Is There More to Repentance Than Feeling Guilty?
Repentance is both the beginning of the Christian life and its continuation. While our place in Christ is doubtlessly secured when we come to Him in faith, part of what it means to be in Christ is to routinely and readily reject sin as the Holy Spirit makes us aware of it. As we read our Bibles and come to a greater knowledge of God’s holiness, He reveals sin to us that we had been ignorant of before as well as sin that arises from new temptations. A healthy Christian walk involves a habit of self-examination and repentance as we steadily draw nearer to Christ.
Repentance is a key doctrine of Christian faith. From John the Baptist’s wilderness cry in the Gospels (Matt. 3:2, Mark 1:4, Luke 3:3) to Paul’s defense before King Agrippa (Acts 26:20) and beyond, it’s a regular topic of the New Testament’s teaching. In fact, right after His resurrection, Jesus told His disciples, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:46–47). A call to repentance, the Lord said, is a fundamental part of Gospel proclamation.
Nevertheless, many Christians don’t seem to understand what repentance is, and even those who believe it’s important tend to embrace an incomplete picture. Some dark and gloomy churches constantly urge confession of sin but never offer the adequate cure. Others urge us to “let go and let God,” rightly treating Jesus as the antidote to loneliness and purposelessness but never really confronting the overarching problem He came to deal with: our sin.
In contrast to both of those incomplete pictures, biblical repentance is a fundamental life change that requires both a turning from sin and a turning to God. It involves both a change of mind and heart and a change of behavior. As we come to understand the fullness of repentance, we can begin to grasp its importance for our Christian walk and ask ourselves the key question: “Have I truly repented?”
Biblical Repentance Means Turning from Sin
Human beings are sinners. We all walk according to our own self-centered concerns unless God renews our hearts. While there may be a religious component to our lives—we may attend church frequently or do good works—at our core we are each going our own way (Isa. 53:6). But if we discover God’s holiness revealed in His law and commandments, we will recognize that we are not meeting God’s standard of right living. Because of that, we are guilty before Him.
It’s common today to suppose that any sense of guilt is counterproductive and wrong. While there is a pathological sense of guilt from which we need to be set free, we also do indeed bear real guilt before God. When we sense this guilt, we shouldn’t ignore it, nor should we think we have done enough simply by feeling it. We need to respond to it. Understanding our guilt opens the door to the possibility of forgiveness and liberation as we turn from the sin that made us guilty in the first place.
A biblical response to guilt involves an internal change first and an external change second. The Westminster Confession describes this well when it says, “A sinner, out of the sight and sense, not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins, as contrary to the holy nature and righteous law of God, and upon the apprehension of His mercy in Christ to such as are penitent, so grieves for, and hates his sins…” This is an internal response to sin, a change in outlook and affections. And it results in a change of behavior: “… so grieves for, and hates his sins, as to turn from them all.”1 Repentance, in other words, is more than simply sorrow at having been found out or regret for bad choices in the past. Godly sorrow for our sin will cause us to hate sin and to turn and seek to do right (2 Cor. 7:10).
Biblical Repentance Means Turning to God
Of course, we may understand our predicament before God, come to a point of remorse, and reject our former sin and yet not be fully repentant. It is not enough that we only turn from sin; we must also turn to God. As the Westminster Confession continues its definition of repentance, it says this very thing: “A sinner … grieves for, and hates his sins, so as to turn from them all unto God, purposing and endeavoring to walk with Him in all the ways of His commandments.”
Sin is not a problem that human beings can overcome in their own power.
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Canadians Must Not Assist a Culture of Death
The proclamation of the gospel challenges aspects of MAiD. So does basic truth telling. MAiD ends lives. MAiD is euthanasia. MAiD preys on the suffering and weak. MAiD exploits the poor who apply for death on the basis of acute suffering to which their neighbors have turned a blind eye. The moral consensus that Canadians—both Christian and non-Christian—once shared has slowly eroded. In its place, Christians stand on morals and ethics that are offensive to a world that celebrates death.
In March 2023, Canada will begin assisting the mentally ill by terminating their lives. Canada first legalized medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in 2016. Bill C-7 in 2021 expanded the criteria for MAiD beyond those who had a foreseeable death. Now, a further expansion will allow those with mental illness to receive a prescription for death.
The slope is not only slippery—the ground below MAiD collapsed into the pit of the earth. We should expect the requests of parents to end their children’s lives to soon be granted. We will not have post-birth abortion; we will have parents requesting to have their children receive the care given by medical assistance in dying. Lest I be accused of exaggeration, Quebec’s college of physicians has already (in 2021) recommended euthanizing infants and teenagers.
The euphemism “medical assistance in dying” means a medical professional will administer drugs that end the life of a patient. In traditional language, MAiD is euthanasia. And it’s the new normal in Canada.
