Repentance

Hello and welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything else along the way. I’m your host, Bryan Broome, and I’m joined today by Greg Uttinger.

Today we’re going to be talking about repentance, specifically the models for repentance that we’re given in scripture, and the importance that scripture lays upon them. Greg, why don’t you go ahead and get us started.

We have our path of discussion laid out for the next few months, and I saw the word repentance and I thought, “Oh, obviously this must be David’s repentance,” which would be a great thing to talk about, but we just had David’s last words so we can’t do that, apparently, so I looked to see what in the world this was all about and it begins with this. This is Solomon, having dedicated the temple and having offered prayers to God, and the glory of God has filled the temple.

And the LORD appeared to Solomon by night and said unto him, I have heard thy prayer and have chosen this place to myself for an house of sacrifice. If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people, if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. [2 Chronicles 7:12-14]

The first time I ever ran into this verse I was a young kid. It was an election season and my parents were supporting a third-party candidate and he used this verse. It seemed very beautiful and powerful to me as a young kid, but I didn’t know where it was, and at that point I didn’t have even a Strong’s Concordance, just the concordance at the back of my Bible. I did a lot of searching for it and finally found it. It has since become a very popular verse anytime an election season comes up, or anytime we want to talk about revival. Interestingly enough, the third-party candidate who quoted this out loud later was found to have been unfaithful to his wife, and yet repentance is a real thing.

Before we go on to talk about it, I suppose this disclaimer. Some theologians with some sense of hermeneutical balance will say that this particular case was a promise to Israel in the context of the temple, and therefore we should not press it too far anyplace else.

There’s a little bit of truth in that. For instance, when he says, “My people,” that does not mean America. That one we need to put right on the table. Should America repent? Obviously, but that’s not the nature of the promise. This is a covenant promise to covenant people so, to make an immediate application into the new covenant era, this would be a command to the church. If the church has grown cold and wayward and, as a consequence, her ministry and her effect upon the nation around is having ill effects, then the church needs to seek God’s face, turn from her wicked ways and such.

Having said that, we certainly have ample grounds in the Old Testament and in the New for calling all nations to repentance. God commands all men everywhere to repent, Paul says. Even in the old covenant we have Nineveh who’s called – actually, not called to repent but does. All Jonah says is, “In 40 days Nineveh will be overthrown,” and the people themselves know enough theology…

…to figure out the rest.

Yeah. “It may be that God…” and they do repent.

God is the Lord of all nations and we all have to answer to him. Particularly with a view to the Great Commission, which calls us to disciple not individuals only but all nations to Christ, we can make an application. It’s indirect but it’s close enough, that if a nation humbles itself and turns from its sin, God will have mercy and there will be visible external signs of his favor as they pursue and continue in their repentance.

But that runs very counter to Western culture as it currently stands. We’re very individualistically centered, and rarely does corporate thought ever creep into it. Let’s just put it that way.

Remember at the tail end of the last episode you were bringing up that strain within Presbyterianism that says that nations aren’t really nations until they have a formal covenant with Jesus. We kind of looked at that askance and said, “No, that’s not really the way that works.” Government is by nature covenantal, and authority that Christ gives is by nature covenantal. Just because the people involved don’t recognize it does not free them from said covenantal responsibility, nor said covenantal sanctions.

We cannot say that God does not judge among the nations because they’re not his people. He only judges his people. That would be a rotten way to conduct a New Testament economy. “All of you nations who are sinning against me, go have fun. I’m not going to judge you, not going to criticize you, not going to bring any punishment upon you, but my church on the other hand…”

The church does receive special attention. Judgement does begin at the house of God. Those of us who draw closer to the throne are more accountable, but if judgement begins with us then where will the ungodly appear, the apostle continues.

Corporate responsibility is a thing. We generally do think of repentance as something I myself do, that is if we think of repentance at all. But it’s something I do, and how dare I judge other people and call them to account. If I repent, my life should get better, but what does that have to do with the rain and the sunshine, the earthquakes, the tornados, or the general state of our economy? Well, if you’re the only one doing it, it may not be a whole lot, but God does deal with people corporately.

Some of the mistakes that people have made in reading the sanctions of the covenant in Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 is to say, “This is what will happen to you if you come to Christ and you obey his law.” He’s not talking to individuals. He’s talking to Israel as a whole.

There were many people in Israel down through the millennium and a half of its existence who were faithful while everyone else around them was unfaithful, and the faithful went through the persecutions. They went through the famines. They went through the droughts. They went through the pestilence. God did not free them from the corporate sanctions that he brought against an unbelieving people.

You’re right, we have a hard time with that. Shouldn’t it all just be me and God? What do other people have to do with it? So there’s that. This particular verse does say that the nation or the people, the covenant group, does need to repent. Do you have any more thoughts on that before we pursue the idea of what repentance looks like?

