Abounding Grace

Pastor Ed Taylor: You need to continue to repent, church. Did you know that? You need to continue to change your mind, change your heart. Of course, you're not repenting to get your salvation back. There is one truth that you do repent once for salvation, but there is a lifestyle of brokenness and repentance throughout our whole life.

Host (Male): Welcome again to Abounding Grace online at aboundinggraceradio.com. Head over to Acts chapter 3, verse 19, if you would, because we're asking and answering this question today: what is repentance? Is it really necessary? We learned last time that repentance is a change of mind and a change of heart. But today, we'll take it a step further. It's also a change of direction. You might think of it as a U-turn. Here's Pastor Ed Taylor with more.

Pastor Ed Taylor: Turn with me to Second Corinthians, chapter 7. Second Corinthians, chapter 7. Here we are instructed when it comes to repentance that absolutely it touches the emotions. And when it does touch your emotions, you need to know the difference between worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. So notice with me, Second Corinthians, chapter 7, verse 8.

If you're just joining us, we're asking and answering the question: what is repentance? Peter is in chapter 3 of Acts teaching and sharing the gospel, and he just tells them straight up: repent and be converted. That's the only way you'll have times of refreshing. And repentance is the only way that you'll experience salvation. We're learning that right now. Notice in verse 8.

"For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it; even though I did regret it. For I perceive that the same epistle made you sorry, though only for a while. Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing." Verse 10: "For godly sorrow produces," there's that word again, "repentance to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death."

But observe this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner. What diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication! In all these things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter. So two things to watch out for: worldly sorrow and godly sorrow.

There is a very simple difference between the two. Worldly sorrow will center on yourself and pull you away from God in condemnation, regret, and shame. Godly sorrow will lead to repentance and bring you to God for forgiveness. Those are two—that’s a very simple definition. You know the worldly sorrow. We often refer to it as, if you committed a crime and you got busted and you're standing before the judge and you're all tears, there are those that would stand before a judge and they're sorrowful, but they're just basically sad because they got caught. They wish they didn't get caught. Now they're going to go to jail, and they're really sad and all broken up about it, but it's not really an emotion that's going to lead to any change.

And then there is that sorrow that Paul describes here as godly sorrow, that you not only recognize the failure, but you understand that it was against a holy and righteous God and you're just like, "I don't want this in my life anymore. God, forgive me and rescue me from myself." And again, with repentance, this is all happening at the same time. You may not fully understand it at the time, but as you learn, you go, "Oh, I remember that. Oh, I remember that. Oh, I remember that."

There's such a drastic change that happens in an instant of time. Worldly sorrow leads to guilt and condemnation. A lot of worldly sorrow surrounds this issue of forgiveness because godly sorrow will put a person toward God in repentance and humility, and you'll come to God and say, "Change me, mold me, shape me. I'm broken and contrite," like David said in Psalm 51. So that will bring you to that place. And yet worldly sorrow keeps you stuck on yourself.

Worldly sorrow also includes, for many people, this sense of being unwilling to forgive yourself. Now, right when I say that, there are those listening go, "Oh, listen to that pastor. He's all caught up in the world's thoughts and you got to forgive yourself. You know how the world is: just forgive yourself and love yourself and hug yourself and close your eyes because everything's going to be fine." Well, you know that's not true. You know that's not true. When I use the phrase "love yourself," I'm not using it the way the world has corrupted it. This is what I believe the Bible would teach when you love yourself and forgive yourself.

A very simple biblical definition for that is that you will choose to receive the forgiveness of God for even that sin. Even that sin—and you name it—that sin, the one that holds you back. That when you forgive yourself, you choose to submit yourself to the utter forgiveness of God by His blood. But here's what happens: there are those that are so broken up about their failure, so broken up about how they hurt so many people, how they destroyed... sin is so reckless that they're stuck in a place where they think, "You know what? I'm not even worthy of salvation. I'm not even worthy of God. Why would God love me? Why would God care?"

Even believers live in that realm. Paul, when he writes to the Corinthians, he's writing to believers. He's describing these emotions to a church that needed to repent. And so what is the way out? Because here's—let me describe what it really is. Because your unwillingness to forgive yourself is a sin against God in and of itself. It is another sin. And I'll tell you why.

When you sit there, when you think in your life and your brokenness that I'm not even going to ask God, I don't want anything to do with forgiveness, this is what you're doing. You're saying this, you're thinking this way: you're looking at the sin in your life and you're like, "This sin is so bad and it is so destructive that if I were God, I wouldn't forgive it." And then to that, we all say thank God you're not God. And so there you are sitting and you go, "If I was God, I would not forgive this," so you won't even deal with it.

And there's a Bible word for putting yourself in the place of God. You know what it is? Idolatry. It is the sin of idolatry. So I'm going to just take control of my life and I've gone before, I've gone outside the grace of God, I've gone outside the love of God. "If I was God, I wouldn't forgive it," which is why some of you have broken relationships with others because you refuse to forgive them, because you think the sin is so bad that if you were God, you wouldn't forgive them.