The stories of people applying for MAiD in combination with the sympathetic reception of MAiD among Canadians will force Canadian Christians into conflict because any attempt to save someone’s life will invoke the ire of those who call death good and preserving life wrong.
Stories of MAiD
In a Toronto, a woman with an incurable sensitivity to chemicals used in housing has applied for MAiD. The woman, Denise, cannot afford to find housing without the chemicals that destroy her life. She may qualify for MAiD due to this incurable sensitivity, but her poverty means she has yet to find long-term affordable housing to preserve her health.
Denise has found “a temporary home” in a hotel, CTV News reports. Yet she has “not cancelled the MAID application.” Denise can’t live there forever; she may have to return to her apartment where she struggles to breathe.
A man in St. Catharines, Ontario, has also applied for MAiD because he suffers from depression, anxiety, and the real fear he might become homeless. Amir Farsoud explains, “I do nothing other than manage pain.” The fear of living with such mental anguish without affordable housing has driven him to the edge. “I don’t want to die but I don’t want to be homeless more than I don’t want to die.”
Homelessness doesn’t qualify someone for MAiD. But Farsoud may soon qualify on mental health grounds due to his ongoing anguish. Erin Anderssen explains, “On March 17, assisted dying will become legal for Canadians with a mental disorder as their sole condition.” Yet Farsoud doesn’t necessarily need the March update to MAiD. One of his doctors has already approved his application to MAiD due to his physical suffering, which is “intolerable and cannot be relieved.”
Julie Leblanc suffers from near-lifelong mental illness. She has an 8-year old son who plays a role in her will to live. Yet she “wavers between wanting to die and trying to live. . . . She feels trapped in despair and anxiety, while carrying the deepest sorrow of all—her illness prevents her from being a good mother to her son.”
Leblanc fears taking her own life because of the pain and the consequences of a failed attempt. MAiD tempts her since it promises a peaceful end.
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What We Learn from Our Sicknesses
Above all, our sickness should drive us to our knees in prayer. God can heal the sick. And even if He chooses to delay this longer than we might want, we should thank God for controlling the world even on days we cannot control even our little part in it.
It is that time of year when everyone seems to be getting sick. I had a virus a few weeks ago and many family members and friends have been taking time off work. There also seems to be a higher than usual amount of people with more serious, long-term illnesses. Like with all aspects of our lives, we should ask: “how does this help me serve Jesus? What does this tell me about God?”
We must not draw the wrong conclusions about what is happening to us when we are unwell. It is easy to feel cheated as if we deserve whatever plans we have made to work out, and incredibly frustrated when they have not. Instead, there are some important things that we can productively think about when we are sick, including:We live in a fallen world
We probably already know this theologically; when we are sick, we feel this personally. We feel the impact of sin in the world in our sore joints and runny noses, in the way that our body cannot do what it usually does. This reminds us that so much of our lives are marred by sin even when we are not obviously sick.
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How Is the Rainbow a Sign of the Covenant?
The rainbow is the sign that the Lord will preserve the present creation until the consummation of the covenant of grace when He will fully redeem His people from every tongue, tribe, and nation and bring them into the full enjoyment of a new creation. The sign of the Noahic covenant is therefore a gospel sign of the redeeming mercy of God in Christ (Isaiah 54:9–10).
Several years ago, my wife and I were driving back home from a trip out of town. At some point, we missed the exit sign on the highway leading to the town in which we lived. We drove for nearly thirty minutes before realizing that we were heading to the wrong city. We had completely missed the sign. Failing to see or to understand physical signs can result in unfavorable consequences; the same is true of failing to rightly understand God’s covenantal signs. This is evident today in the way many parade their sexual rebellion against God under the banner of a rainbow.
In redemptive history, the Lord established the covenant of grace with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Christ. With each administration of the covenant of grace, God gave various divine signs. He set apart the rainbow in the sky to serve as the sign of the Noahic covenant. The Noahic covenant was God’s pledge that He would sustain the created order (Gen. 9:9–13). Because of His promise not to destroy the earth, mankind could be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth (Gen. 9:1). In this sense, the Noahic covenant was a unique administration of the covenant of grace in that it contained a principle of common grace.
However, the Noahic covenant was ultimately serving the redemptive purposes of God. God was renewing the covenant promise He made to Adam when He inaugurated the covenant of grace (Gen. 3:15). In the Noahic covenant, God was setting the stage for the unfolding of redemptive history. Christ was in the lineage of Noah (Luke 3:23–38). Noah stood as a type of Christ, the head of a new creation (Gen. 8:13–19; 9:1–7). The ark itself served as a microcosm of redemptive history. The clean animals in the ark belonged to the Old Testament sacrificial system and typified the sacrifice of Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (Gen. 8:20; Ex. 12; John 1:29; 1 Peter 1:19). Clean and unclean animals together represented the Jews and gentiles, for whose salvation Christ came into the world (Acts 10:9–48; 11:18).
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