COLLEEN TINKER
Sometimes I am surprised by the way the Lord gets me to pay attention to things. One such situation occurred this week. It started on Sunday as Richard and I were leading a discussion with the teen Sunday School class on five main objections to the biblical teaching of salvation as developed by Neil Shenvi in his book Why Believe? One of the arguments Shenvi tackled is that which asserts, “Thinking about sin is unhealthy and morally paralyzing”.
In addressing this argument, we asked the teens three questions: “What is repentance? What is God’s grace?” and finally “Does our behavior play a role in salvation?”
A quiet and deep-thinking girl responded, “I don’t think I really know what repentance is. It seems like it’s deeper than just asking for forgiveness.”
Surprisingly, on Wednesday this week we received an email from a former Adventist who struggled with a similar problem. I realized that both Adventism and today’s deconstructionist environment have changed the definitions of sin, of our responsibility for our sin, and of God’s solution for sin. These altered definitions have resulted in many people not knowing what repentance is or what its role is in our own forgiveness.
In order to address this subject, I will share the essence of the email we received, and then I will share my answer. Repentance takes on a completely new appearance as we learn the truth about ourselves and about our Lord Jesus!
The Letter:
Hi! I’m a recovering Adventist (eight years so far) and have found so much help from your ministry, first from the magazines, and then from the podcasts. Amazing! There is so much to untangle intellectually and emotionally. There are so many tears (and they keep coming I might add); but the conversation that had me pull over on the side of the road was the one about breaking the will of the child.
A couple of years ago my aunt told me she found bruises on my bottom when I was about one year old or less. My will was most certainly broken or at least shattered. I confess that, coming out of that belief system, I find myself being rebellious towards God, and don’t want to be.
I am really struggling to understand what “repent” means. As I understand it, “repent” means to stop sinning, or at least turn away from sin. I feel like there’s a disconnect because if I could do that, I would’ve done that already.
And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).
I would read this as stop sinning, and be baptized. Is there’s a better way to understand this?
Thank you for all you do; you have no idea the profound impact you have made on my life! I pray for Colleen, Nikki, their husbands, and their children often.
Start With the Definition
You are right; repentance is deeper than merely “stopping sinning”. In fact, I believe that Adventism obscured the real meaning of this word, instilling in us the endless guilt of trying over and over to stop sinning only to perpetually fail.
I’m going to copy part of a discussion about repentance from BibleStudyTools.com, and then I will comment below:
Two requisites of repentance…are “to turn from evil, and to turn to the good.” Most critical theologically is the idea of returning to God, or turning away from evil. If one turns away from God, apostasy is indicated…
One may detect two sides to this turning/converting. There is the free sovereign act of God’s mercy, and a conscious decision to turn to God (a turning that goes beyond sorrow and contrition).
Confession of sins is both commanded and frequently illustrated …When one is guilty of various sins, “he must confess in what way he has sinned” in order to receive atonement and forgiveness…Thus, confession belongs to repentance, and is needed for divine forgiveness…A great prophecy/ promise is given in the Book of Isaiah: “The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins” ( 59:20).
The Adventist Skew
From our Adventist background we learned that we had to repent and turn away from our sins, meaning, as you indicated above, STOP SINNING!! We were expected to give up our habits and sins at any cost. I struggled for years with my inability to completely give up coffee. I just functioned better when I drank coffee, but I believed I was sinning. I would will myself to stop. I would even have times when I didn’t drink it for a day or three, but ultimately I drank it again because my mind simply functioned better; I felt better, I had more clarity.
We were taught that sin was genetic propensities to sins, and we had to decide not to indulge those propensities and desires.
I realize now that we former Adventists have to learn what sin is and what it means to turn away from sin. We were not taught that we were by nature dead in sin, unable to please, choose, or honor God (Rom. 3:9–18). We were taught that sin was genetic propensities to sins, and we had to decide not to indulge those propensities and desires. Choosing to keep the law and to suppress impulses that we were taught were sins (including the urge to have caffeine or meat or eggs—protein deficiency, anyone?) was demonstrating our repentance, or turning away, from our sin. I didn’t understand how to define my sin biblically; I had internalized the Adventist organization’s teaching about what was sinful.
