Repentance

If you’re a Christian, you know that repentance is essential. It’s precisely one half of the formula Jesus lays out for his disciples: Repent, and believe the gospel. This, Scripture clearly tells us, is how one becomes a Christian. It’s a fairly simple thing, repentance. We turn away from our sinful ways and sinful desires. Our mind, posture, and orientation toward our life’s pursuit change. And yet repentance is one of those things that remains a lifelong project for the faithful Christian. Martin Luther famously wrote at the start of the Reformation that all of a Christian’s life is one of repentance.

But what does a Christian do when even our repentance seems to be half-hearted, insincere, and ineffectual? This is an old problem. Psalm 78 recounts Israel’s checkered history and in verses 34-37, we get a brief little window into what could be called “Israel’s perpetual repentance problem”. The Psalmist tells us that when God disciplined his people for their sin, 

“…they repented and sought God earnestly. [35] They remembered that God was their rock, the Most High God their redeemer.” That sounds good, right? Seems like they’re on the right track… “[36] But they flattered him with their mouths; they lied to him with their tongues. [37] Their heart was not steadfast toward him; they were not faithful to his covenant.”

Their repentance turned out to be insincere, fickle flattery. How many of us have repented in this way toward God? With sins in our lives, we come before God each week here in worship to confess and seek repentance, and then we go back to the same habits. The same patterns. The same desires we started with.

As I said, this is not a new problem. Not only does the Psalmist recount Israel’s repentance problem, but we also have writings from the Puritans about the repentance problem we as Christians face. And in reflecting on this Psalm, the Puritans would often exhort one another to “repent of your repentance.” Repent of your repentance. Now, if that sounds like classic Puritan spiritual gobbledygook to you, just take a moment to examine this thought with me for a second.

We are commanded by Christ to repent. But if our repentance has been insincere, lackluster, and empty, how can we turn this around? We must rely solely on the grace of God, his kindness alone, to lead us to sincere repentance. True repentance. And the first step in this process is to pause and take time to repent of our insincere, incomplete, and false repentance.

God is not pleased with half-repentance. He does not delight in his people’s insincere flattery. When he commands his people to repent—to turn away from and change their minds about sin— he actually means for them to do it. But the hope that we have in Christ is that he also provides the means for sincere repentance to actually happen in our hearts. It is his kindness alone that leads us to sincere repentance. 

And so, I want to encourage you now to take a moment in the silence to confess your sins to God. Do this honestly before him. And if you’ve found that your repentance has been lacking in sincerity or zeal, you can start by confessing this. This is the beginning of repenting of our repentance.