This morning, we are going to move to our eighth Article of Faith, which is:
VIII. Repentance
There was a man that was about to paint his house. Being the frugal person that he was, he only bought 5 gallons of paint. Although he knew that he couldn’t finish the job with 5 gallons, he decided to thin the paint with water. He thinned and thinned and finally the job was done. A few hours later, a big black cloud showed up over the house. It rained and rained and of course, washed all the paint off the house. Just then, the man heard a voice coming from the cloud that said: "Repaint and thin no more."
Yes. I am aware of how bad that joke was. Sometimes, you just have to use what you’re given. Now, back to repaintence. I’m sorry, repentance.
Here is the description of this 8th tenet of our faith:
We believe that repentance, which is a sincere and thorough change of the mind in regard to sin, involving a sense of personal guilt and a voluntary turning away from sin, is demanded of all who have by act or purpose become sinners against God. The Spirit of God gives to all who will repent the gracious help of penitence of heart and hope of mercy, that they may believe unto pardon and spiritual life.
I believe that this is one of the most under-used facts of Christianity in today’s era. We have been so afraid of not being able to reach people for Christ that we have almost exclusively been concentrating on God’s love for us that we have nearly taken repentance out of our vocabulary. In fact, in our culture, the whole idea of repentance is being systematically removed from our society. In the shows that we watch and the psychologists that we listen to, we are being told that our kids aren’t really doing wrong. We are supposed to be supportive of them no matter what the behavior is. The pendulum has shifted from one extreme of hellfire and damnation to one of complete surrender to our base natures. Every selfish desire is not only acceptable, but encouraged. Because of this shift, many young people in our society have little respect for others or for themselves, for that matter.
In essence, our society now wants continuous forgiveness and grace without the hassle or inconvenience of repentance. Ideas like surrender and repentance are no longer popular. It is directly linked to our society’s feeling that they are automatically owed everything. If someone does harm to someone else that they love, their thought process is no longer that they need to ask for forgiveness. Instead, the person that they wronged is expected to forgive them just because they are a loved one.
Imagine this: let’s say you find out your spouse is having an affair. Not only do they admit it, but they want that relationship to continue and want you to stay happily married to them. How’s that going to go over?
You see, the idea of unconditional love is a romantic fairy-tale. God does offer His love to everyone, regardless of who they are, but there are conditions for the outpouring and outcome of that love, and repentance is at the very heart of those conditions.
Repentance is a very biblical idea. You cannot receive forgiveness from God without repentance. There is a verse we know quite well that says this very plainly (2 Chronicles 7:14):
if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
The first word in that verse is the most important one. The word ‘if’ tells us that forgiveness is conditional. What is it conditional upon. You see, repentance has several parts attached to it. Too often, we just define the word without including its whole meaning in context. I want to look at the different parts of repentance that are contained within the verse that we just read.
The first thing that makes up repentance is humility. It requires humility to admit that you are wrong. Have you ever met someone that just cannot seem to admit they are wrong? Well, we have a whole world of them. Things that the Bible plainly and firmly say that are wrong in God’s sight, we now find acceptable. It’s okay to cheat on your taxes because the government steals from us and besides, they don’t spend the money wisely. People consistently steal from their workplaces simply because they can afford the loss and won’t ever notice that it’s gone. Co-habitation is accepted as the norm now, even in Christian homes. And it is getting to the place where we may not even be able to preach that homosexuality is wrong in God’s eyes, or we may go to prison. It’s not any one sin. It is all of them. We refuse to admit that we are wrong. We have put ourselves in the same place as the spouse that insists on having his mistress and his wife at the same time. It’s a complete lack of humility before our God. Psalm 32:5 says it perfectly:
Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
You see, in confession, you show your humility toward God. I love verse 17, in Psalm 51. It speaks directly to the importance of humility toward God:
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Once again, we see that the admission of guilt due to a repentant and humble heart is exactly what God requires for the forgiveness of sin. The Apostle Paul really brings this home in Romans 2:5
But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
The single most important aspect of repentance is a broken heart. In fact, as Paul says in that verse, a hardened heart will eventually doom every person (or nation) that is unwilling to be broken before God. It is what brought down Egypt when Pharaoh’s heart was hardened against the people of Israel and it continues to be the downfall of every nation that puts itself above the laws of God. Without true repentance, every single person and every collective nation will fall. That is why God urged His people to repentance. He wants us to live in peace, love, and harmony, but when we live outside of God’s will, we are doomed to fall.
The second thing that repentance requires is prayer. You have to ask God for forgiveness and tell Him that you are in the wrong. He already knows it. He needs to hear that you know it as well. We usually require the same thing from our kids. When they do wrong, we want them to ask us for forgiveness. It should be happening in our marriages as well. Far too often, we allow things to just blow over without any true closure because no one is willing to ask for forgiveness. All that does is cause resentment to build up because there has been nothing resolved. In our relationship with God, we have to have the humility to know that we are wrong and then we have to ask for forgiveness for that wrong.
After praying and asking for forgiveness, we must seek God. How do we do that? In our case, that is much easier than it was in biblical times because we have His word to read. It is in His word that we learn what it is to live the Christian life. We must show God that we want to do what is right by seeking to understand what He says is right and the way that we do that is by reading His word.
The last thing that God requires in our verse is that we turn from our wicked ways. That is the true meaning of repentance. It isn’t enough that we recognize that our actions are wrong, although that is very important. We must desire to change and do what is right. That doesn’t mean that we won’t fall. It means that we know that those actions are wrong and that we intend to cease doing them and to do what is right. Satan knows that his actions are wrong but he has no intention of ever doing what is right.
Now, in case you are thinking that repentance is an OT idea, let’s look at a few verses in the NT that speak to repentance. In Luke 13:2-3, Jesus told the people:
“Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.
Jesus wasn’t telling them to just believe in Him. He stressed repentance. In Luke 24:47, Jesus was getting ready to go back to the Father and spoke to His disciples:
…and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
So you see that Jesus also considered repentance to be a condition to forgiveness of sins. It is not an OT concept, nor an archaic one either. It is truth.
When the woman caught in adultery was brought to Jesus, He did not condemn her (nor did he pronounce her innocent). Her guilt was self-evident since she had been caught in the act. However, He did want her to know that she did not have to live in that sin (John 8:11):
“…Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
You see, forgiveness requires a clean break from sin. It requires repentance. When I read the OT, I am always astounded by the stubbornness of the people of Israel. However, our generation is just as stubborn. Rather than submitting to God’s authority, our nation, which was began by many godly people, continues to defy Him. We haughtily believe that He must change His standards rather than calling us to repentance. As a nation, we have a hardened heart and will continue to see sorrow upon sorrow until or unless we are willing to repent.
In closing, I want to read to you a portion of Proclamation 97, which was written and spoken by Abraham Lincoln on March 30, 1863.
Whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord; And, insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
(Invitation)
(Prayer)
*All scriptures are in NRSV unless otherwise stated.
* Humorous illustration from SermonCentral