The problem was that we didn’t understand the gospel. The gospel says that we are born dead in sin, unable to seek or please God. This natural spiritual death is our legacy from Adam, and it means that we have an immaterial part of ourselves that is disconnected from God. This spiritual death is what happened to Adam and Eve, and this death (as per Eph. 2:1–3) is our NATURE. Only in Christ is our dead nature reversed.
It’s A Matter of Death and Life
Jesus came to take our imputed sin into Himself and to endure God’s wrath against our sin. He not only took our spiritual death to the cross, but He took all our literal sins, all our addictions and aversions, our uncontrolled rages and fears and illegitimate desires that we express because we do not trust God but try vainly to protect ourselves. He took our sins in His body to the cross and endured God’s wrath against these sins we commit against a holy, sovereign, righteous God—and He died our death. But because His death was sufficient to pay God’s demand of death for sin, He broke the curse of death by shattering it from the inside-out on the third day! He broke the curse, and the inevitable doom into which we are born as spiritually dead people is broken!
Adventism did not teach us the truth about ourselves—that we are by nature spiritually dead, unable to please or even to seek God, and by nature children of wrath! We were taught that we are born with tendencies to sin, but we become sinners when we first sin—usually shortly after birth. At least, that is the way it is generally understood among Adventists. They have no idea that they have immaterial parts of themselves that must be made ALIVE. The issue we have is not that we have to perfect or change our behavior, but that we must be made alive!
We can will-power our way through all sorts of behavior modification: we can will ourselves not to eat bacon or sugar; we can exercise willpower to resist coffee or to refuse to kill someone who angers us. We can will-power our way through not smoking or doing drugs, and we can even will-power ourselves away for a time from pornography or emotional affairs at work or perhaps even from shaming our children.
We have no ability at all to resist sin long-term. We have no spiritual life from God, and as people dead in sin, we are slaves to sin.
Yet these will-powered decisions to clean up our behavior never work long term because inside we are still dead in sin. We have no ability at all to resist sin long-term. We have no spiritual life from God, and as people dead in sin, we are slaves to sin. We have no spiritual life. We have no internal connection to God. We are dead, and dead people cannot rise above their natures.
At the same time Adventism did not teach us the truth about ourselves, it did not teach us the truth about Jesus’ atonement. We learned He died to “uphold the law” and to show us it COULD be kept. In other words, His death was the ultimate guilting tool. This perfect Jesus who had no advantage we did not have (or so we were told on the authority of EGW) kept the law, so surely we, also, can learn to keep it.
Jesus’s Advantages Were For Our Benefit
We were never told that Jesus DID have advantages we do not have, that He was spiritually alive from the moment of conception, the only person ever born who did not have to be born from above! He was NEVER without the life of God; He was never dead in sin! His law-keeping was the natural result of His being spiritually alive and connected with His Father. Further, He was God the Son, and although He was 100% man in mortal flesh, the fulness of deity dwelt in Him bodily (Col. 2:9).
Jesus came as eternal, almighty God our Creator wrapped in mortal human flesh in order to be the perfect Sacrifice and Substitute for us. He had authority to take our place because He was our Creator against whom we had sinned, and He had the humility to take our place because He became incarnate, setting aside His rightful glory to identify completely with us His creatures. He took on flesh so that He could die a human death for human sin. Furthermore, His taking our sin and enduring God’s wrath against it in our place qualified Him to forgive us when we trust Him.
To simply wave sin away would be unjust. God is just, and justice demands that sinners die.
Forgiveness is not cheap, and justice must be satisfied. God could not merely “forgive” us by negating our sin and saying, “Let’s go on as if it never happened.” To simply wave sin away would be unjust. God is just, and justice demands that sinners die. God could not forgive us unless there was a death that justified that forgiveness, so God, in the person of the Son, died that death. Because He is God, His death is sufficient for us all. He is eternal and omniscient and omnipotent, and He alone could take our collective sin in Himself and endure God’s wrath against Him in our place. His death alone could substitute for the deaths of all who turn to Him. Yet because He is human, He suffered human agony—only His agony was far greater than any we will ever suffer. He suffered for every one of us; He did not suffer a mere representative death but experienced God’s wrath against all of our sin.
