What Repentance Is and Does
Repentance is defined as “a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, does, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience.” Repentance is not only turning from your sin. It is turning to God. It’s not just feeling sorry. It’s being convicted, becoming inwardly humbled and visibly reformed. It’s a directional change in your life from sin to God. It’s one of the foundations of Christianity. It’s mentioned over 60 times in the NT. Jesus’ first words in his ministry were “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). You can’t understand Christianity without it. For those of you who trust Christ for salvation, this isn’t new. For those who don’t yet trust Jesus for salvation, let me ask you, what do you do with your guilt? What do you do with the bad things you’ve done and thought? How are you going to change? The Christian gospel has the answer. I’m pleading with you, listen to David’s story, David’s words, and David’s Lord. So, what repentance is. Repentance is three things. First, repentance is turning from sin. Every sin is treason against our Creator. So, lest we think we are better than David, let us see that our sin is just as wicked in God’s eyes. Seeing the sins of others is easy. But seeing our own sin is hard. It took David nearly a year and a prophet from God to see it. When he does, he uses strong words about himself. He turns. He refuses to blame-shift, or make excuses. He owns up. In verses 1-5 he admits his sin: “my transgressions,” “my sin,” “my iniquity.” In transgressing, he knowingly steps over the law. In sin, he misses the mark of righteousness. In iniquity, he twists what God has made straight. He calls these acts what they are: evil. Repentance begins when we start using I and my. Personalizing our sin creates sorrow over it. And we start hating our sin when we see what it does to our relationship with God. You’ll never turn from a sin you don’t hate. So, we need to see that sin is always first against God. Every sin you’ve committed is because you loved something else more than God. That’s why in verse 4 David says his sin is against God alone. God is right to judge him. Notice what he’s saying. David committed adultery with Bathsheba, but the first sin of adultery he committed was against God. David didn’t go from perfection to murder. It never happens that way. We sin step by step, smaller to greater. The first step is always cheating on God.
Second, repentance is turning to God. If we think of repentance as only turning from sin, we won’t ever do it. We can’t. It’s too ingrained. What we need is a power greater than our sin. We need a greater love to drive out our love of sin. And there is no greater love than God’s love. We need to understand God’s heart toward sinners. David understood. That’s why he could come to God in this moment of brokenness and plead. The lower we go in repentance, the clearer we see God. Sin clouds our vision. Repentance cleans the window. In repentance, we position ourselves under the grace of God, waiting on him to pour it out. Third, repentance is believing the gospel. Repentance always moves us close to God. That’s why we must do it constantly. The gospel alone compels us to repent and has the power to change us. Only in the gospel do we have a message that says, “I know you’ve sinned, but your sin can’t keep my love from you because I paid the penalty for it.” We can deny our sin, we can beat ourselves up over our sin, or we can believe the gospel that God’s love has covered our sin. The greatest power for change is always love. So, here’s the goal. Let’s be a church staring at the love of God. As we hear the word of God in scripture and from one another, he’ll call us to repentance, and we’ll have to think it through, and we’ll have to change, but we’ll have a power to change because the gospel never changes.
The Holy Spirit Dwelling Within Us
Psalms 51:11;
David prays that God would not do the same thing to him that he had done to Saul. I.e., he prays that God would not withdraw the equipping presence of the Spirit from him, thus effectively ending his service to God. His concern has nothing to do with the saving presence of the Holy Spirit, because this was something no one had or even knew about in Old Testament times. David knew what it was like to lose the blessing of God and to have the Holy Spirit taken away. He saw it happen before his eyes. And so he says, “Lord, don’t let that happen to me!” This is the heart of his prayer: “Lord, without your Holy Spirit to strengthen me, I have no power. Without your Holy Spirit to guide me, I cannot find my way. Without your Holy Spirit to give wisdom, I cannot lead these people.” It is a prayer that he would not lose the Spirit’s blessing upon his life.
We need the Holy Spirit or we cannot pray. We need the Holy Spirit or we cannot understand. We need the Holy Spirit who brings us every divine blessing. The Holy Spirit gives us access to the Father through Christ. Let us no longer take the Spirit for granted. If the Holy Spirit were removed from us, we might as well be lost. We cannot sing or pray or worship or serve or come near to God without him. We are told to pray in the Holy Spirit. If he were gone, then our words are mere babbling. He is our Teacher, our Guide, our Helper, and our Comforter. He brings God near to us. We cannot live without him.
Only a true Christian could pray like this. An unbeliever won’t care about being cast away from God’s presence because he was never close to God in the first place. An unsaved person won’t care about losing the Holy Spirit that he never had anyway. The ungodly flee from God’s presence and hide from the Holy Spirit. Only the child of God feels the pain of the Lord’s discipline. Those who have dwelt in the sunlight of his love shiver in the cold darkness of his displeasure. If all you have known is darkness, how can you miss the light you never had? So to pray like this is a sure sign of spiritual light. What an encouragement this ought to be to all of us. Are there any great sinners in our midst today? Any Christians who have grieved the Lord again and again? Any adulterers? Any murderers? Any slanderers? Any liars? Any lawbreakers? If you feel the pain of your sin, it surely means that you must know the Lord. The guilt that you feel is a severe mercy God gives to his erring children. Your tears are signs of life within. Your pain and your shame and your frustration are signs that you are a true child of God.
Obedience to God is What God Wants (and We Should too)
As I look at these heartfelt verses from David, I see him moving down the process of letting go of guilt. He was certainly repentant and did not deny or hide what he had done. He named it for what it was. He then repented of his actions and expressed deeply that he would never find himself in that situation again. He expressed a deep desire to abide with God. Now he is working on releasing himself from the guilt. He did bad things. He is dealing with those bad things and guilt is part of it. Guilt is part of the human conscience. For the Christian, the Holy Spirit augments our conscience and shows us when we sin. One must deal with guilt and release it. How do we do that? How do we release guilt when the fact of our sin remains in our past? How do we release guilt when at times the other person may not have forgiven us? How do we release from guilt when there may be a constant present reminder of our past transgressions? To be honest, releasing yourself from guilt is one of the hardest emotional journeys any person has to go through. That is my opinion. Sometimes we are hardest on ourselves. Sometimes we forgive ourselves the least. Sometimes we blame ourselves the most. David reminds us that the only path to forgiveness is a broken heart and a humble spirit (cf. Matthew 5:3). When we throw ourselves on the mercy of God, He delights to lift us up (Luke 18:13-14). When we openly acknowledge our sin against God, turn from it, and cry out for cleansing, God promises that He will hear us and forgive (1 John 1:9). It is interesting to note that, although David sinned against Bathsheba and her husband, David makes this statement to God: “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:4). David gets to the heart of why God so hates sin. It is a violation of His very nature. We are created in that image, but our sin mars it, like a smudge on a mirror. A broken spirit and a contrite heart invite God to clean that smudge and restore us to right relationship with Him.
