Is My Repentance Real If I Keep Committing the Same Sin?
Chapters
0:03:26 Definition of Sin
6:14 Kinds of Confession
13:48 Does God Detest Africa
00:00:00.000 | A podcast listener named Doug in Ohio writes us with a very common and an incredibly important
00:00:09.720 | question too.
00:00:10.720 | We see it all the time in the inbox and for good reason.
00:00:14.000 | Here it is.
00:00:15.600 | If my repentance is genuine, why do I keep confessing the same sin?
00:00:20.720 | Here's specifically how Doug put it.
00:00:22.080 | Dear Pastor John, hello and thank you for APJ.
00:00:24.320 | Your biblical responses have helped me in times when I needed guidance with handling
00:00:27.360 | circumstances in life.
00:00:29.040 | My own question has to do with repentance.
00:00:31.640 | Does true repentance mean that we never ask for God's forgiveness for the same sin twice?
00:00:37.040 | Numerous are the times that I have had to ask for forgiveness for all manner of sin.
00:00:41.000 | But how can I say that I have repented if I commit the same types of sin over and over?
00:00:45.840 | This question plagues me to such a degree that I am sometimes seized by depression when
00:00:50.760 | I think of it.
00:00:51.760 | Pastor John, what would you say to Doug?
00:00:55.160 | Doug's question is one of the most common questions that an honest and serious Christian
00:01:04.440 | has to ask.
00:01:06.240 | The question of repeated sinning in the light of the demand of the New Testament for holiness
00:01:15.240 | and the warnings that faith without a changed life is dead—James 2:17—and that there
00:01:22.520 | is a holiness without which we will not see the Lord—Hebrews 12:14—and if you love
00:01:30.080 | me, Jesus said, you will keep my commandments—John 14, 15—and many will say to Jesus at the
00:01:38.160 | last day, "Lord, Lord," and he'll say, "I never knew you because you didn't do
00:01:42.120 | what I said"—Matthew 7, 23—and how can you still walk in your sins if you have died
00:01:48.840 | with Christ—Romans 6, 2?
00:01:51.120 | So this is an urgent and common, rightly common, question among serious, honest Christians.
00:02:01.480 | Let me start with a clarification of how to even pose the question in language that I
00:02:06.520 | think is perhaps more consistent with the way the New Testament speaks than the way
00:02:13.000 | Doug set it up.
00:02:14.880 | Doug uses the word "repent" to pose the question that he has.
00:02:20.680 | He says, "Does true repentance mean that we never ask God's forgiveness for the same
00:02:29.320 | sin twice?
00:02:31.360 | How can I say that I have repented if I commit the same types of sin over and over?"
00:02:39.920 | I would suggest that we not use the word "repent" for the way we respond to daily sinning as
00:02:51.280 | Christians.
00:02:52.280 | That may surprise people, but let me try to explain.
00:02:55.240 | And yes, I do assume that Christians sin every day because Jesus said alongside, "Give
00:03:03.520 | us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts."
00:03:09.280 | So I take it for granted then that he wouldn't have said that if there weren't a need for
00:03:17.120 | daily forgiveness of our sins, our debts to God.
00:03:22.660 | And of course, I'm giving a very radical New Testament definition of sin when I say
00:03:29.040 | that, namely—here's my definition—any thought, any attitude, any word, any facial
00:03:37.760 | expression, any gesture, any action that does not flow from a treasuring of Jesus is
00:03:47.040 | sin.
00:03:48.920 | Sin is not just big bad deeds like murder or stealing or adultery or even more regular
00:03:55.600 | sins like dishonesty or foul language or impatience.
00:04:00.960 | Sin is a condition of the heart that is bent away from God in preference for other things
00:04:10.880 | and any expression of that preference in our mind or attitude or behavior.
00:04:18.000 | So sin will be with us.
00:04:20.200 | Yes, it will.
00:04:22.040 | Sadly, it breaks our heart.
00:04:24.160 | Sin will be with us until that inner condition is wholly obliterated in the presence of Christ.
00:04:33.400 | And I'm saying that the New Testament does not encourage us to use the word "repent"
00:04:41.040 | for the daily activity of acknowledging those sins and bringing them to God and expressing
00:04:47.760 | our sorrow and hating them and turning afresh to walk in the light.
