Genuine Repentance

“For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.”  II Corinthians 7:10

Godly sorrow is the kind of sorrow that leads a person to repentance.  It is the sort of sorrow that one has for his or her own actions that are sinful.  A person who truly repents of sin will not repent of his repentance.  Once a person has repented and has been forgiven of sin, he or she will not desire to reverse his or her repentance.  I have never known anyone who truly repented who said, “I wish that I had not told God that I was sorry for sinning against Him”, which would be the same as saying, “I hate that I have been forgiven”.  How dumb is that?  Those who are sorry for things they have done but do not repent and turn from sin are not forgiven.

Repentance means not just being sorry for one’s sins but is a turning from sin and a turn toward God.  Repentance comes from the Greek “metanoia” which means “a change of mind”.  The sinner must see himself as God sees him, a person separated by sin from a holy God and Creator.  Sinners then must realize how much God loves them and is merciful toward them in bestowing His grace upon them, providing His saving faith to them which leads to repentance and the surrender of their lives to Him.  The main change in the life of one who has been born again is his or her realization of the seriousness of sin against God, and the infinite grace, love, and mercy with which God forgave them.

Acts 5:31; 11:18; and Romans 2:4 all tell us that repentance is God’s gift to man.  God send the Holy Spirit to convict the sinner of his or her sin.  It is a warning to the sinner that he or she is not right with God, that his or her sin has separated him or her from God, and that there is no fellowship between the sinner and God.  People are born with a conscience to know right from wrong, but until that conscience is awakened by the Holy Spirit’s conviction, people do not realize how their sin has separated them from God.  Judging by the condition of our nation and our world, an awful lot of people have no clue that they will be held accountable before the righteous and holy God of all creation.

When God created man, He put inside man a conscience, a human way to reason right from wrong, but because humans are inherently devoid of the Holy Spirit until they receive Christ, they can override their conscience.  People do this all the time.  They rationalize.  For example, a person decides to not claim all of his income on his tax return.  He rationalizes that the government gets enough of his money, and, also, he doesn’t always agree with how his tax money is spent.  He makes a logical argument.  I can agree with those two statements, but God expects us to obey man’s law unless it conflicts with His.  After all, Jesus did say to pay our taxes (Matthew 22:21).  Another example is when folks get too much change from a cashier and do not return it.  If they get overcharged for something, they will make a big deal about it.  Most violations of conscience occur either over money or sex.  A spouse feels like his or her spouse doesn’t pay enough attention or doesn’t understand the other spouse, thus they have an affair (let’s call it for what it is–adultery), violating the marriage vow and justifying their actions for purely selfish reasons.  Folks can rationalize themselves all the way to hell.

When one repents of sin and trusts Christ to save him or her, the Holy Spirit comes into that person’s soul as what we might call “God’s conscience”.  However, the Holy Spirit can also be ignored, but not without consequences.  The human conscience, when it has been violated over and over again, can be “seared with a hot iron” (I Timothy 4:2) and thus rendered of no effect upon a person’s thoughts and actions as is the case from Romans 1:28 which describes those who constantly violate God’s laws and ignore God Himself.  God give them over to a “reprobate” mind, one who has no way to judge right from wrong and thus condemns oneself to God’s wrath with no escape.  If a person can’t see that a policy, idea, or act that is obviously wrong and ungodly and pursues it, seems to me, that he or she would fit into that category of a reprobate.  It blows my mind to see so many people supporting and promoting the murder of unborn children.  Why can’t they see that abortion is completely wrong?  I guess they have been blinded by Satan because they surely aren’t listening to the Lord.

In Ephesians 4:30, the believer is warned to not grieve the Holy Spirit of God whereby he or she is sealed unto the day when Christ will return to gather His people together for all eternity.  A believer grieves the Holy Spirit when he or she does what he or she knows is wrong.  However, the Holy Spirit, unlike the human conscience, will not overlook violations against Himself.  In I Corinthians 11:26-30, Paul warned against taking the bread and wine of the Lord’s supper with unconfessed sin in one’s heart.  Some who had done so either became ill, weak, and some even died.  As the old gospel song says, “You can’t do wrong and get by”.  Of course, the Holy Spirit is given as a comforter, but also as a deterrent from committing sin.  Doing our “own thing” is just not worth it.

Genuine repentance is such a freeing experience.  Why harbor sins within your heart if you can rid the guilt by turning from those sins and trusting Christ to forgive you?  Jesus said in John 6:37 that “All that the Father gives me shall come to me; and him that comes to me I will in no way cast out”.  You can count on that.