Just a passing note that there’s a good reaction of disgust to people who look at passages in the Old Testament and basically say, “This is for you today.” You think of Jeremiah 29:11, which has been used and abused in various ways for prosperity gospel types and all that. But there is, in fact, a real way that Jeremiah 29:11 actually applies to the life of the faithful today as well, because at the very least it is something that is bound up in Christ.

We need to recognize that when the Old Testament speaks to Israel or about the land or about things like this, that these are things bound up in the person of Christ, and that therefore there is a fulfillment for the people of God, somehow – not that it’s the same in every verse or anything like that.

There’s an over-reaction, which is to say, “No, no, nope. That doesn’t even apply at all because it was talking to Israel,” and that’s an over-reaction.

It is, and this brings to mind some of the minor controversies I’ve been on the edge of for the last few weeks having to do with covenant continuity. Can you look at the Old Testament and say, “Well, this is for the church because God said it, and he said it for anywhere from 4,000 to 1,500 years, depending where in the Bible we are.” Do we say, “This too belongs to the church,” or do we say, “Nope, old covenant, gone, done. That was never something God intended for us. Our privileges, our blessings are far more spiritual or internal or real or something.”

It's easy to err in either direction, to try to bring it across directly. “The Bible says this, and the New Testament Church is the New Testament Israel, and whatever God said applies exactly and directly.” That can be dangerous, but at least as dangerous is the idea, “That’s Old Testament. It doesn’t apply here.” It does apply. It’s the same God. Human nature has not changed.

The thoughts that God thinks to us are still good, and they’re no less good because we’ve moved into the new covenant, nor were his thoughts for Israel less good because that was the Old Testament and he was thinking about giving them a nice house and a dog or something, whereas for us he’s giving us heaven. We can’t do that, or we shouldn’t do that. God’s nature has not changed. What God values has not changed. Man existing as both a temporal and eternal creature as both body and soul has not changed.

The power of the new covenant is that it can actually accomplish what the old covenant promised. The old covenant promised in types and shadows and signs and symbols, but what it promised was the new covenant reality.

I think that sometimes we get the idea that God has for a while maintained competing relationship structures. The old covenant did one thing with one people, and the New Testament does something very different with the new people. There was that moment of overlap for 40 years, but we’re not even going to think about that because we don’t understand the old covenant very well anyway and it doesn’t matter because we’re in the new covenant, rather than saying that everything that got promised in the old covenant pointed to the new covenant and what it would do. It wasn’t a different kind of promise.

Along the way there were some types and shadows that perhaps are not identical to what we have, and yet Abraham was promised that he would be heir of the world. Jesus says, “Go make disciples of all nations.” And Paul commenting on Abraham being heir of the world doesn’t pull that back and say, “Well, that was nice for him, but now you don’t get the world, you get heaven.” He does not do that. God preached before the gospel to Abraham saying “In thee shall all nations be blessed.”

Part of the job of expositors and theologians, both biblical and systematic, is to see how this hermeneutic brings the old covenant promises to us. Here we have something very specific. We’re not worshiping at Solomon’s temple. We have no promises about our church buildings, but we do have the temple which is the church.

America is not God’s people. We would dearly love for America to become God’s people by faith in Christ, but in the meantime there is a God’s people called the church, a covenanted community that is quite capable, at least theoretically and within God’s grace, of repenting. And God is more than capable of healing our relationships and our land and our finances and our economy as we do this, that is of pouring out the blessings that the church receives so that they see beyond us and what we often call common grace, so that we become a channel of blessing for the world, both spiritually, which is primary, relationship with God in Christ, but then everything that comes with that.

God claims us. He claims our children. He claims our stuff. That hasn’t changed, so as we proceed through the rest of the old covenant over the next several months, Lord willing, this is something we’ll probably come back to again. “Why do you keep teaching from the old covenant?” Because it’s foundational. It sets the pattern. It’s the ABCs.

Some of this has to be translated, as it were, which is a good image. The Bible uses the idea of resurrection and ascension into heaven as translation, being lifted out of one language into another, but the sense is the same. If any man be in Christ he’s a new creation, not in the sense of brand new but in the sense of something radically transforming has happened.

So the old covenant, the realities there – as I say, the same God, the same problem with sin, the same promise of Christ – the only difference is he has come and the work is finished.

All of that that you explained was wonderful, and I think the way to just really succinctly put it into a short sentence is that we are affirming that the substance of the old and the new covenants is identical. We’re not dealing with one way to God and now this new better way to God. We’re dealing with this is the way to God, and the only thing that makes the new covenant new is that it’s the substance, the reality, using substance in a different way there than the first time I said it.