Thus, in Jesus, God provided the only way out of our natural death sentence. He provided a way that we could be made alive and reconciled to Himself—and that way is to turn to Jesus and admit that we are intractable sinners, unable to please Him, and lay ourselves and our sin before Him and ask Him to be our Substitute and Savior. When we acknowledge Jesus’ death, His shed blood that paid for our sin and trust Him as our Savior and as the Source of our life and salvation, He does a miracle in us: He gives us a new heart, a new spirit, and He places His own Spirit in us! He seals us and guarantees that we have an eternal future with Him. He brings us to eternal life and places us in a new kingdom: the kingdom of the Beloved Son (Jn. 5:24; Col 1:13)!
Repentance: Admitting the Truth
Repentance, then, is recognizing our intractable sin, our inability to stop sinning in spite of how hard we tried or how much we prayed to be able to stop. It means admitting that we are spiritually dead and need a Savior to rescue us, humbling ourselves before Him and thanking Him for taking our sin, for paying its price, and for breaking our curse. Repentance is turning away from our frantic efforts to stop sinning, from our doubts and rebellion, and turning to Jesus to save us. It is turning away from our efforts to stop sinning and turning toward the Lord, admitting our sin and helplessness, and believing that He will now take us and make us His. It is turning to Him in trust, believing that what He says is true, and receiving from Him the assurance of His eternal life and forgiveness. Repentance is an internal trust in Jesus instead of holding onto our effort to be good. It is turning away from trying not to sin and turning toward the One who has paid the price for our sin—and trusting Him.
Jesus gives us His life and Himself, and now, when we are tempted to sin, we have Him instead of will-power to turn to.
This new spiritual life that He gives when we turn to Him in trust, letting go of our attempts to control our behavior and trusting Him instead, gives us new desires and new potential and new power. Jesus gives us His life and Himself, and now, when we are tempted to sin, we have Him instead of will-power to turn to. We lean on Him in those moments of temptation, asking Him to take care of us and to show us how to proceed in a way that honors Him instead of acting our of our flesh.
Romans 7 explains that even after we are born again, we still have a “law of sin” in our flesh. This mortal, sinful flesh still sins, but our spirits are now alive in Christ, and that eternal life He gives us cannot be taken away. Now, we admit our sin to Him and ask Him to show us how to trust Him and to live in that trust instead of resorting to our old habits. The miracle is that when Jesus saves us and gives us life, He also changes our desires, and He causes us to want to please Him.
Repentance is our response to the Holy Spirit’s conviction of our sin. We admit we are sinners, and we throw ourselves on the mercy of God at the foot of the cross. When we repent, the Lord receives us and forgives us. He credits us with His righteousness and breaks the curse of sin into which we were born, and pass from death to life.
Repentance is God’s gift to us. There is freedom in admitting the truth about ourselves and in turning to the only One who can rescue us from ourselves. †
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Thank you Colleen! Wonderful and affirming Words of Life! Sing them over again to me, these wonderful words. I am re-inspired.
Speaking of his own sins, Paul admitted that they had won the battle, and that he was a prisoner of sin. Then he quickly says that it was now no longer ”I myself” committing sin, but it was his ”flesh” which was doing these unlawful deeds- and that his sinful nature, which he inherited from Adam, was responsible. Then, after writing that his flesh obeyed the Law of Sin and Death, come some of the most sublime and Wonderful Words of Life – ”…there is now NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” For the past several years I’ve been priveleged to minister weekly to a small (20-30) group of believers. Citing Romans 8:1, they have heard me refer (w/ a bit of humor) several times to the old country music lyric, ”What Part of NO Don’t You Understand?” Indeed we do need to often repent. We need humility. We must keep in mind that we continually ‘fall short’, and that grace is bigger than all our sin.
Colleen, your message came just as I am planning to give a message about repentance. What a blessing you have provided (in God’s Name) to me! And, I do believe – to many others as well. Thank you once more. HF Cross
Thank you, HF.
The Holy Spirit is at work in us, and He convicts us when we sin against God and those in our lives. He leads us to make right what we do to hurt others and dishonor God. It’s such a relief to know that we are pot saved or lost on the basis of works but of belief or unbelief!
The Holy Spirit in us convicts us, when we are alive in Christ, of the times we sin as believers, and He leads us to confess and repent and to make things right. This is the process of sanctification—which is the Lord’s work in us! This is the fruit of our salvation!
I’m thankful that the Lord has called us to Himself!