00:04:52.120 | Rather, the word "repentance" in the New Testament refers to a more basic, fundamental
00:04:59.680 | change of mind, the kind we experience at the beginning of our Christian life and that
00:05:05.720 | we may have to experience if our life takes a terrible turn into a path of destruction
00:05:12.660 | from which we need to be called back, as in the churches in the first chapters of Revelation,
00:05:18.120 | which were all called to repent because they're going to be destroyed, their candlesticks
00:05:22.520 | going to be removed if they don't repent and turn back from that pattern of life they've
00:05:27.920 | been living.
00:05:30.280 | But the New Testament doesn't use the word "repentance" for the daily habit of dealing
00:05:37.560 | with our indwelling recurrent sin.
00:05:40.400 | Rather, I would suggest that 1 John 1, 8 and 9 proposes the word "confession."
00:05:47.520 | If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us
00:05:55.520 | from all unrighteousness.
00:05:58.560 | So what about sins, then, that we commit more than once, indeed so often, that they are
00:06:07.080 | threatening to destroy our assurance of being a Christian?
00:06:11.920 | And here's the way I would put it.
00:06:14.280 | There are two kinds of confession, and there are two kinds of sin.
00:06:19.400 | So test yourself now as to which you are doing.
00:06:23.240 | First, there is confession that at one level is expressing guilt and sorrow for sinning,
00:06:31.680 | but underneath there is the quiet assumption, "This sin is going to happen again, probably
00:06:39.680 | before the week is out.
00:06:41.520 | I'm going to look at nudity in a movie or at some website again, or worse.
00:06:49.880 | I'm going to overdo it with alcohol again, probably this weekend.
00:06:54.000 | I'm going to laugh at those demeaning jokes at work again tomorrow.
00:06:59.720 | I'm going to avoid confronting my colleagues' dishonesty again.
00:07:05.240 | I'm going to respond in a belittling way to my wife when she looks that way at me again,
00:07:11.880 | probably two days from now."
00:07:14.440 | In other words, this kind of confession is very superficial.
00:07:21.440 | It's a cloak for fatalism about your besetting sins.
00:07:27.660 | You feel bad about them, but you have surrendered to their inevitability.
00:07:34.520 | That's one kind of confession.
00:07:36.160 | The other kind of confession is that you express guilt and sorrow for sinning, just like with
00:07:43.040 | the first kind, but your hatred of the sin is so real that you have every intention,
00:07:53.480 | as you confess, of making war on that sin.
00:07:58.560 | Like this weekend, you aim by the power of the Holy Spirit to defeat it.
00:08:06.440 | You are going to seek out whatever ways are going to help you put this sin to death.
00:08:12.040 | You are going to rob it of its power.
00:08:14.960 | That's the plan.
00:08:16.120 | No hypocrisy.
00:08:17.120 | Now, those are the two ways of confessing sin.
00:08:20.800 | The two kinds of sin that I'm referring to are, first, the kind of sin that blindsides
00:08:29.000 | you.
00:08:30.000 | It's not premeditated or planned, and there is scarcely any battle in the moment when
00:08:37.000 | it happens.
00:08:39.120 | Before you're doing what you wish you hadn't done, it's done.
00:08:44.400 | In my own experience, I would illustrate with certain kinds of sinful anger that come over
00:08:50.200 | me, and almost instantly I can tell, "That's over the top.
00:08:55.000 | That's not holy.
00:08:56.000 | It's not righteous."
00:08:57.720 | Or maybe spontaneous unkind words that just pop out of my mouth, and I'm ashamed of them
00:09:04.600 | as soon as I say them.
00:09:07.640 | Or say, a reflexive sexual fantasy owing to some decades-old experience, or a recent advertisement
00:09:15.800 | that you saw while you were looking at the news, or whatever.
00:09:19.800 | I'm not excusing these things.
00:09:21.440 | They're sin.
00:09:22.440 | They're sin.
00:09:23.440 | They show something about my heart.
00:09:25.640 | I'm calling them sin, even though they are more or less spontaneous and not premeditated.
00:09:33.680 | Now here's the other kind of sin that I'm referring to.
