WEEK 3 | REPENT
IS ANYTHING TOO BROKEN FOR GOD TO HEAL?
Psalm 130:3–4 (ESV) — 3 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? 4 But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.
Romans 6:23 (ESV) — 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Last week, we focused on God. This week, we are going to shift the focus inward
to ourselves, and where we actually stand in relationship to him. Just as there are different voices competing for our hearts and giving us conflicting descriptions of God, the same voices are also giving us varying descriptions of ourselves, influencing what we believe about ourselves. Our loving heavenly father tells us who we are in his word; the flesh tells us who we are every day we live in this world, and the deceiver tells us who we are by twisting and distorting the truth at every turn. When we believe what God says about who we are and about who he is, the only response we can have is repentance.
THE GOSPEL: REPENT AND LIVE!
THE GOSPEL
The cost of believing any voice other than God’s is more severe than any of us like to admit. Not only do these voices lead to fear, frustration, suffering and pain in this life, but they have eternal ramifications. Our decision to defer to our own voice has made us enemies of God (Col 1:21). We are not merely imperfect beings; by our disobedience and disbelief, we are condemned.
Let that sink in.
You are condemned. God owes you nothing but his wrath.
This should be the end of the story. Humanity had a choice: life with God or death without him. We made it. We got exactly what we asked for — depressing, but just.
Fortunately, God, in his infinite mercy and love, has provided a way back. It is not a wide path. It is not an easy road. It is a narrow way that is open to everyone willing to enter through the narrow gate (Matt. 7:13-14). The thing is...most won’t.
The narrow gate is Jesus and he is only accessed by faith and repentance. Repentance is the act of turning from sinful disbelief and disobedience to God. Everyone who repents, receives God’s forgiveness of their sins, past, present, and future. Through the single historical event of Jesus’ death and resurrection, salvation is available to all who believe and repent (Eph. 2:1-9).
This is an event most find difficult to believe. Some will stumble on the miraculous nature of the resurrection, others won’t understand why they need it, still others won’t see how it could possibly be sufficient.
The reasons to disbelieve are as numerous as the souls headed to destruction, but nevertheless the offer remains: repent, turn to Jesus, and be saved! Don’t and get exactly what God promised to all who ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, death (Luke 13:3).
CORE TEXT: 2 COR. 7:8-11
Is there such thing as the Gospel without repentance?
How are you personally more prone to believe a “gospel” without repentance?
Read Deut. 32
How severely does God view the unfaithfulness of his people? Pretend this is addressed directly to you, how do you feel when you read it? Are you as bad as Israel?
Read 2 Corinthians 7:8-11
Why does Paul rejoice in the Corinthians’ grief?
Share a time that you were sad because you were confronted (by his Word or by the words of another) with your own sin. Did your hurt feelings and pride eventually result in repentance that led towards salvation? How so?
What is the difference between Godly grief and worldly grief? (2 Cor. 7:10) Do you find it tempting to treat godly grief like worldly grief? Elaborate.
THE TELL: HARD HEARTS
You can recognize a hard heart when truth seems to fall on deaf ears. You feel like you have the same conversations over and over, but each one feels futile because the recipient is not open to change. Everything bounces off of them (Mark 4:15). This can manifest itself in two very different ways: pride or despair.
Pride and despair are the direct consequences of believing the voices of the flesh or the deceiver instead of the voice of God.
PRIDE
2 Corinthians 7:10 (ESV) — 10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
People do not naturally revel in their own failures. Everything in us fights against healthy and regular repentance. Repentance is especially deplorable to the religiously minded, who deep down still believe they are saved by their good works (Luke 18:9-14). When pride is accused of wrong-doing, the following excuses surface as hurdles to true and honest repentance:
I didn’t know
It’s not that bad
It will all work itself out
It’s not fair
It’s not really my fault
The proud minimize their own culpability in an attempt to remain righteous in their own eyes. But little do they know, the godly grief they fight so desperately to avoid is the very thing that is intended to save them.
DESPAIR
Others have no problem acknowledging their failures. They are well aware of their own sinful standing. Despair avoids repentance for different reasons than pride. Despair thinks it’s too bad, too far gone, too hopeless. Despair wallows in its own self-pity.
It cannot fathom forgiveness without proof of righteousness. So despair remains paralyzed by sin, but not freed by the gospel (1 Kings 19:3-5). Despair says:
It’s all my fault
It’s way too bad
I’ll never figure things out
I should have known better
I’m so much worse than everyone else
Those who are spiritually proud minimize sin and it’s effects. Those who are spiritually despairing maximize sin and its effects.
Luke 15:20 (ESV) — 20 And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.
The prodigal son had a difficult choice. He could wallow in his own self-pity, or he could rise up and face his father again. Despair is the emotion that keeps us wallowing in the pig pen, because we don’t believe there is a father with open arms, waiting for us.
Hebrews 10:22 (ESV) — 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
THE REMEDY: A LIFE OF REPENTANCE
“Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
The Good News of the Gospel is that when we have sin in our lives we only need to confess it, and turn away from it back toward God. We are not responsible for beating ourselves up about it. When we fully believe the Gospel, and receive the forgiveness offered to us, we can live freely, upright, and in communion with God.
Read Acts 14:15
When you repent, what are you turning from? What are you turning to?
Read Acts 2:36-41; Acts 17:29-31, Romans 2:4
In Acts 2:36, what is Peter calling the people who rejected Jesus to change their minds and repent about? What is the role of repentance in the gospel? Is there good news without repentance? Why not? What does Romans 2:4 say motivates us to change?
Every sin is ultimately committed against God (Psalm 51:4). God is the initiator of forgiveness (Col. 2:13). His Holy Spirit convicts us of sin (John 16:8) and God wants us to confess our sins to Him (Psalm 41:4; 130:4; Acts 8:22; 1 John 1:9). When we do, God remembers our sins no more (Heb. 10:17).
When confession is a lifestyle, we regularly acknowledge our mistakes and repent (1 John 1:5-10; Matt. 6:12; 2 Chron. 7:14). We do not fear failure, or allow our fallibility to paralyze us (Ps. 139:23-24; Rom. 3:23-26). When repentance is a lifestyle, it transforms us into people who are quick to forgive (Matt. 6:14-15) and quick to deal with the planks in our own eyes before we address the specs in others (Matt. 7:3-5).
THE CHALLENGE : CONFESSION
DISCIPLINE OF CONFESSION
Find a person you can trust and confess to them a sinful belief or behavior and
ask them to pray for you. Discover how difficult it is for you to not only face all your own sin, but for you to expose it to light. Though God is the primary recipient of our confession, confessing to other believers can be part of the healing process.
James 5:16 (ESV) — 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.
The more comfortable that we get with the confession and repentance process, the more humble and free we will be.
1 John 1:5–10 (ESV) — 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
1 John 2:1–2 (ESV) — 1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.