Sin, repentance, forgiveness
March 19, 2011
You will sin. The question is: what should you do when you sin?
You’re supposed to repent. That’s the Christian answer.
All of the Christian’s life is one of repentance. Martin Luther nailed that to the Wittenberg door, which was the launching of the protestant reformation. He had ninety five theses, criticisms of the church, things that needed to change, so that it could be back to the biblical way. And he began his ninety five theses with this statement: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said <<Poenitentiam agite>>, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.”
Fishes swim, birds fly, Christians repent. That’s how we know you’re a Christian: you repent.
So what does it mean to repent?
I believe there are five steps to it. I’ll share them with you in succession. I don’t think that most Christians even understand repentance. I believe it is widely misunderstood and it is widely ignored.
And it begins with CONVICTION. (1)
Some people misunderstand conviction as depression. I had a new Christian tell me this.
“- Being a Christian it’s not working.
- What do you mean, it’s not working?
- I just feel bad.
- Did you do something bad?
- Yes.
- Well, if you are bad and did bad and you feel bad, I see a pattern. I see a consistent pattern.”
A bad person does a bad thing and has a bad feeling. What we call that is not depression, what we call your experience is conviction. Some of you come and say “I need to get over my depression.” No, you need to repent of your sin, so that you can be free of your conviction.
The Bible says that conviction comes to us in two ways. Because we are image bearers of God, God made us in His image and likeness, male and female, with a conscience. It’s a moral roader that helps us figure out right and wrong. It’s not perfect because we are sinners, and self deceived, and we do suppress our conscience, but even the non-Christian knows “This is right. This is wrong.” There’s some sense of morality about us. In addition, for the Christian, Jesus says in John 16: “I will send the Holy Spirit, and He will convict you of sin.” So, everyone has a conscience, and for the Christian they also have the additional ministry of God the Holy Spirit, who convicts us of sin. And as a Christian you know what this feels like.
The next step is CONFESSION. (2)
This is where you agree with God.
You go to God and say: “God, I sinned against you.” This is what the psalmist does, he says “against You only, Lord God, have I sinned.” You go to the person that you’ve sinned against, you tell them “I’ve sinned against you, I was wrong.”
Confession also means you talk about it with others. James says it this way in the New Testament, in the epistle bearing his name, “confess your sins one to another.” Talk about it! Need to have people to talk to. But be careful who you talk to. You need to talk to God and Christian, mature people about what it is that is going on.
Some of you are very tricky. Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians that some people practice worldly sorrow. Worldly sorrow looks like conviction and confession, but it never moves to REPENTANCE (3). Paul is saying that even non-Christians can say “I did bad, I feel bad.” What happens with some of you is that you feel conviction and you have confession, but you never repent. All you have is worldly sorrow. You’ll say “I did bad, I feel bad.” Everyone then will embrace you: “Well, we love you, we forgive you, everything is ok.” And then you do it again. And everybody’s confused: “Wha… I thought you understood what you did was wrong…”
“Yeah, it was. And I did it again. And I did it again. And I did it again. And I did it again.”
And when confronted you look sorry, you cry, you’re emotional, you’re heartbroken, you’re devastated… “I’m so sorry. I did bad, I feel bad.”
It’s this loop, the vicious, unchanging, unrepentant loop of worldly sorrow. And it looks a lot like conviction and confession. The difference between worldly sorrow and true confession is that true confession leads to repentance.
Repentance is the foundation of Christianity. Christian church in the New Testament era was launched in Acts chapter 2, verse 38 by a sermon that Peter preached, and he started with this:
“Repent of your sins to Jesus!”
And Christianity came into existence as we know it. Christianity began with a sermon on repentance.
What is repentance? Where does repentance begin?
The proliferation of modern psychology and counseling leads many to think that repentance is behavior modification, behavior change. It’s not. God’s desire is not that you would just have a change of behavior, He wants to go deeper than that. Repentance truly starts in the mind. You think differently about sin, and God, and what you’re doing and failing to do. That’s why Romans 12 says: “do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world”, how everybody thinks and just does their life, “be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. Then you can discern what God’s perfect, acceptable, pleasing will is for you.
So how do you have a renewed mind? You’re going to need to get a lot of time in Scripture. Need to read your Bible, memorize your Bible, study your Bible. Why? To renew your mind.
