How Many Times Can We Confess the Same Sin? | Kingsmen

Repentance, Confession, and the Question of Repeated Sin

Welcome to the Kingsman podcast, where we are reclaiming biblical manhood by training and equipping men for the work of the kingdom. I'm your host, John Moffitt. I'm a pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee and host of the podcast on reform theology.

As the title you have seen, we are gonna be talking about repentance. There's a question that I have received quite often as a pastor. If Jesus' blood has covered all of our sins, why are we still repenting as if we need to repent of our sin because the blood covers it?

It's an interesting question. When people don't understand the significance of repentance in prayer as a part of the Christian life, you end up not partaking in it. And because you do not end up partaking in it, you don't receive the benefits of it and the value of it.

And then we end up remaining in our sin and we end up remaining in... Our conscience continues to bark at us. I just want you to think about a couple of passages that call you to repent and then we will, or prayer, a prependence, and then we'll kind of dive into why those are important.

Confession, Boldness, and Cleansing in Hebrews and 1 John

1 John's probably the most famous one, right? Confess your sins and what he is faithful and just to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Another one would be Hebrews where he says, with boldness, run into the presence of the Father and ask for mercy.

Mercy is to not receive judgment for what you deserve and grace, which is to receive favor, which you did not earn. So there's forgiveness once again. 1 John even says, if you say you are without sin, you're a liar and the truth is not in you.

The passage that probably encourages me the most is when it says that Jesus is our great high priest. And he is a sympathetic high priest because he was tempted in every way, like we are yet without sin.

So when we confess our sin to him, he isn't there cross on saying, I can't believe you did that again. No, he's hearing you with sympathy as one who understands your pain. Why is this so important? Theologically, we're gonna deal with it and then I wanna deal with practically how it's gonna influence and affect you as a soldier and worker in God's kingdom.

And then hopefully you'll be able to love and care for your brothers and sisters with the same truth and your children, if you have children. One of the jobs of the priests during the Old Testament and the Old Covenant is that they would become ceremonially unclean physically.

And that would mean that they would not be able to be in the presence of God and his blessings. And so God created a system to where they would be ceremonially physically cleansed. And this is what the sacrificial system would do, was that it was a temporal cleansing and they would allow them to continue to live with God in harmony and to receive his blessings.

This is why it's such great truth when we are told that Christ is the final sacrifice once for all. And according to Hebrews, he cleanses our conscience. So not only did his sacrifice cleanse the ceremonial side of us, that which would prevent us from being in the presence of God, this is why we can boldness run to him.

We don't have to have a priest, we don't have to have a sacrifice. We can with boldness at anywhere, anytime run to him because his blood cleansed us permanently, not only ceremonially, but also our conscience.

And so now we wear the righteousness of Christ and our conscience has been cleansed. But what ends up happening is this, we live in an already not yet scenario, okay? We are the children of God. You'll hear things like you have been saved, you are being saved, you will be saved, right?

There is a already not yet reality that we live in. And here's what it is. You have been adopted, but you do not have righteousness yet. You have to wear the righteousness of Christ. Therefore your body is still under the curse of sin.

And this is why we wage war of the spirit against the flesh. And at times our flesh wins and our spirit loses, right? Now the promise will be when he appears, when he returns, we will be like he is. We will be righteous, we will be perfect.

But until then, right, we look to Christ and we purify our flesh. The reason why some would say, well, if he's already made the sacrifice, why is he having to cleanse us over and over again? It's your conscience he's cleansing.

That's that side of you that when you know you failed and you have disobeyed, you feel that guilt and shame within you, you're not designed to carry that guilt and shame, okay? I'm not gonna cry, but I feel like crying here for a moment.

You are not called by the God of the universe to carry the shame because Jesus did on your behalf. And he says, come to me and be reminded that I will set you free. The illustrations I've used in the past, if you're watching this on YouTube, God is a static being.

He does not change and alter and move. Praise God for that. We are so thankful that he is the same today as he has always been. Who moves? We do, right? When we sin, we turn away from the promises of God.

We turn away from the truth of God and we turn towards the sin of the world. We turn towards the world and self. And what repentance is, is that that choosing to turn away from God, we repent and turn back to him.

But here is what, here's the key guys and ladies, whoever else is listening, here's the key. You're not turning to cleanse yourself. You're not turning because you've been cleansed. It says with boldness, run into his presence and receive mercy.

That means to be set free and cleansed because you don't deserve it, right? And then he says, receive grace. That means the favor and love and affection of your father. It's so important when 1 John says this, he says he is faithful and just to do this.

Why? It's not a call that you get to do it once. All right, you've been saved, you messed up, you get to come back. It's perpetual. It's over and over and over. And he says with boldness over and over again.