So that said, when we come to the new covenant, the New Testament, we should not be surprised to see this word repentance, nor should we be bothered by people who say, “Repentance? That’s so Old Testament.” No, that is so New Testament. Man’s relationship with God in Christ demands repentance.

The Greek word metanoia means to change your mind or to turn around. Since we are all conceived and born of sin, if we’re going to walk with God and have a good relationship with him, we do have to turn around. We do have to change our mind. We have to stop walking in the direction that leads to hell and damnation, and walk to our God. We have to come in Christ. The straight gate is Christ himself and there is no other way. We can’t simply reverse our obedience patterns and think that that’s going to fix anything.

Again, last time we talked about how outward repentance is better than no repentance, but not by a lot. If you are a serial killer it would be good for you to stop killing people. We know that. If you’ve been cheating on your wife and you want a better marriage, it would be good to stop cheating on your wife. Yes, this is so. These are external changes and God can, may, and often does honor these to some extent, but true repentance is repentance from the heart. It's a change in our basic nature that’s wrought by the Holy Spirit and the preaching of the gospel.

When we come to the New Testament, we do find a passage from Paul in 2 Corinthians 7 where he sort of sums up what repentance is like. Amongst myself and my friends, we often have the joke that 2 Corinthians was translated by the Scots. It’s not completely a joke, it really was, and as you read through 2 Corinthians in the Authorized Version there are expressions where you say, “What does that mean?”

I will read this passage in the King James. The problem is the New King James and the ESV don’t do a whole lot better, which suggests that the Greek is difficult, but I think it gives us some starting points to talk about.

The context shows up in 1 Corinthians. There’s a man in the congregation who is living in sin with his stepmother, his father’s wife, and the church didn’t do anything about this. It didn’t say anything about it besides acknowledge the fact, because Paul somehow knew about it, but they didn’t feel they had to pronounce any kind of criticism or official judgement. Paul says, “What’s that all about? You’re puffed up.”

Apparently they were proud that they were so inclusive. They were proud that the grace in them was so great it could embrace even this horrible thing without a blink. Paul says, “Uh, no. You need to excommunicate this man.” In fact, Paul does a long-distance excommunication. That was 1 Corinthians.

In 2 Corinthians the message is, “Hey, he repented. This is wonderful. You need to welcome him back and receive him, lest he be swallowed up with much grief.” That’s the context for talking about this, and that of course was not Corinth’s only problem. They were suing each other in court, visiting prostitutes, getting drunk at the Lord’s Supper, denying the resurrection – there were a whole host of things that needed fixing.

In that context, Paul says in verse 9 –

Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance.

We can think here of Judas and Peter. They both were very sorry about what they did. They both wept tears and walked away from everybody else into the darkness, but Peter’s tears were unto repentance and Judas’s were to self-destruction. He did not repent, although he was very sorry. Just because people cry a bucket of tears does not mean that their heart has changed. It’s just that they are feeling the weight perhaps of the consequences of their sins.

For ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of, but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter.

He's talking about their repentance for their own actions for the sin that was in their midst, and for their failure to deal with sin, so there’s a couple things overlapping here which sort of explains some of the words he uses.

As I said, when I first studied this I found the English difficult, and I went to a number of sources and I still think someone more versed in Greek could do a better job than I’ve done, but I think there are some things here that we can see.

First of all, carefulness. The New King James says diligence. ESV says earnestness. In other words, repentance is not a slack half-hearted “Yeah, I’m kinda sorry I guess about something. Yeah, I made some mistakes, who doesn’t. Well yeah, I sinned against you.”

“How about other people?”

“Huh, other people? Well, no.”

“Did you sin?”

”Well, yeah, primarily I sinned against God, but I’ve talked to God and we’re okay.”

That’s not being careful, diligent, or earnest in your repentance.

This is a strange sort of object example of this, but I was watching a TV show with my wife, and one of the characters is a nobleman, and he essentially walks all over this character’s love interest because she’s not a noblewoman. She’s a servant. At some point she breaks and she goes, “You’re being very rude. You’re a guest in my house and you’ve done nothing but just act like the king because you’re a nobleman.”

He’s very sorry. He speaks to her and says, “You know, you’re right. I apologize. That was not fair to you. I will do something to make it up for you. Go for a walk. I’ll make dinner for us.” He’s never cooked a day in his life. At this point he calls his manservant over and says, “Go get two dinners from the palace kitchens,” and proceeds to pretend that he made that.

Then she gets mad at him for that. “You lied to me. That’s not great. That’s not a good look, either.” He says, “I have a lot to learn,” and he does the whole big show thing again of being sorry. But then he turns around and is exactly as arrogant and condescending and rude to the manservant again. It’s like he learned nothing after all. He just liked the pretty girl.

It becomes a question of what do you have to do to get what you want. “What are the magic words I’m supposed to say so that we can get on and I can get back to pursuing my own interests?”

