I see that occurring on the cross, and I understand that to be true.

Not sin in general, my sin. Not my sinfulness in general, my sins that I could never, you know, be willing to explain to people. When I see the Father gladly do that, when I see the Son gladly be the sin offering, you know, the Father was pleased to crush the Son, Isaiah tells us, if He would be a sin offering, then the motivation for repentance is there, that we've been talking about all along.

But also the pathway of repentance, a daily depending upon what Christ did on the cross to enable me, moment by moment, to put sin to death. So Romans 6, by the cross, I'm in a whole new realm. By the cross, being living in the realm of grace, the old enemy can tempt me, but he can never rule me again.

By the cross, I am now able to wake up and present myself alive to God. So the cross is everything. Without the cross, everything we've talked about is just, you know, good intentions and trying to scrub yourself clean.

But seeing the cross and depending upon that constantly, I mean, that's Christianity. Don't sin, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Yeah. So responsibility, you believe, you repent, but in the power of the Spirit, it is His work. It's what He's accomplished. You trust Him. If that is real repentance and real Christianity, then what is left, you know, there's, as He began with, there are a lot of people who have felt stuff, sorrow, etc., that don't necessarily make real repentance, but again, they believe they have repented.

And so He makes the statement, more souls are destroyed by their repentance than by their sins. How would you explain that?

Yeah, I find that a shocking statement. And I'm glad He said it, because I think it's a true statement. There is a repentance that we have to repent of. So if we have manufactured kind of a counterfeit repentance, okay, I'll clean up my sins, my life, you know, I'll stop doing this or that, and then God will be okay with me.

If we do that, then we become deluded. And so we don't really go to the King for forgiveness, because we think, well, I got it. Like, we don't go to the doctor, because we took a pill that made me feel better for a moment.

So that's one way that we could say, like an unbiblical version of repentance, a counterfeit repentance is more dangerous than your sin almost, because you become deluded. We were talking earlier, if you think that you're in trouble with God, at least there's something in you that keeps saying, do something about this.

But if you think that what you just did, that kind of self-cleansing, fix myself for Jesus, then you're deluded and you're satisfied. And instead of longing for Christ, you think, well, I got everything I wanted.

I got the get out of jail free card, so I'm good. And that kind of repentance, which is not repentance, if you don't repent of it, will lead to hell. Well, as we pull this together, we really want to encourage you that as you look at those five things, those evidences of an evangelical or of a true and biblical repentance, as you look at those, ask the Lord to help you to be very honest.

And that may take some, you know, some real soul searching to get alone, to lock yourself away for a while, you know, to plan time, to make time this weekend or whenever to say to God, is this really me?

And not just the question, well, I'm a Christian, so I must have all five. But even as a Christian, since repentance is ongoing, is that me now? Okay. And is there room for growth in any of these? And will I leave God alone, or will I plead with Him and say, God, I can't leave you alone until these things are in wonderful full bloom in my soul, you know, as an ongoing habit.

We see these evidences of that real happy, love-rooted, you know, gospel-fueled repentance. So it's a good question to ask ourselves.

How to Examine Whether Repentance Is Real

So what if you're not there yet? You hear this, but you're just not there yet. You're not experiencing this yet.

Where would you start? Yeah, and Davies has a great point there. At the end of the sermon, he says, if you do not love God enough to repent like this, well, let self-love start you on the course. You know, put your shoes on, start walking.

And he gives some good guidelines. He says, search the scriptures to see what the Bible says about the nature of sin, what it really is doing to you, and what it will do to you. And we've, of course, mentioned that that's not all there is to repentance, but it's a good starting place.

If you do not love God enough to turn from sin to God, then at least love yourself enough to take an honest look at what you're doing to yourself. And maybe that will stir the heart to cry out to God and say, God, save me, the chief of sinners.

Amen.