After recently writing about repentance (see “Repentance”), I didn’t think I’d be revisiting the topic so soon. Then I came across the following quote from Puritan Josias (Josiah) Shute concerning genuine repentance: “True repentance is when a man grieves for his sin to the extent that he abandons it.” It is one thing to think we are sorry for disobeying the commands of God. It is another to resolve from doing it again.
But it is something else altogether for our sin to so grieve us that we abandon any thought of pursuing it in the future. We don’t just quit repeating the sin for a moment, or even for an extended period, but become so destroyed by even the thought of revisiting such sin that we scarcely even entertain a thought of it for the rest of our lives.
Genuine repentance is to treat the thing for which we are repenting as the most dangerous, vile, caustic, and lethal thing we will ever encounter. We don’t just avoid it, we flee from its very presence with great haste and intention (James 4:7; 1 Timothy 6:11; Colossians 3:2; Proverbs 4:14-15). There is no distance too great from which we will work to separate ourselves from our sin.
Sin is not something a follower of Christ can ever take lightly. It’s not something we do and simply move on with our lives. We cannot claim Jesus as Lord while continuing in a pattern of sin. We cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24), and we cannot love God and the things of this world at the same time (1 John 2:15). That’s going to be unsettling for most of us to think about. It’s not a message any of us typically hear from our pulpits, but it is the truth of God’s Word. We can deny the truth all we want, but it will not make that truth less true.
Until we experience an appropriate fear of God’s holiness, we won’t be able to manifest genuine repentance. When Isaiah came into the presence of God, it ruined him because he knew he “was a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). The holiness of God made Isaiah so aware of his sin that he knew he should die. When Peter came face to face with the holiness of Jesus, he couldn’t tolerate being in God’s presence (Luke 5:4-8). He couldn’t bear his sin in the presence of Christ. These are pictures of the proper attitude we must have towards our sin. It must ruin us to the point of despair when we consider the ultimate righteousness of our Savior.
When we live our lives in a state of genuine repentance, our hearts become ready to be used by God. When the awareness of our sin becomes too grievous for us to indulge in it, we have finally come to a place of complete surrender to God. Abandoning all the lusts, desires, and cares of this world, we will set our eyes on Jesus, the redeemer of our souls, and the prize for which we all run (1 Corinthians 9:24-25). This is the freest way to live, in genuine repentance and completely abandoned to Jesus.