Well, John, that just makes it sound like you can sin however you want. If you have ever had your conscience yell at you, if you ever feel the guilt and shame and the effects of your sin on other people's life, no.

That does not give you the freedom to just go run off and do it again. You don't really understand the cleansing of the father, what it feels like to be cleansed, what it feels like to be renewed in that affection.

Not that his love is wavered, but our experience of that has wavered. We turned our hearts and loved something else. And he says, child, you have a sympathetic high priest who understands that he didn't give into the temptation, but he understands the power of it.

You gave into the temptation, calm to him, confess your failures to him. He will cleanse you, he will restore you, he will love you, and he will not hold it over you ever. He who began a good work in you will complete it.

I think at times we hold onto our sins because we're so ashamed that we've done it again, in that we are gonna try harder this time and work harder and prove to God we mean business. And so instead of running to him in shame, running to him in weakness, running to him as failures, we try to walk back in and say, see, God, I failed, but look, I made it right.

He said, I didn't ask you to do that. He doesn't say that. He says, with boldness, come into the presence of the Father. Confess your sins to Christ, right? Who is your great high priest? But we think our way is better, and this is why we remain under the guilt and shame.

And that shame leads you back to last episode. It ends up to the point where you're in such a dark and empty place that you're, you know how the Bible describes Satan? He's the great accuser. Oh man, you build a castle with your sin and he will imprison you in it.

And he will put a key on that, he will put a lock on that thing, and he will hide the key, and he will let you sit there and wallow. The way that Paul describes it is someone who's trapped in sin. This is why perpetually and constantly we confess our sins to our Father to have our sins, the conscience cleansed so the great accuser can't come in and keep us trapped in our sins until we get enough strength.

The end of Colossians chapter two does it this way. Instead of looking unto Jesus, it says we use asceticism, we use laws and regulations. It says they have an appearance of wisdom, but they're of no value of stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

Do you know what he points you to to stop the indulgence of the flesh? He says, Jesus, your high priest sitting at the right hand of the Father, look unto him. So gentlemen and ladies, whoever's listening, you who are feeling the guilt of your shame and you're like, yeah, but I can't just go ask God for forgiveness again.

Yes, you can. He didn't cover your one-time sins. He covered all your sins. He doesn't call you to confess your sins once. He says, if he says to the disciples, how often should we forgive? Seven times?

And he says seven times 70. Do you think he doesn't mean I will forgive you seven times 70? Of course he will. He will forgive you. So that guilt and shame, this is part of going back to episode one. You are a weak and frail person.

You are called to depend upon him. Let's just go to the Lord's prayer. Every day he calls you as an example in this prayer, Lord, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Every day, debt meaning I failed you so much, I owe you in return and I need you to forgive me what I owe.

That's mercy. That's mercy. In the Father's model prayer, he says, every day you're gonna ask for forgiveness because he knew we would need it for the sake of our conscience and to be restored in the joy of our salvation, right?

So hopefully this is encouraging to you. It's not as long as of an episode, but I just wanna strengthen you guys in trusting in prayer. We're gonna do more episodes on prayer in the coming weeks, but prayer is the most powerful weapon God gave to the conscience and to the strength of our joy.

And yet Satan uses this as a way to accuse us. Oh man, I haven't spent an hour in prayer. Well, who told you to do that? Like the thing that should be encouraging for you, that should give you strength and hope, it's turned into a weapon.

That is crazy. That's like turning your freedom into a weapon against you where it imprisons you. Prayer is this joy that we get from our Father and now we use it as a means to judge ourselves and judge each other.

Oh, and here's another one. Here's another one. I'll give you a little insight. We'll get into this when we start talking about prayer. You use it as a means of self-righteousness. Like God's impressed with you talking to him.

I mean, come on guys. Just stop for a moment and think to yourself, oh man, I can't believe John spent an hour talking to me today. Really? You really think that's what he thinks? I mean, come on. He's the God of the universe.

He gives you everything. You should say, I can't believe I can talk to him anytime I want, for as long as I want, for a half a second or for an hour. It's up to me, whatever I want to do, whatever I want to talk to him about, I can do that.

It's, he says, anytime I'm here. Whether it's a quick conversation or you need to spill your guts because you just completely face-planted. And he goes, by the way, sympathetic high priest. With boldness, guaranteed mercy, guaranteed grace.

James has guaranteed wisdom. Man, prayer becomes a powerful, powerful tool for the weary pilgrim who's trying to do the work of the kingdom. Hopefully this is encouragement to you. Hopefully it'll whet your appetite a little bit.

Stay tuned, we're gonna talk about prayer some more. We'll see you next week.