STOP Using Repentance As a Fear Tactic!

Fear, Reverence, and the Limits of Shame as Motivation

Fear before the Lord and fear before each other is a tremendous hindrance to repentance and is actually a significant hindrance to sanctification. You know, a lot of times preachers, but even it's not just limited to preachers, a lot of times serious minded Christians think that fear and dread and shame are really good motivators toward holiness and obedience.

And we're here today to say, let's pump the brakes on that. There is the right preaching of the law to crush us all in our sin, to drive us to Christ, amen. But when it comes to the transformation of life, there's a different way and there's a better way.

God's perfect love cast out all fear, right? So there's nothing more significant in all of my life than God's love for me. And there's no reason that I should be afraid yet, yet he is a holy God. Yet he is a God to be feared with reverence, not trembling, but with reverence, right?

We put it this way, he is a God that demands our respect. We cannot take his concerns lightly.

Contemplating God's Love as a Motive for Repentance

One of the best things that we can do to foster repentance in our own lives is to contemplate individually and collectively with other saints, with other Christians in our church, the love of God for us.

How do you think God feels about you?

Listen, sin is destructive, it's horrible.

It wrecks things, man.

It has nothing to do with anything that isn't purity, so no one should ever sin.

It'll wreck you and it'll wreck everybody.

Who's close to you.

Walking by the Spirit and the Internal Testimony of Love

Now, Justin, a lot of times when people think, when they hear walk by the spirit, it's very confusing and arbitrary. There's lots of interpretations here. And so it's really complicated. And a lot of times what people turn it into is a law of works or spiritual disciplines.

Oh, yeah.

To say, to use, hey, you better stop sinning or else you're not a Christian. No, the fact that you're fighting your sin and you hate your sin is good evidence that you are a Christian. The question is, how do you find the strength?

Walking in the spirit literally means that you have the love of God poured out in your heart.

Romans 5.

That's exactly what it says, right. So God pours his love into your heart. How do you know that? Because the spirit inside you is the witness of this.

Internal testimony of the spirit. The Christian life is a life of repentance. What is repentance? Well, it's a change of mind about God and his law and us and what's required, how we haven't met the standard, how Christ is it.

And now we live out of reverence for the Lord. That's a change of mind. But then it's also a turning. It's a turning from ourselves to Christ in faith. Don't turn repentance into something that's scary and bad.

Repentance, Sin, and Loving Others Well

This is how we live life as sinner saints, this side of the resurrection. Anytime we are breaking God's law, it affects us in every relationship that we have, whether we realize it or not. And so we should talk more about fighting against sin from the perspective of, I love, if I'm married, I love my spouse.

If I have kids, I love my kids. I love my local church. I love my brothers and sisters. I don't wanna bring reproach upon the cause of Christ or cause division in this local body. Like I don't want to hurt other people whom I care for and whom the Lord loves.

That is a motivator for me in fighting against my flesh and fighting against sin. May this be for me a continual reminder of my need of Christ. May it humble me and may I never be deceived into thinking that I established my own righteousness.

May this be a deterrent for me from future occasions and opportunity for sin. May I not go down the same road again, because this was bad. The Lord has good and holy purposes, even when we fall on our faces.

God's Sustaining Grace and Hope After Failure

And we will not, Psalm 37, 24, we will not be cast headlong because the Lord upholds our hand. That would be my encouragement to somebody out there who's thinking that I have blown it and wrecked my life.

The Lord has you. You may bear consequences this side of the resurrection, but all will be well in the end. And may you be continually humbled and cast yourself on Christ whenever your sin does come to your heart and be comforted by the love of God for you.