A street corner prophet wielding a picket sign with bold, black letters, shouting doomsday warnings at passers by. A stern-faced, fire-and-brimstone TV evangelist, wildly waving a Bible as he rebukes his audience. A pious priest handing out spiritual checklists: confess, say a prayer, do a good deed, and you're in the clear! Repent is one of those words that conjures up a host of different cultural images. And alongside those images are usually feelings of guilt, shame and despair. For many, myself included, the word repent is mistakenly interpreted as "clean up your act."
True repentance, however, is not confessing, saying a prayer, engaging in religious activity, or even feeling sorry about your sin. It does undoubtedly lead to such things, but repentance itself literally means a change of mind. Charles Spurgeon put it this way: “[Repentance] is, in fact, a change of mind of a very deep and practical character, which makes the man love what once he hated, and hate what once he loved.”
As we change our minds about sin and turn to Jesus, recognizing Him as our Lord and Savior, our actions subsequently flow from our conviction. Our hearts shift from loving sin and hating Jesus to hating sin and loving Jesus. Repentance, therefore, is an integral part of believing the good news. It is a lifelong posture of faith in and submission to Christ's finished work on the cross.
But there are days when our faith and our feelings simply do not align. Struggles with sin and apprehensions of unworthiness overshadow the gospel truth in our hearts, and we're left once again trying to clean ourselves up. I just need to read my Bible more. The problem is I haven't been praying enough. If only I were more patient, more compassionate, more generous... If I could just get past this one hang-up, everything would be better. Such thoughts reject God's testimony about the indispensable nature of Jesus' sacrifice on our behalf. What's more, fixating on all the ways in which we are falling short steals our gaze away from where it should be: fixed on Christ (Hebrews 12:2)!
Imagine for a moment that you are running a race. As you're running along you can see the finish line ahead in the distance. Your gaze is fixed on that point and every muscle in your body strives towards it when all of a sudden the unthinkable happens...you trip over your own feet and fall flat on your face! Skinned knees and scraped palms sting as you pick yourself up and stumble forward. But now, rather than looking ahead to the finish, you keep looking over your shoulder at the place that tripped you up. Instead of focusing on where you're headed you keep staring at your clumsy feet, obsessing about the fall and worrying you'll fall again. Seems like a rather absurd and ineffective way to run a race, doesn't it?
And yet this is exactly what we do when we allow sin rather than the Savior to become our primary focus. So don't grow discouraged at how slowly you seem to be running, and don't despair when sin trips you up. Instead, see your stumbling as God's loving invitation to repent and re-believe the gospel. You'll discover that focusing on Christ's finished work rather than your unfinished progress speeds you along the fastest! And persevering in assurance even when you falter strengthens your faith all the more. You can find daily joy in the truth that God's acceptance of you is not based on how far you've run or how quick your pace is, but on the One who finished the race perfectly for you!
Now I'm not saying we should pretend our sin isn't there or try to hide it. Scripture speaks to this kind of prideful self-delusion: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us... If we say we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar, and His word is not in us" (1 John 1:8, 10). In other words, we are going to fall along the way. But between these two warnings there lies a wonderful encouragement: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).
The word confess in this verse is homologeō, which means to agree with or to say the same thing as another. The idea goes beyond the specific naming of sins to, again, a changing of the mind. Confessing is agreeing with God that sin is sin and it needs to be dealt with. But who deals with it? Let's look a little further: If we confess our sins—that's our part--He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins AND cleanse us from all unrighteousness--that's God's part.
The verse does not say if we confess our sins and cleanse ourselves from all unrighteousness (sounds a lot like "clean up your act" don't you think?) then God will forgive us. If that were the case, if we could clean ourselves up enough to be acceptable to God, then Christ's death and His advocacy on our behalf are completely unnecessary. If repentance is part of believing the gospel, then we must understand the gospel in its context: the truth about humanity. And the truth is we are irrevocably broken and hopeless apart from God's intervention.
Now let's take a look at the words John used to describe God when He intervenes and forgives our sins: faithful and just. You'll notice God is not described as accommodating and lenient. When we stand before God on the day of judgment He will say to no one, "It's ok, I know you did your best and that you have a good heart." We will either have an advocate by our side—Jesus Christ—or we will stand alone. For those who believe God's testimony that we are desperately wicked apart from new life in Christ and have put their trust in Him, Jesus is indeed their Advocate. But He never argues for their goodness—He argues His righteousness in their stead!
Jesus Christ is the sinner's only hope. We will never be able to clean ourselves up enough to come to God on our own, but thankfully He doesn't ask us to! God asks us to repent and believe: to change how we think about sin and in so doing recognize our need of the Savior. This is the beautiful, glorious, scandalous simplicity of the gospel!
Do you believe Jesus Christ is who He says He is, and that He did what He said He was going to do? Do you believe that His death on the cross paid the debt of your sins in full? Then fasten your gaze on Him and run--run the race set before you, laying aside every hindrance and casting off the entanglements of sin (Hebrews 12:1–2). And when you fall, keep believing the gospel! It is faith, not works, that imputes the righteousness of Christ to you (Romans 4:5). And when your righteousness is Jesus Christ Himself, you can be sure that it is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8)!
Lord, thank you for the beauty and simplicity of the gospel. Thank you that if I believe in You and what You’ve done for me, I will be saved (Acts 16:31). Help me run the race set before me in the strength of Your Spirit—keeping my eyes fixed on You, O Lord. May I remember and take hold of the truth that You alone, Jesus, are my righteousness. And when I stumble and fall help me to keep believing the gospel! Amen.
Reflection Questions
- How have misunderstandings about what repentance means tripped you up in your faith?
- What are some practical ways to keep Christ in focus as you run your race?
- John Bunyan once said, “…with the eyes of faith, I saw Christ sitting at God’s right hand, and suddenly I realized, there is my righteousness…God could never say to me, ‘Your righteousness is insufficient,’ for it was always before Him…my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself…” How does Jesus’ righteousness become your own? How can this truth encourage you the next time you stumble?