What Paul is calling for is a seriousness about this, an understanding of how bad sin is and of who all it’s affected and how deep it reaches in your heart.

Not terribly long ago I was dealing with a person who said, “I get my sin. I have done this,” and it was true. The person had done ‘this.’ But I’m sitting back thinking, “I don’t think you’re ready for repentance yet because yes, you’re confessing the surface appearance, but just in talking to you there’s the stuff behind this. There are root sins that you haven’t dealt with yet.”

It’s easy for us to see the thing that we’ve done. It’s an action. We were caught at it probably. We’ve been called on the carpet for that and we get it. “Okay, that was wrong and I’m not only sorry for getting caught, but I am really sorry I did that. That was wrong.” But we don’t pursue further to see why did we do that? What are the root sins?

This is something at my late stage in life – I’m not that old, but I’m getting there – where I’m beginning to look at things I’ve struggled with for a long time and seeing, yeah, that’s really sinful, but now I’m beginning to see what’s beneath it, and it’s scary because it’s ugly.

I’ve never thought of myself that way. I mean in the abstract, sure, I know the theology, I know what sin is like and would-be autonomy and all that, but now I’m actually seeing it in myself and saying, “Ugh, yeah. There’s a lot to pull out there.” Obviously, I can’t do it without the Holy Spirit’s work in me, but I need to be earnest in pursuing the Spirit and asking for his help and confessing what I do see.

I think we maybe all have seen the progression in Paul’s thinking. Before he came to Christ he could say, “I was blameless in keeping the law,” but by the time we’re through Paul’s career he says, “I’m the chiefest of sinners.” It’s not that he had suddenly gotten worse, but that he saw more clearly. The more we repent, the more we see there is more to repent of.

The next word – and this is one where I had a little bit of trouble, and I was still doing some research just before we started – the King James says “what clearing of yourselves.” The ESV says “what eagerness to clear yourselves.” That doesn’t really improve on it.

The Greek word is apologia, in the sense of a formal defense – not saying “I’m sorry” but making a formal defense. Paul is not praising excuse-making. “Well, you see Paul, there were reasons we had to do this.”

The nature of the offense and the nature of the apology seems to be after the fact saying, “Look, here’s what we did. Since your letter, here is what we have done to fix it. This is how serious we got. If necessary, we could write up a task map and an after-action report of all that we did to fix this, because we were serious about fixing this and we want you to know that you don’t have to worry. It has been dealt with.”

It's always encouraging when someone under your authority – in my case, often students, or as an elder, parishioners – come and say, “This is where I was, and God showed me this and he showed me this, so I’ve done this, I’ve done that.”

It’s not that we’re saved by works, but true faith and true repentance is going to generate some changes in lifestyle and some recognition that there are some people you shouldn’t be hanging out with, some things you should not be watching, some sites on the computer you should not be going to, ways of dealing of people.

Your example was a good one. “You’ve been rude to this lady. You’ve been presuming upon her. Now you’ve even been rude to the servant.” These are all things that just changing them is not going to change anything, but until they change naturally, or supernaturally – as the change comes organically out of your repentance and faith in Christ – we have good reason to say, “You’re not repentant yet,” or at least the repentance has not gone deep enough to change things that matter. When repentance does work that deeply, we should be able to sit down and say to our parents, to our pastor, to our spouse, to whoever, “This is what I’ve done.”

This is where husbands and wives often need to sit down and say, “Look honey, I hear you. I’ve listened to you. I’ve taken this before God and searched my heart. I really get it, and as a consequence here are things I will not be doing anymore, and here are some things I will be doing.” Again, that can easily degenerate into legalism, but the flip side is that if the repentance is true, there will be external changes which we can catalog.

If someone has been struggling let’s say with pornography, if you come to your wife and say, “I’m getting rid of the TV and blocking all the channels on the internet. In fact, my computer is going to be out here in the open where I can’t do anything without everybody watching me,” that in itself does not prove true repentance. But contrast it with this. “Yeah, honey, I’ve talked to God about this and we’re okay, so you don’t need to worry anymore.”

“Are you going to change anything?”

“Oh no, because, you know, my heart is pure now. I don’t need to worry about anything.”

That’s not as comforting somehow.

It’s really not. Think about how many number of times that has functionally been what people say when they’re in positions of authority in the church. They basically say, “Yep, this is a thing that’s happened, but I’m growing through it now and we’re just going to go right back to business as usual. God said I’m clear.”

Yes. “Between me and sin it’s a personal matter. Between me and God I’ve cleared it. Trust me. We can go back to the way things were.”

Well, see, the way things were is where the problem started, so something needs to change here. Again, the appeal will be, “No, you’re asking for legalism.” No, we’re asking for reality, a reality that can be chronicled, described in words, and measured out. Promises can be made. “I will not do this.”