You may not understand your sin, you may not understand what to do with your sin, you may not understand anything about sin. You need a change of mind that comes through Scripture, and that includes Bible teaching, podcast, lectures, community group, classes, Sunday service. Renewing your mind with Scripture. The beginning of repentance is a change of mind that leads to a change of heart. That leads to a change of behavior. The key is not to focus on the behavior, the key is to focus on the mind. Once the mind changes, the heart changes, the behavior changes. That’s repentance.
That leads to RESTITUTION. (4)
Restitution is not penance where you’re trying to earn forgiveness, but acknowledging that you have done damage, and as much as possible you want to try and make amends. You’ve been stealing time, money, emotion. You want to try and pay back what you’ve stolen. Zacchaeus is a great example in the New Testament. He ripped people off for a living, met Jesus and said “I’m going to pay everybody back.”
Lastly the result is RECONCILIATION. (5)
Once this process has been undertaken, you can reconcile.
Paul says it this way, in 2 Corinthians 5:18 that through Jesus’ death He paid the penalty, gave the sacrifice to take away sin, we could be reconciled to God. Only through Jesus can we have a relationship with God. He said: not only that, He has entrusted to us, quote “a ministry of reconciliation”. Because sin comes between people and God, sin comes between people and people, Jesus dies to take away sin, so that people could be reconciled to God, reconciled to one another, have loving, intimate, trusting relationship back into a restored condition.
Now, all of this is well. Let me be careful with this. I know some of your hearts, and you’re really hurt, and some of you are going to automatically going to have resistance to me. I want you to be careful not to practice religious repentance. Religious repentance is where you only are keenly aware of the sin of someone else, and your only repentance is to repent of their sin, not your own. Jesus speaks about this in a parable the New Testament, He says that two men go to the temple, and one prays “God, thank You that I’m not like that one.” Be careful that you don’t give your enemy a foothold by only taking this principles and applying them to someone else, conveniently overlooking the plank in your own eye.
And what I teach on repentance, almost invariably, it shifts to how other people need to repent to you. We’ll get there in a minute. First, let’s ask the question “what do you need to repent of to those you’re in relationship with?” We’ll get to their sin in a minute, let’s deal with yours first.
You need to repent of your sin, and not practice religious repentance confessing their sin, ignoring your own.
Secondly, when you are sinned against, what should you do?
The answer, according to the gospel of Jesus Christ, is: you need to forgive.
And again, immediately some of you become defensive: “You don’t know what they said, you don’t know what they did, you don’t know how bad they hurt me… Don’t tell me to just forgive them.” Open your heart a little bit, give me an opportunity to explain this to you. If you don’t forgive them, you are choosing the path of bitterness.
Your bitterness is probably legitimate. At least the cause of it, what you perceive to be the cause of it. When I deal with bitter people I will say “You are bitter…” and they will say “Of course I am. Don’t you know what they did? They’ve destroyed me.” And what often times happens is that the person who sinned against them says things like “You’re overreacting! You’re blowing this out of proportion, you’re making this into a bigger deal that it is…” For those who have sinned against someone, and that person is now bitter, let me take from you the right to ever say that. Because bitterness does not emanate from the magnitude of the offense, but rather the proximity of the offender. What I mean is this: it’s not whether or not it was a big deal, it’s whether or not the person who did it is deeply loved. A total stranger, for example, could break into your home, steal all your possessions, and you’d be frustrated, but not bitter, because it’s not personal. Your parents, your children, your friends, your spouse, they may say or do something that isn’t a “big deal”, but because you’ve opened your heart and your life to them, because you’ve trusted them, because you’ve become vulnerable to them, because you’ve taken a risk with them, their betrayal (and that’s what sin feels like) is a big deal. It does great, deep, profound damage.
And if the person who has been sinned against chooses not to forgive, they will become bitter, and if the person who has sinned against them chooses to be unrepentant, you have a relationship where there’s an unrepentant person with an unforgiving person. That’s death. And the relationship will be crucified.
Your bitterness may be very real, the cause may be very real, the pain may be very real, the betrayal may be very real. But the bitterness is still a sin. And it doesn’t just affect you. Hebrews 12 says that a root of bitterness grows up to defile many.
Ephesians 4:31-32 “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.”
