Repentance Really Means What? Will Daily Confession Make Us Sin More?
Question : What does repentance really mean? Is the following explanation right, that I found else where, "The word in the New Testament usually translated “repent” is the Greek word “metanoeo”. It means “to change your mind; reconsider; or, to think differently.” Granted, if a person changes his mind (repents) toward certain sins in his life, he may become very sorrowful and may even stop committing those sins, but this would be a result of repenting, not repentance itself.
When God tells an unsaved man to repent, He means for that man to change his mind about how to reach God and accept His way of salvation. The person must change his mind from any idea of saving himself through religion or good works, and trust Christ’s death as payment for everything he has done wrong."
If we really repent, will we not go back to the same sin again at all? Of course I know that once we repent we will look sin as sin and not as something that is justifiable or as a good sin that is not affecting others. Once we repent we will not categorize sin as something big and small sin, good or bad sin, serious or normal sin, but all sin to be equally sinful. Am I right in saying this?
If we consider we have repented once and for all at the time of salvation, and then confess the sins of ours after that consistently when we do sin to cleanse our conscience for fellowship with God, does that mean we by confessing our sins daily we will start to have a tendency do more sins with out walking in righteousness.
Thanks for your answer in advance.
Answer : This is a great definition for repentance, the word “repent” in the Greek is “metanoeo” means “to change your mind; reconsider; or, to think differently” and it does not mean change in behavior though it might follow sometimes instantly and at other times progressively. The true act of repentance is when a person knows that he is a sinner and needs the Savior Jesus to save him from sin. To know that we are sinners and that we need a Savior in Jesus is the only repentance we need to get saved from sin (Rom 10:9-10).
Dead works are something we try to do religiously to please God that can never save us. Our sins are breaking of God's righteous law (1 John 3:4). To repent from dead work is to introduce faith in the cleansing blood of Jesus again to save us (Heb 6:1). Repentance is to turn towards God and agree with Him that we are sinners in need of salvation, and then to believe and accept that Jesus has paid for all our sins and as a result become saved (Acts 2:38-39; 11:18; 17:30; 20:21; 16:31; Matt 3:2; Luke 13:3).
Repentance is the God ordained way for a unsaved man to reach out to God and receive His salvation. For a person to repent means to tell God that he cannot save himself except through His ordained way of believing in Jesus knowing that he himself is a sinner in need of Him (Gal 2:17). But confession is the God ordained way to clear the way to God from our dead works and sins which accumulate between us and the Lord because of our sin nature that tries to hamper the fellowship between us and God (1 John 1:9).
And once faith comes to us, we do not repent again as we already know that our behavior is a sin, but confess to God and get cleansed in our conscience. Many of us are taught that we have to stop sinning to repent, but that means we should stop sinning before we can ask Jesus to save us and therefore none of us could ever be saved. God sends us His Holy Spirit and seals our heart and saves it by grace through faith as a sign of our salvation, which is a gift given to us, and then helps us to change our behavior progressively more in to the likeness of Christ day by day (Eph 1:13-14; Rom 8:29). We are saved by grace through faith which we received as a free gift from the day we are born again to the day we will die and go on to be with the Lord, and God has not even once said or warned to revoke us of our gift of salvation if we sin, instead He has spoken and encouraged the believers through the apostles to walk in the benefits of salvation because Jesus justifies all believers from their sins (Eph 2:8-9; Heb 6:9; 1 John 2:1). The Bible says that not even one person on earth who always does good and does not sin (Eccl 7:20). So according to the Bible, no believer can boast of being sinless at any point of time in his saved life. Yes you are absolutely right in saying that all sin is equally sinful.
Because of our sin nature influence, we might commit any sin that we have committed before we were saved, but because of the new nature God has put in to us, we cannot habitually practice those sin without any regret for having done it (1 Cor 6:9-10, 11; 1 John 3:9). Because we have become righteous by our faith before God, we can practice joyfully only righteousness because we are truly saved (1 John 3:7; Gal 3:11). But as for the sins we do, we will regret for having done it and therefore must confess it to God (1 John 1:7, 9). Then we will be forgiven and cleansed by God, and then God might deliver the believer from it according to his own faith (Luke 7:50; 8:48; 18:42). Some times God delivers a believer from sin instantly for his glory (Matt 9:29; Mark 10:52), still at other times he delays his deliverance to test their faith and make them grow in it (Matt 15:28; John 9:2-3, 7; 11:4, 6, 14-15, 40, 43-44). The original root cause of all sickness is sin, sickness brings death (Rom 6:23). So all these healing event in which Jesus healed people can also be applied to sin symbolically and spiritually.
