Repentance: fake and real

by Dan Phillips

False repentance is worse than no repentance.

Scenario: a professed believer sins. (It happens, sadly.) Or he finds himself beset with strong temptation to sin (which also happens). Now what?

Problems. The course forward is dangerous, and riddled with booby-traps.

The big problem, of course, is the human heart. It's a slimy, "tricksy" con-artist (Jeremiah 17:9). It will fool us, in whichever of a dozen ways proves effective. There are enough traps and snares in our own hearts that we hardly need a crafty devil on the outside to be in peril — yet there is one, and he has designs on us.

What happens. Often the devil and our heart collude to convince us that, ahem, our sewage doesn't smell. That is, sin isn't so "sinny" when it's sinned by us. Sin out-there is a nasty, vicious, repugnant thing. Nobody should indulge in it. But sin in-here is noble, romantic, tragic, perhaps even heroic. (See this post, especially numbers 4-6, 12-14.)

It is okay with the world, the flesh, and the devil if you do anything about sin — except one thing.

What we will see, accordingly, is people who grant they "did wrong," in general and non-specific terms. They made a mistake. They erred. They did bad things... of some sort.

Or they will focus on the periphera of their sin, the leaves instead of the root.

Or they will make little of their responsibility, and much of others' contribution.

I saw this sort of thing once, many years ago. A married Christian friend committed adultery. His wife put him out, and he spent the night at my house.

He seemed chastened... but then he talked. How was he processing what he'd done, in his heart?

Wellsir, he told me that he thought maybe this whole thing was the Lord's will, because the other woman's marriage wasn't good, and his marriage wasn't great, and....

Just pause right there for a moment. This was a Baptist, evangelical Christian, going to a good, Bible-teaching church. He had committed adultery, a pretty unambiguous act, pretty unambiguously sinful. Yet he not only had a rationalization for it, but he ended up making it something that was pleasing to God, something that was of the Lord! Not only did the sewage not stink... it actually had a rather pleasant fragrance.

How could that happen?

But this poor soul is hardly singular. I have heard all sorts of folks talk about all sorts of plain, straightforward, primary-colored sins in wistful, longing tones, or in terms that end up making their bad not so bad after all. Some sins are bad, yes; but surely this sin is different. Surely my sin is different. It is a noble, brave, manly/assertive act. It is necessary, wise, even pleasing to God.

And even if we abstain from the act, we still cherish and protect the temptation. I've seen that as well. A man or woman is not (pursuing sexual immorality or perversion, sinning against their parents or spouse, etc.), true; but hear how (s)he talks about it. You get the impression that it isn't really that vile, after all. Let someone rip the mask off of marital treachery or sexual immorality or perversion, and watch how the "but-but-but" beast shows its head, how crucial it becomes to hear "the other side." We mustn't make (homosexuality, adultery, false doctrine, abusing one's spouse) look that bad.

What must happen: repentance. I said that sin's allies are fine with our doing anything about sin except one thing. What is that one thing?

Well, of course, in general terms, it's repentance.

Now that's a good Bible word. Most OT occurrence translate a term that actually means to turn around, to turn back. It depicts turning away from evil (cf. Ezekiel 14:6; 18:30), and turning back, returning to Yahweh (Zechariah 1:3).

Usually the NT word is a form of metanoeō. Though the definition has been abused, it does mean fundamentally to change one's mind. Our problem with that gloss, I think, is that we confuse changing one's mind with merely changing one's opinion about something, as if one were going to order a burger and instead goes for a club sandwich. We hear it as a light, shallow pivot — which repentance certainly is not.

Perhaps it would be better to explain metanoein as to transform one's mind. It envisions a root-to-branches paradigm-shift which always and necessarily issues in a change of behavior (Acts 26:20). If there is fruit that is appropriate to repentance (Matthew 3:8), then equally there must be fruit that is inappropriate to genuine repentance — such fruit as I briefly alluded to, above.

One would hope we would be in fundamental agreement thus far.

But there is a crucial element to repentance that I find missing in the thinking of many. And that element is...

...the topic of Thursday's post, Lord willing.

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