And I know it's hard in this realm. I know it personally by experience. You think forgiveness might give approval, and it doesn't. And you think forgiveness might be a sign of weakness. It might. But when you forgive someone, you release them of the debt that they owe you, and you free yourself from being controlled by their continual sinful behavior. You don't have to live under it anymore. You can walk in freedom. There's a true freedom when you receive the forgiveness of God and then you give it.

And then you go, "But Ed, you don't understand, they're still sinning against me." Well, this is how you do it with other people: you live in a lifestyle of forgiveness, just like you live in a lifestyle of repentance. You know, there's another doctrine out there. It's called in the category of hyper-grace. There was a guy on the radio here in Denver for a while that was teaching this. I don't know if he still is or not, but the doctrine goes something like this: you only need to repent one time and never again because you're basically sinless the rest of your life. Wow. You are not sinless. You need to continue to repent.

Did you know that? You need to continue to change your mind. Now, of course, you're not repenting to get your salvation back. There is one truth—you do repent once for salvation. But there is a lifestyle of brokenness and repentance throughout our whole lives, asking for forgiveness, not just being sorry. Like he says here: "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." And you know how it is sometimes in relationships. Somebody will come and go, "I'm sorry if you're upset for maybe something I might have done and it's really all your fault, I'm sorry." Well, that's not repentance.

Repentance is this: "Will you forgive me?" and then you say exactly what you did, for saying that wicked thing or for doing that wicked thing. "Will you forgive me?" And then there is a connection of repentance. And even repentance before one another is a change of mind and a change of heart, and as we'll see in a moment, a change of behavior. If you don't change your behavior, you haven't repented. It's just the way it is. You continue to live in sin, you haven't repented because that's our third point.

Our third point is that repentance is a change of action. It is a change of action. Or you could say a change of direction. When you and I repent, we don't just change our mind, we don't just see a heart change, but thirdly, we see a lifestyle change. It starts small, but over time, it's very big. Your life becomes reoriented with God's plan and will. And listen, church, repentance always involves action. Bad action is replaced with right action.

It is an inward work of God inside of us, a change of mind and heart, but it's also an outward change of the course of your life. It is something that can be seen. You can literally see repentance in people's lives because what they were doing before, they're not doing anymore. It's obvious. As a matter of fact, I think it was Charles Spurgeon that said—so to what degree should we see repentance in a person's life? And I'm paraphrasing here because I couldn't find the exact quote, but he said something like, to the degree that the sin was seen and experienced, repentance should also be seen and experienced.

So if it was a massively public thing and millions of people saw it, then millions of people should witness your repentance, or what was termed in the New Testament, the fruits of repentance. If repentance was a tree, it's going to bear fruit. It's going to be obvious. And isn't it true unrepentance is equally obvious? When you say, "Oh, I'm so sorry," and you just keep doing... That's why raising a hand in a service doesn't save you. It doesn't. Coming up to the stage... we had a brother last night stand up to receive. Standing up didn't save him. When he came up to talk after the service, it was a whole process that God was bringing him to, to repentance and change, and we just got to be a part of it here in the room. But standing up doesn't save you. Being in a church doesn't save you.

Jesus Christ saves you by faith, and the hinge to get in is repentance. And I know it doesn't take long to consider all the brokenness around us: broken relationships, broken families. And one of the reasons why is there's just no repentance. It doesn't even have to be biblical repentance. You know, you have some unsaved family members and... just stop what you're doing. Stop saying that, stop doing that. If you find that in your life, you find that with a boss or a coworker, I mean, it could be an open door where there's some radical change of the coworker but they're not saved. You can come to them at the right time and go, "You know what? This is so good that we've changed and we've got... you know what happened? You know what happened in your life? You repented." "What?"

And you got their attention now, and you can just slip into them the biblical truths of repentance because that change probably took a lot of effort on their part. And now it's an open door for the gospel. It's an open door to talk about the things of God in their life because they could be so close. Repentance isn't just biblical, but it's significant when it is biblical. It involves an inside work of God and an outside work from you.

James would put it this way in James chapter 2, in verse 18. He says, "But someone will say, 'You have faith and I have works.' Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works." You'll see it. And for those of us that have dramatic testimonies, which is unfortunate because a dramatic testimony means we spent a lot of years in pain and sorrow and difficulty. But for those of us that have a dramatic testimony, this all makes sense. Most of you probably all of you never met the old sinful Ed, so there's really no comparison. I mean, there are people in my life like Marie; Marie definitely met that guy. Didn't like him very much but met him. Sometimes she doesn't like the new Ed very much either, but that's marriage, that's life. We all still continue to sin, right, husbands? Oh, look at that. Not our wives, but our husbands.

But Marie knows the old Ed. Even Eddie when he was a little guy, he had, unfortunately, the old Ed as a dad. But he also met the new Ed. Dramatic testimony. Some of you don't have the most dramatic testimony, but you still as well needed to repent. And the good news is that through your repentance, whether it was a young child or whatever, He kept you from all the things that we all had to repent from and kept you from great pain.