God expects in the New Testament that no matter what, each believer should keep fighting against sin when it tries to dominate their lives, and He has promised to all believers that sin cannot dominate them once Jesus has set them free when they were born again, and that each one should receive His overcoming grace to be overcomers over sin (John 8:36; Rom 6:14). As faith grows in the heart of believers, no sin will ever be able to stand against them and they will be victorious over it by their faith (1 John 5:4). As more and more grace of God increases in the lives of believers, they will start to reign in this life through Jesus Christ over sin by the grace of God (Rom 5:17, 21).
Whether we like it or not we all sin until we die because of our sin nature within us, and only after the day of rapture we will be given by God a glorious sin-free body to live, then we will never sin (1 Cor 15:56, 54). A man like apostle Paul who was sold out to fulfill the will of God for his life and for the Church was honestly telling that he was not able to control himself when tempted. When he did not want to sin, he did what he did not like to do because of the sin nature working within him (Rom 7:14-20). So to some degree all those who are born again also sin in their motives, thoughts and actions. And according to God, breaking one law is equal to breaking all the laws of God (James 2:10). That means we all fall short of the perfect requirement of God all the times in our lives. The Bible says that if anyone says that he has no sin nature, he is deceiving himself and the truth of God is not in him (1 John 1:8). Then how then can we ever be a righteous person and walk in righteousness? That righteousness with which we can walk in God way's does not come by our own strength but by faith in Jesus who has made us as the righteousness of God in Him and gives us His righteousness to walk day in and day out when we choose not to depend on our own righteousness (2 Cor 5:21; Php 3:8-9). When we believe what God has done for us in Christ Jesus as something done personally for us, that is when we are made righteous before the eyes of God (Gal 3:5-6).
Only by God's empowerment of His grace we can ever be made righteous and can walk in His righteousness, and we can never walk righteously by our own strength before God (Rom 11:6; 3:22). If we try to walk in righteousness by our own strength, then we actually are counteracting the force or effectiveness of God's grace that is available freely for us from God and therefore we make what Christ did for us by dying on the Cross for our sins as something done in vain and of no effect to us personally (Gal 2:21). Christ become the end of the pursuit of all righteousness for all those who believe Him because they themselves have been made the righteousness of God in Him and they will walk in righteousness by letting Christ walk daily in His righteousness through their bodies (Rom 10:4; 2 Cor 5:21; Php 3:9; Gal 2:20; Rom 12:1). God demonstrates His righteousness to all people through our life by letting Christ walk through our lives (Rom 3:26). So if we do not try to work righteousness but instead believe God's way of justifying us through Jesus and let Jesus walk through our lives, even though we are ungodly sinners in the natural state, our faith is then considered as righteousness before God (Rom 4:5). God puts Jesus' perfect righteousness in to our spiritual account which the Bible calls as "the righteousness of the faith", and then seals us with a unique sign of spiritual identity from heaven called spiritual circumcision which is of faith like He did to our spiritual father Abraham in the beginning where He considered him guiltless before Him through his faith (Rom 4:11,16; 9:30). No person who tries to work his own righteousness before God will ever be considered guiltless from sins done by him before God (Gal 2:16).
Even though all our past, present and future sins are all forgiven by God when we believed in Jesus (Eph 4:32), still when we presently sin because of our sin nature, the fellowship with God and His joy in us will be broken by our sin (1 John 1:3-4), so God has made a way to keep our conscience clean through confessing it to God through Jesus our High Priest who is in heaven on behalf of us all (Heb 10:21-23). Jesus Himself is the offering that appeases and satisfies God's anger against our sins every time we do sin and confess it to Him through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior (1 John 2:1-2). Once we confess to God all our present sins in Jesus name boldly, Jesus Christ as our Advocate with the Father settles the issue and bring a clean state of righteousness in our spiritual fellowship and makes us as righteous as God is and also just as if we have never sinned at all (1 John 1:7, 9; Luke 18:13-14). God has made this the living way of righteousness to be happy and prosperous spiritually through Jesus Christ, what more do we need (Heb 10:19-12). So the issue is not whether we sin often or once in a while, it is whether we are humble enough to consider all sins as breaking all of God's laws and immediately run to Jesus to confess it that will bring a clean conscience before God through the blood of Jesus (Heb 9:14). We repent once we are saved, but we confess for a lifetime according to the word of God.