00:09:37.880 | Namely, it is premeditated.
00:09:40.400 | You actually sit there or stand there weighing whether to do it or not, whether to look at
00:09:48.760 | the pornography or not, whether to stay and listen to the dirty jokes or not, whether
00:09:55.360 | to call out the injustice at work or not, whether to be dishonest on your tax returns
00:10:01.520 | or not.
00:10:02.520 | You take 10 seconds or 10 minutes or 10 hours wrestling, and then you do the sin.
00:10:09.200 | I think it's possible for a Christian to commit both kinds of sins and get into patterns of
00:10:18.280 | both kinds of confession for a season.
00:10:22.280 | But I would say that the confession that cloaks fatalism, hopelessness, peace with sin, and
00:10:32.600 | the sin that is premeditated are more dangerous to our souls.
00:10:39.920 | Both are dangerous.
00:10:40.920 | Don't get me wrong.
00:10:42.300 | Both are dangerous.
00:10:44.280 | But the confession bordering on hypocrisy and the sin bordering on planned unrighteousness
00:10:52.120 | are more dangerous.
00:10:54.240 | And Paul acknowledges in Romans 7, as I understand, verses 16 to 19, "I do what I do not want,
00:11:03.240 | and I do not do the good I want."
00:11:05.760 | And he cries out, "Wretched man that I am!"
00:11:08.800 | And then he flies to Christ for cleansing.
00:11:13.560 | I don't think we can, as much as I would like it for my own soul, I don't think we can provide
00:11:21.640 | a list of sins or a number for the frequency with which you can sin and get away with it.
00:11:31.400 | I don't think we can do that in a way that answers the question, "How much sinning proves
00:11:38.600 | that I'm not a Christian?"
00:11:40.600 | Instead, I would say this, to the degree that your confessing of sin has made a kind of
00:11:51.160 | fatalistic peace with sin's inevitability, and to the degree that your sin falls into
00:11:59.520 | the category of premeditated unrighteousness, to that degree, you should be frightened that
00:12:08.120 | you are on a path that may well lead to destruction.
00:12:12.560 | I think that's what we can say.
00:12:14.920 | The book in the New Testament, interestingly enough, paradoxically enough, the book in
00:12:20.760 | the New Testament that is perhaps the hardest on Christians' sinning is the same book that
00:12:29.480 | warns most explicitly about the dangers of perfectionism.
00:12:34.520 | So let me close by reading that paradoxical section from 1 John 1, 8 to 10.
00:12:41.680 | This is the way the Bible chooses to talk about this paradox.
00:12:46.920 | If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
00:12:54.320 | So that's the warning against perfectionism.
00:12:56.320 | And then he continues, "If we confess our sins," and that confession right there, I
00:13:03.360 | think, means real.
00:13:05.520 | He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
00:13:13.120 | And then he goes back to the warning.
00:13:15.280 | If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
00:13:25.560 | That's really great.
00:13:26.560 | Thank you.
00:13:27.560 | And great point on 1 John as well.
00:13:28.560 | The same book that is hardest on Christians' sinning is the same book that warns most explicitly
00:13:33.260 | about the dangers of perfectionism.
00:13:35.760 | That is a great point.
00:13:37.080 | Thank you, as always, Pastor John, for that.
00:13:38.640 | And thank you for joining us today.
00:13:40.000 | You can ask a question of your own.
00:13:41.800 | You can search on our growing archive or subscribe to the podcast, all that at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:13:49.160 | Well does God detest Africa?
00:13:51.960 | It's a stark question that comes to us from inside the continent.
00:13:56.760 | Doesn't the long track record of providence show that God does not care so much for Africa,
00:14:01.480 | a continent that's constantly riddled with disease, famine, and suffering?
00:14:06.880 | How can we not conclude that Africans are God's least favorite race?
00:14:11.440 | And that is a stark question.
00:14:12.440 | It's a good one, though.
00:14:14.120 | And it'll give us an opportunity to look at the global church and what God is doing around
00:14:17.480 | the world.
00:14:18.480 | That's up next time.
00:14:19.480 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:14:20.480 | We'll see you back here on Monday.
00:14:21.480 | We'll see you then.
00:14:22.360 | [Music]
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