If you’re having an affair with a girl at the office, if I’m her boss I can fire her, I suppose, depending. I can quit. I can ask for a transfer. At the very least I can make sure that we are never alone in the same room at the same time, and this is how I’m going to do that – as opposed to, “No, I will never lust after her again. We’re going to work side-by-side at late hours, but it’s okay.” Your wife is not going to buy that, and she shouldn’t.

This apology, this defense is we are in fact doing all that we need to do to clean up our act. We’re looking into things. We’re asking the right questions. We’re exercising church discipline. We ourselves are making repentance.

We’re not just blaming this guy over here who fell into sin. We’re blaming ourselves for not having helped him and dealt with this. We’re taking responsibility for the body of Christ that we have endangered by allowing this thing to fester in the body. So we begin to look more broadly and see all of the things, and then begin to show how we are trying to deal with them, how we are putting the grace of Christ into practical effect in our lives.

For Antinomians, all this is still going to sound like legalism, because we don’t want to be told what to do. God can tell us, but we generally come down with “Whatever I’ve done is good enough for God, because why would it not be?”

The next word in 2 Corinthians is indignation, and I think the other translations use the same word. Indignant is to be thoroughly displeased and upset with something. Repentance leads us to be indignant to sin in ourselves, for we understand at last that we have offended God. A repentant soul is angry with sin, particularly his own.

There comes a point in repentance where we finally get it. We look at ourselves and say, “I am stupid. No, I am rebellious. I have let this fester. I deceived myself. I hurt other people. I have damaged relationships, and it’s me. I really wish I could blame…no, I don’t. I’m past trying to blame people. It’s me. I take that and it hurts and I’m sad and I’m mad at myself. I’m angry with myself.” We get a little glimpse of God’s anger with sin.

There’s a danger with a lackadaisical approach of, “Yeah, well, it’s alright. God forgives sin. I confess my sins every night and we’re good.”

If there is a single theme through all of these words it’s that repentance is a very serious business, because sin is a very serious danger. Anything that does not force us to do heart searching, to – as an old radio program used to say – face ourselves and think, to examine ourselves, as Paul says with regard to the table, is insufficient. It might be a start maybe, but it’s not what God’s demanding here.

Fear. John Gill says, “Fear not of hell and damnation,” well, unless you really aren’t believing, “but fear God.” It’s what he at other places calls a filial reverence for God. “Fear, lest the corruption should spread in the church.” Matthew Henry speaks of an awe-ful fear of God, a cautious fear of sin, a jealous fear of ourselves.

This is something I’ve kind of mentioned, but I think we should talk about for just a second. When we sin, and since we are – as you said at the beginning of this – in a corporate relationship with others, this thing called the body of Christ, the church, the local church in particular, when I sin I do risk the danger of bringing God’s wrath upon the entire congregation. Just because my sin was little and private does not mean that I am not endangering everybody by my sin. We need to understand that.

When Paul describes what was happening in Corinth he said, “Many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep,” he does not tie it to, “You people who have sinned, this is happening to,” but because there is sin in the congregation undealt with this is happening. The implication seems to be that it’s happening to people who may not themselves have directly participated in these sins, although perhaps in some sin or in the unbelief of the body generally, but when we sin we have to realize that punishment may be coming to everybody.

A man who cheats on his wife and gets caught, or even if he doesn’t get caught, that’s going to have repercussions in his family. He cannot say, “No, that was just between me and the woman, but I tried to keep it from my wife so she would not be affected by it.” No!

It’s a very out-of-touch way of processing the situation. The fact is that any other sin is equally corporate, because if you murder someone else, the other person is very much affected.

As is his family, his friends, everyone around him. Everyone who trusted you or relied on you is affected. Again, God holds the congregation responsible. If the congregation does not act, then the congregation may expect God’s chastening on them as well for not dealing with the cancer. If you leave the cancer in the body alone long enough, the body is going to die.

You cannot say, “Well, there was cancer in the liver, but we like the liver. The liver is nice. The liver does good things. We didn’t want to disturb the liver so we just let the cancer alone. We’re sure that God will take care of it somehow.” Well, God will, and it’s called death.

Again we need to go back to this idea of corporate or covenantal thinking, where we are members of one body, and if one suffers the whole body suffers. That’s Paul. That’s scripture.

The next phrase is vehement desire. We don’t say vehement anymore very much. The ESV says longing. “A desperate desire,” Matthew Henry says, “for a thorough reformation of what has been amiss and a reconciliation with God.”

These phrases keep overlapping in our mind. It’s again getting serious. Really seriously desiring to get things fixed, to make things right, to put right what once went wrong, and to bring about substantial healing.

