In my last blog I wrote to you about repentance. I was given to remind you that repentance is a gift from God. It is “granted” by Him, then brought about as a part of your salvation. Repentance shows us our sin as it really was, before we were saved. By faith we see Jesus as He really is—our Savior—and our sin as it really was, and why He had to suffer and die such a horrible death. Yes, true repentance does begin with sorrow, but paves the way for rest, relief, and rejoicing.
Today I am given to clarify a few more things that the Bible says, and God’s grace declares about repentance. First, I would like you all to understand that repentance is a one-time action of God, as part of our salvation. It cannot be repeated. There are several reasons for this—all of them cause for rejoicing. Let’s begin with a verse:
For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. Hebrews 9:15.
Jesus died as a ransom to set us free from the sins of the first covenant. And He instituted a new covenant by His death and resurrection, right? Well then, I have a question for you: Why didn’t His death also set us free from the sins committed under this new covenant? What about those sins?
Answer: There ARE NO SINS under the covenant of Grace. Grace is the covenant of believers. The only Way in is through faith in Jesus Christ. We were all baptized into His death and raised up as new creations that are free from sin. There are no sinners in God’s Kingdom. There is no sin in His Kingdom or the covenant of Grace. Therefore, there is no need for repentance. Repentance is what happened to us as God was bringing us in.
As part of your salvation, repentance makes complete sense. We are being made to realize the nature of our sin and therefore the true nature of salvation. We realize what Jesus had to accomplish on the cross in order to make it possible for salvation even to exist.
Once you are saved, repenting again makes no sense at all. Do you want Him to die for your sins again? Was His death and resurrection not enough? Did He really take them all away or did He leave some still unforgiven? To suggest we have to repent every time our humanity has a sin problem is to ignore the miracle of who we are in Christ. Remember, in His last final breath Jesus declared, “It is finished”.
Now here is another verse we must look at: If we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:8-10.
Some would say that this verse verifies the need for ongoing repentance every time we sin. That is not true. This verse is speaking of the one time that repentance takes place as we are being saved. After that, we are “purified”. Not only are we forgiven, but through faith and baptism, our souls are no longer capable of sin. That is what “purify” means. Later in this same epistle by John, he wrote:
No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s Seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning because he has been born of God. 1 John 3:9
I hope you can grasp what this verse is saying. God’s Seed is Jesus Christ. He lives in you, by His Spirit. Your soul is not capable of sin because of Him. He is sinless, and so are you, dwelling in Him until the end of time. It is the result of your new birth into His Kingdom.
In your humanity, you still have a sin problem, but we must learn to reckon ourselves by the same Way that God reckons us–through His Son Jesus. We are new creations in Christ who have taken His Name as our own and His righteousness has been credited to us through faith. Who we are to God is discovered by understanding the position of your soul in Christ, not your body in this world. The two are very different. The first–your soul–was saved through the shed blood of Jesus; the second–your body, was not saved and will never escape the confines of this earthly existence.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). To insist that we need to repent every time something sinful happens is to insist that perfection has not come and we are not yet saved. If that is true, then no one is saved and the cross of Jesus was pointless. If, however, the cross of Jesus was perfect and through it God accomplished all that He intended through His Son, then perfection has come to those who cling to the cross of Jesus–His death and resurrection–by faith. Repentance is a one time act that God uses before He gives us faith to believe.
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