ChosenRebel's Blog

Thursday is for Repentance

Every Christian has a cancer of the soul. In our better moments we know it. In our lesser moments, we forget. And the world around us suffers the consequences. 

We came to Christ because we recognized our need for a Savior. We knew ourselves and know ourselves to be sinners, desperately in need of grace but our souls leak. We forget that Luther was right and Bonhoeffer was right. When Christ bids us come, he bids us to come and die to self, to enter into a life long journey of forever recognizing our sinfulness, and always running toward the cross.

Part of that means that when we are confronted with our short-comings and failures, we tend to be defensive and proud rather than open and humble. We defend ourselves or we “manage the moment” so that we can feel better about ourselves rather than admit our failures, confess them, appeal to God for grace to defeat them and thank Him for the grace that covers them.

We are dumb.

We live with the sin-cancer that only radical surgery performed by the hand of God can eradicate. Infinite mercies and real progress in holiness is available but we grieve the Spirit of God by holding on to the sinful, painful and pain-producing patterns of the past. Such thoughts were all stimulated by this brief offering from Kairos Journal.

Esau and Judas—Richard Owen Roberts (1931–)

Founding director of International Awakening Ministries, Richard Owen Roberts is a world-renowned student of revival. His 9,000 volume collection on the subject forms the nucleus of Wheaton’s Billy Graham Center Library. In this passage from Repentance, he explains and insists that true repentance is more than inward pain.

One can experience the deepest possible remorse over sin and yet not repent. Both Esau and Judas demonstrate this. Indeed, we must all learn to distinguish between the sorrow that comes from being caught and the sorrow that comes from a deep, inward hatred of sin and longing for the glory of God that is the distinguishing feature of the regenerate person.¹

1 Richard Owen Roberts, Repentance: The First Word of the Gospel (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2002), 86.

Pray for me. Pray that I would not be a sin-cancer patient in denial but a sin-cancer patient on the way to surgery so that the Spirit of God can cut out any cells in my spirit that hinder his full transformative power in my life. Keep praying for me. And I will try to pray for you too.