We can’t undo the past, and it’s naïve and childish to think that if I say I’m sorry then everything will go back to the way it was. In many cases that’s not possible, but we can at least go forward on firmer ground, that ground being the blood of Christ, if we’re willing to be honest and seriously pursue forgiveness – God’s forgiveness first of all, and repentance and forgiveness from one another. True repentance can never be lukewarm.

Two more – zeal and revenge.

To be zealous about something means to be thoroughly committed to it, be passionate about it. Matthew Henry calls this “a mixture of love and anger, a zeal for duty and against sin.” John Gill speaks of “a zeal for God and his glory, for restoring the discipline of the church, for the doctrines of the gospel, the ordinances of Christ’s house.” Zeal is “desire on fire, an intensity of desire” Calvin says.

This is what we keep saying. It’s not lackadaisical. It’s not laidback. It’s not chill. It’s not, “Yeah, well I dealt with that last night. It took 5 minutes or so.” It may require a lot of heart searching, a lot of prayer. It may require weeks and months of coming to terms with what you did and what is at the bottom of it. I keep coming back to that.

We can sin sins that don’t seem that big, or that maybe in themselves do seem pretty big. In fact, they seem so big that once we’ve dealt with that open sin, say adultery or stealing from the church or slandering the pastor – once we’ve dealt with them, “Yeah, that was really bad and I’ve now dealt with that. I got really serious about that. I will never do that again” – but have you dealt with what got you there? Have you really taken the time to figure out why you ended up there in the first place? What walls and barriers did you drop way in the past in your heart perhaps that allowed you to walk into these sins now?

It's this ongoing thing called the Christian life, and it’s often not fun. It’s often hard, but there is a certain joy and passion in pursuing the holiness of God and loving a holy God because he is holy, and we perceive that that holiness is a good thing. It’s not who we are yet, but it’s who he’s making us to be, and every step of repentance pushes us and nudges us just a little more to what he’s making us out to be when he appears at his coming.

Then lastly, revenge. The New King James says vindication. The ESV says punishment. Vincent in his word studies says “meting out justice, doing justice to all parties, making sure justice is done.” This may mean public humiliation. You have to stand up in front of everyone and say, “This is what I did” so there’s no confusion. Open confession – “I called you all here because I’ve got to tell you something.”

Financial restitution – “Yeah, I did steal $1,000 and I told God I’m sorry, so we’re done I guess.”

“Did you give back the $1,000?”

“Well, no. I said I’m sorry.”

Chuck Swindoll in one of his books on grace gives this example. You walk out into the church parking lot and you hear kind of a crash and a bang. You look down the row of cars and you see a friend of yours, a church member, scribbling something and leaving a note on your car, and he begins to pull away. You see him leave and you come to the car and you see the fender has been bashed in, because the guy backed up sloppily. The note says, “Sorry about the damage, but I’ve talked to God about it and we’re alright. Isn’t grace wonderful?” and he’s gone.

Not for me. I now have a car I need to get fixed.

Again, Antinomians will look at this and say, “You’re talking legalism.” No, we’re talking heart change. I think that maybe is the point where legalism doesn’t get it, because legalism is about external things, and Antinomian is about external things.

The Antinomian wants to plead the heart, but it short-circuits the heart’s connection to reality. “As long as it’s in my heart in the sense of some kind of sentiment and privately wished concern, that’s all that matters. It need not come out in the open.”

Legalism is also not concerned with the heart, in that if you have done the thing then we’re done. We don’t need to pursue any further.

I remember years ago at my previous school there was a young man who we suspected was cheating – suspected in the sense that we were absolutely positive, but wanted to make sure we could prove it. He and his dad were coming to meet with us and I just had a bad feeling, so I called a number of my students to me privately and said, “Look, do you know anything about this kid that you haven’t told us?” and one after another said, “Oh, yeah, he’s the worst cheater ever,” so I got lots of new information.

I went into the meeting and the dad said, “Well, I’ve talked to my son and he did admit to cheating on at least two occasions. He’s repented so we’re done here, right?” I said, “Except for this and this and this and this,” and the father got angry with me. One of his phrases was, “Well, what do you want, crocodile tears?”

I was thinking, “How about some real ones? How about realizing it, and how about you? Don’t you understand that your son has not simply lied but he is a liar. He has not just cheated but he is a cheat. His character is in dire need of the gospel.”

The pastor of this man called him a social Antinomian, but I would also say he’s a legalist. “I checked the boxes. I’ve met the external requirements.” Legalism and Antinomianism mean we invent our own rules so that we can keep God’s from our heart.

Exactly. They’re two sides of the same coin.

The Heidelberg Catechism, the confession of Reformed churches of the continent and of America, says this. It calls repentance “heartfelt sorrow for sin, causing us to hate and turn from it always more and more.” That’s question and answer 89.