People who are in malice are unconscionable. What they say and do is unbelievable, and some of you say “That’s horrifying! I would never do that.” But in varying ways, you need to know that when you’re bitter, and you’ll get there if you don’t repent and forgive, invariably you’ve chosen to walk with Satan instead of Jesus, and unforgiveness and bitterness lead to malice, and malice leads to sin. And you are capable of anything if you walk away from Jesus. This is the vicious loop of bitterness.
Bitter people sometime hold on to their bitterness: “I have a right to be angry, I have a right to hurt you. You hurt me, I’ll hurt you.” The question is how does Jesus factor into all of this? The answer is in verse 32. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.” What it says is this: the forgiveness of a sinner is not contingent upon their repentance, is contingent upon Jesus’ character.
No one has been sinned against more than God, everyone has sinned against God and God has sinned against no one. In the history of the world there is no victim of sin to the degree that God is. But aren’t you glad that God didn’t look down to the soil and said “Well, I’m going to malice. I’m going to wake up every day, get up early and invent a new way to mess with you. You’ll live a long life and it’s going to be terrible. Every day, I’m going to get you, one way or another you’re going to pay me back!” Our God is not a god of malice, He is a God of forgiveness. He sees us in our sin of rebellion and folly and while we were still His enemies He comes, His name is Jesus Christ, God comes down from heaven to the earth, as a man. And He is tempted, Hebrews 4:15 says in every way as we are, yet without sin. I am sure that there were occasions when Jesus was tempted to be bitter. For example, Judas Iscariot. Your friend for three years, that you feed while he’s ripping you off and then stabs you in the back and hands you aver to be executed. And what does Jesus do? He chooses to forgive people, He doesn’t succumb to the sinful, demonic temptation of bitterness. He doesn’t succumb to it and He doesn’t sin. He does go to the cross and there He does the unthinkable, God dies in our place, for our sins; God goes there and takes our sin upon Him. And from the cross do you remember one of Jesus’ final words? “Father, forgive them!” Jesus is crying out for the forgiveness of His murderers. He dies. Three days later He arises and He ascends into heaven, and Jesus today do you know what He is doing? Well, He is tenderhearted and forgiving. He puts up with people like you and me, He’s patient, He’s loving, He’s gracious, He’s merciful, He’s kind. And here’s the truth about Jesus: there’s not one person in the world who would come to Jesus and say “I’m a sinful person, forgive me!” that Jesus would say “No!” to and turn away. He is tenderhearted and forgiving of anyone who repents. Paul says that we are hypocrites if we receive Jesus’ grace and mercy and forgiveness and we don’t share it. When you are sinned against forgive! “Why?” Because that’s what Jesus does with us. And as we forgive others we are sharing something of the love of Jesus with them. It’s a Gospel issue.
I’ll give you some things about forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not approving. “What you did is not a sin, it’s ok.” It’s saying “Actually what you did is so bad God died for it. So it’s a bigger deal than you were thinking. And you thought it was a big deal.”
It’s not excusing. “Oh, that’s your personality.” We come up with these crazy psychological categories. “Oh, you’re violent… It’s personality.”
It’s not denying it.
It’s not overlooking it.
It’s not forgetting. Jesus doesn’t come with some side of amnesia, you still remember things. We remember, we just choose not to hold it against someone.
It’s not diminishing it.
It’s not pretending. What you did is wrong! You need to repent of it.
It’s loving in spite of what they’ve said and done. Because that’s how God loves us. While we were yet His enemies Christ died for us.
It’s choosing not to punish. If Jesus died for you I cannot punish you, that would be unjust.
It’s choosing not to keep a record of wrongs. It’s not keeping every sin you’ve ever committed against me in a big pile, like rock, and every time I feel like I want to pick one up and throw it I feel free.
It’s also choosing to give mercy: one sinner giving another one mercy.
It’s not a one-time event. You don’t just forgive someone and move on. Sometimes that issue comes back. Sometimes you’ve got to get up every morning and start the day with forgiveness. “I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you. It hurts like crazy. I forgive you again today.”
It’s not necessarily reconciliation. Just because you forgive someone doesn’t mean, if they committed a crime, you can’t sent them to jail. We need to see fruit in keeping with repentance. We want to see that you’re really changed. Not just worldly sorrow. And that will take time.
It’s not a restoration of full trust, because trust is built over time. Trust needs to be rebuilt and that takes time.
This is a part of Mark Driscoll’s sermon “My dove” from The Peasant Princess series.