There's a great illustration. We won't develop it, but I do want you to see it. Would you go back to Luke chapter 15 with me as we close? Change a mind, change a heart, change of direction. We change our mind about ourselves, about God, about Jesus. Repentance is necessary; you're not going to be saved without it. If you don't repent and you continue to live a life in sin, you're going to die in your sin. You're going to die apart from Christ. And that's just the truth you need to hear today from the Scriptures.

And we find a neat illustration, although not exact but very close to what we're learning here, in Luke chapter 15 with what we commonly know as the parable of the prodigal son. Which actually, by the way, isn't necessarily the right title. You know that, right? This is not the parable of the prodigal son; it's actually the parable of the loving father. That's the focus. Unfortunately, it's always been on the son, but it's actually on the father. If you count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven times the father's mentioned here. It's all about a picture of your heavenly Father and how He'll receive you to Himself.

However, there is the insight to compare ourselves to this young man, and here he is in verse 17. It says he came to himself. And he said, "How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.'" And he arose and came to his father. And when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.

And then he said in verse 21 to his dad, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son." And then the father throws a party for him. So you see the ingredients. The whole situation—this is he is a different young man than he was when he left. When he was so confident in himself, he wants what's his, the inheritance. But his dad isn't even dead yet. That's when you usually get your inheritance: after death. And so the equivalent of where his heart is at that time is like, "You know, Dad, I wish you were dead because I want what's mine," even though it really wasn't his, it was the benefit of his dad giving it to him. It really wasn't his; it was his dad's.

So he's just this hard-cocky kid that wants to spend money and go party, and he does. The father gives him the permission to do that and go live your life however you want. The word "prodigal" actually means wasteful, and he lived a wasteful life. I suspect that some listening to me right now, you're living a wasteful life. You have taken what God has given to you or the home you live in or what your parents have done for you, and you're just wasting it. You're just wasting away.

And God will be calling you back to Himself. So what happens? All the circumstances of his life lead him to the place where he is beginning to change his mind. "This isn't for me. What did I do? I can't believe where I'm at." And that led to emotion: a change of heart. "I got to—my dad." He started to change his mind about his dad. "You know, my dad, it would be okay, he's an okay guy. My life would be better even if I was just his servant."

He changed his mind, he changed his heart, and then what does he do? He goes home. He acts on it. And what he was thinking about, he tells his dad. He gives to his dad a whole new perspective. And what does his dad do? Welcomes him and receives him. It's the same for you and me. We change our mind about our current condition, our hearts are changed, we start to emotionally feel sick about the condition of our lives.

We have a godly sorrow that leads to repentance, which is a turning away, and here he is coming back to his dad, following through with action. A change of mind, a change of heart. The Bible says in Proverbs 28:13 that "he who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy." Repentance is God's will and pleasure for you.

In Second Peter 3, verse 9, it says, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." Repentance is God's gift of His sovereign love. Acts chapter 5, verse 31: "Him God has exalted to His right hand," speaking of Jesus, "to be Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and the forgiveness of sins."

And so God's calling us and reminding us of this important word today. Even as you and me as believers, we need to live a life of repentance. We don't just repent 30 years ago and now I don't make any more mistakes the rest of my life. No, my life in a broken, contrite place, I'm ever awakened and I'm ever acknowledging continual sin in my life. Not a lifestyle of sin, but continual episodic sin.

If you are in a lifestyle of sin, then there's even a greater need for you to repent today, for you to examine yourself. Because true believers don't live a lifestyle of sin. There is a distinct difference between a life of the believer and the unbeliever, just like worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. So when you're sharing the gospel, you don't have to lay out this 45-minute or 30-minute Bible study for somebody, but you can think of it: change of mind, change of heart, change of direction.

And you can look at that in your own life. Don't start applying it to everyone before you apply it to yourself. You look in the mirror and go, "Okay, Lord, where am I? What's my feeling? What do I believe about me? What do I believe about You? What am I feeling right now when I have sinned? Do I even have a feeling?" Because the Bible says that you can grieve the Holy Spirit.

The Bible says you can quench the Holy Spirit. The Bible says you can resist the Holy Spirit. But when you and I have turned away from Him, there's a distance and we want to come back. "God, forgive me. My mind's been in the wrong place. My heart's been in the wrong place. My feet have been going the wrong way. I turn back to You today."

Host (Male): We learned today that repentance is not only a change of mind and a change of heart, it's also a change of behavior or direction. And Pastor Ed leaves us with this question: to what degree should we see repentance in a person's life? To the same degree that the sin was seen. This is Abounding Grace, and we're so glad you joined us today. We have many resources for you at aboundinggraceradio.com. You can also follow us on social media for even more from Pastor Ed Taylor. We look forward to being with you next time as we grow in the knowledge of God's Word. Until then, may God's abounding grace be with you.