The Westminster Confession says, “The repentant sinner grieves for and hates his sin and is to turn from them all unto God, purposing and endeavoring to walk with him in all the ways of his commandments.” There’s traditional Reformed theology. There’s the union of heart and outward action. Both are required, and that’s what makes it so hard.

If we limit it to the heart but not outward action, we can fake the heart. If we limit it to outward action but don’t pursue the heart, we can fake outward action. It’s when you unite the two that suddenly we’re up against the horrible realities of our sin and our sinful nature and see our infinite need for Christ.

It is the truly hard way, and it’s the right way, the good way.

In the original article I listed some suggestions for national repentance. I don’t know that we need to pursue them, because at this point I think one of the things we’ve said is rather obvious. At each level we need to get serious with God about our sins and about our disobedience, whether it’s family – with regard to our spouses and our children – or whether it’s our church. Is our church living up to what God says the church ought to be, or are we cutting corners in order to increase numbers or because we love people and don’t want to be judgmental?

Then as a nation we have huge policies embedded in our system that are anti-Christ, and that’s not particularly the place to start, although as God gives us opportunity we have a chance to abolish the public school system, our temples to socialism and federal power, or the laws favoring abortion. If we can get rid of those, obviously we should. But in general that’s the tail end of things. Repentance begins in our hearts with our concerns.

Years ago I conceived of writing an article titled “We Don’t Want Revival.” The thesis was going to be we don’t want revival out there because we don’t want revival in here. If we wanted revival we’d go have one. We’d go home and get on our knees before God and we would examine ourselves, which is the hardest thing in the world to do. But until we do that, there is a bit of hypocrisy in complaining about the little sins of our national leaders in the media.

That’s not to say that we can’t call them to repentance, too. Hey, repentance is for everybody, but there is this danger of guilt-shifting, at pointing the finger at people ‘out there.’ They’re the bad guys. If we could just get rid of the media, the press, if we could get rid of the bad guys in Washington or the international bankers or the Marxists, then everything would be great.

No, then it would be back on us and it would be pretty clear where the problems really lie, because somebody votes these people into office. Someone buys and listens to the media stuff.

Not everyone who votes is voting with their noses held, so to speak.

Exactly. So God calls us to repentance, and I think we have to close with this, though. There are tender souls who truly want to repent, and the question becomes “Have I repented enough?” The answer to that is no, but the flip side of that is we are not saved by the degree and purity of our repentance.

Salvation brings repentance, just as it brings obedience, but our salvation is never measured out in terms of that. It’s an evidence, it’s a fruit, it’s something in which we will continue to grow. But the person who keeps looking at his conscience and says, “I’ve sinned again and again and again. I must not be a Christian,” no, brother, no. The very fact that you care, that sin grieves you is evidence of the work of God in your heart, because the unbeliever can skip through life with an occasional, “Oops, sorry, ran over your kid, but I’m sorry. I’m moving on. I have things to do.”

The Christian will be grieved for things that to the world seem very small and insignificant, but to us are huge because we know the honor of God and our fellowship with him is at stake. So we have to be careful to say this is not a program for justification, but rather an ongoing demonstration of the righteousness we have in Christ.

Amen. Even our repentance is something that is tainted by sin. If we’re going to claim total depravity using the easy popular five points, if you’re going to claim that you don’t get to say, “All except for this one thing,” because then you’re standing on the same shifting ground that the Arminians do when it comes to that first moment of repentance. You rightly criticize them, and you should recognize it in yourself.

I think that’s a good place to wrap up, because otherwise we’ll be here for another 30 minutes.

My recommendation this week is one that I’ve given before. It’s a book by Sinclair Ferguson called The Whole Christ. It starts with a historical analysis of the Marrow Controversy in the Church of Scotland, but it really is about antinomianism vs legalism, and avoiding both of those errors and what the gospel really is.

There’s a lot of really great parts in there, but one of the relevant things that gets touched on, at least as far as my memory is saying it, is the idea of repentance. If we’re talking about justification and we really, really want to focus on keeping sola fide intact, then you can’t say that you need to repent in order to be justified, because that puts the order out. You have to be justified, which is to say converted as well, before repentance even enters your mind.

The creed of this one small Scottish presbytery was called the Auchterarder Creed, which I will never be able to pronounce as cool as Sinclair Ferguson pronounces it, which in very confusingly-set English essentially says, “Do you need to repent in order to come to Christ?” and depending on how you answer that, you ended up on one of the two sides in this controversy.

The Marrow men, Thomas Boston and others, came down and said, “You don’t need to. Now, you will and you should because that’s a sign, but you can’t get that order out of the way.” And the people on the other side who said yes, actually said things like, “When you’re evangelizing, you cannot tell unbelievers to repent.” It was something very basic to evangelism that just completely escaped my mind now, but they got the order wrong and it messed with their very ability to complete the Great Commission.

This isn’t an ivory tower discussion. This is, “Oh, those MDivs. They’re all at Westminster Seminary and they’re talking about Lapsarianism again.” This is the gospel at stake. It’s how you think about justification.

So that’s my book recommendation. It will probably always be a recommendation. We should just put it on our podcast page. “This is Bryan’s recommendation forever,” but it bears special mention this time.

Unfortunately, I have not read about the Marrow Controversy. I know it’s a thing and it’s popped up once or twice. I asked my pastor about it once in passing, and he either didn’t have a ready short answer or we didn’t have time, I don’t remember. So what I’m going to say has nothing to do with anything you just said or anything that’s in the book you just quoted, but there is this issue. Can you tell an unbeliever to repent and trust in Christ? The answer has to be yes, because the apostles did.

Now, does that imply that the unbelievers had the ability to respond? No, unless God gives it to them through the message you just preached. And if God gives them ability and regenerates their hearts and gives them faith, then that faith will be a repentant faith. It will be a working faith. It will be a faith that is life-changing, but the work of the Spirit is through the gospel directly to the heart. It’s our one and only claim on it, is faith in Christ.

We could talk then about what faith looks like, but we have to be careful not to say, “Faith really means faith and…” No, it’s faith and it’s faith alone, but faith does have a definition.

And it has results.

It has results. If we reach for Christ as Savior, that kind of implies we’re reaching for Christ as Savior – from what? From sin, which means why do I want to be saved from sin? Oh, because I realize sin at some level is a bad thing. Even if I only realize it’s taking me to hell and I don’t want to go there, that’s a sort of repentance. If now, trusting in Christ as I do this instant, realize I love Christ because of what he’s done and therefore I don’t want to offend him, that too is repentance.

Again, do we measure that out? Do we mete it out? Do we ask for details and specifics? No, because it’s the faith, it’s the laying hold of Christ which is what saves us and binds us to Christ. But as all the Reformed standards say, there is a connection here. Wherever that would land me in this controversy, I think that’s what we have to insist on, because I’ve seen this. I’ve seen people who cannot functionally preach the gospel.

In fact, I know of one dear couple. They’re sweet people who love the Lord, but as we were visiting one day as elders they admitted that they didn’t do much evangelism for this reason. They were afraid they would come off sounding like Arminians. Then sound like Arminians! Come on. Offer them Jesus. If the words don’t come out right, that’s okay. God can work around that. You’re not deliberately trying to be a heretic.

There is some grace for not trying to be a heretic on purpose.

Yeah. But when it stalls you to the point that you can’t even tell people that Jesus saves and that you can have him, that’s horrible.

I was thinking about recommending watching life in your backyard, because my daughter has been doing a lot of gardening and she says we now have two pigeons, two scrub jays, two mockingbirds, and two squirrels she’s watching right now. They’re just having a blast in our backyard. When we had a cat back there they couldn’t do that, but now they’re just chasing each other all around, so that’s a good thing.

But my primary recommendation I’ve been thinking about all morning because as I said earlier, issues of covenant continuity have been coming up in and about me, so I recommend reading the book of Hebrews with some attention and detail. If you want to see how the two covenants connect and what does it mean for the new to be better, without abolishing the old? That’s the book where it all starts. How is it that you could be in the covenant and not be saved? It addresses that very plainly.

It shows us that covenant life is more than divine election, that there’s an inner eternal grace to those whom God has elected, but that doesn’t mean there’s not also an outward showering of grace for those who are within the bounds of the covenant and who may yet come to faith in Christ, or who may turn away in apostasy.

As my wife says, if apostasy is not a real thing and if there’s not an external side of the covenant, we can get rid of Hebrews. That’s the main reason it was written, to show people that you can be of the covenant and not in it. You can reject faith in Christ or not yet come to faith in Christ, and yet be within the external influences of the covenant, which may indeed lead you to Christ in God’s good time.

But there’s the presumption to say, “Well, you’re in the covenant and you’re not.”

“Why am I not?”

“Your profession and your testimony is not good enough to convince us. We’re not sure that yours is a real profession.”

That’s what destroyed Puritanism in America, trying to get at the heart by some questions and reading the soul. It never works and it’s thoroughly destructive because God’s ways are not ours and we cannot read the heart. We cannot tell who is saved and who is not, and to pretend that we can is thoroughly destructive to covenant life and it arrogates us to presumptions of godhood, that I can actually read your heart and tell whether or not you’re saved.

Hebrews will help with all of that. It combines faith and works, predestination and covenant living, and above all a Christ who has in fact come and who has brought fullness to all the promises.

Very good. Thank you so much for joining me for this conversation, Greg. It was a very good topic to discuss today.

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