Fearing that we will sin more as we confess and get cleaned by the blood of Jesus is a illogical fear of all men, the question is, "What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not!" (Rom 6:15). The answer continues saying, "And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness." (Rom 6:18), and having become slaves of righteousness, why should any believer willingly would like to become addicted to sin again rather than enjoy the true liberty of the Spirit of God unless deceived by the deceitfulness of the sin of unbelief (Gal 5:1; Heb 3:13, 17-19). If any believer intentionally sins because of unbelief, he will be chastised by God and if still he doesn't turn back, God will judge him physically even to death and he will lose his eternal rewards (Heb 12:10-11; 1 Cor 11:30-32; Rev 3:11), but as for salvation it is not earned by him so it cannot be lost by him (1 Cor 3:15). Jesus has promised not to lose even one sheep of his who are saved for eternity, and has guaranteed that no one including sin or devil can take them out of His hand (John 10:27-28; Rom 8:38-29). So it is not our business to judge, give a opinion or say and determine who is saved and who is not (Rom 14:4). Praise God that we are saved by grace through faith and that it is not a effort of our work, but that it is a pure gift of God from the first day of our salvation to the final day we receive our glorious sin-free body! Or else sinful human being we are, I know for sure that no one of us could ever be saved and could go to heaven. Just enjoy your rest in God by faith.
Thanks and Blessings......
When God tells an unsaved man to repent, He means for that man to change his mind about how to reach God and accept His way of salvation. The person must change his mind from any idea of saving himself through religion or good works, and trust Christ’s death as payment for everything he has done wrong."
If we really repent, will we not go back to the same sin again at all? Of course I know that once we repent we will look sin as sin and not as something that is justifiable or as a good sin that is not affecting others. Once we repent we will not categorize sin as something big and small sin, good or bad sin, serious or normal sin, but all sin to be equally sinful. Am I right in saying this?
If we consider we have repented once and for all at the time of salvation, and then confess the sins of ours after that consistently when we do sin to cleanse our conscience for fellowship with God, does that mean we by confessing our sins daily we will start to have a tendency do more sins with out walking in righteousness.
Thanks for your answer in advance.
Answer : This is a great definition for repentance, the word “repent” in the Greek is “metanoeo” means “to change your mind; reconsider; or, to think differently” and it does not mean change in behavior though it might follow sometimes instantly and at other times progressively. The true act of repentance is when a person knows that he is a sinner and needs the Savior Jesus to save him from sin. To know that we are sinners and that we need a Savior in Jesus is the only repentance we need to get saved from sin (Rom 10:9-10).
Dead works are something we try to do religiously to please God that can never save us. Our sins are breaking of God's righteous law (1 John 3:4). To repent from dead work is to introduce faith in the cleansing blood of Jesus again to save us (Heb 6:1). Repentance is to turn towards God and agree with Him that we are sinners in need of salvation, and then to believe and accept that Jesus has paid for all our sins and as a result become saved (Acts 2:38-39; 11:18; 17:30; 20:21; 16:31; Matt 3:2; Luke 13:3).
Repentance is the God ordained way for a unsaved man to reach out to God and receive His salvation. For a person to repent means to tell God that he cannot save himself except through His ordained way of believing in Jesus knowing that he himself is a sinner in need of Him (Gal 2:17). But confession is the God ordained way to clear the way to God from our dead works and sins which accumulate between us and the Lord because of our sin nature that tries to hamper the fellowship between us and God (1 John 1:9).
And once faith comes to us, we do not repent again as we already know that our behavior is a sin, but confess to God and get cleansed in our conscience. Many of us are taught that we have to stop sinning to repent, but that means we should stop sinning before we can ask Jesus to save us and therefore none of us could ever be saved. God sends us His Holy Spirit and seals our heart and saves it by grace through faith as a sign of our salvation, which is a gift given to us, and then helps us to change our behavior progressively more in to the likeness of Christ day by day (Eph 1:13-14; Rom 8:29). We are saved by grace through faith which we received as a free gift from the day we are born again to the day we will die and go on to be with the Lord, and God has not even once said or warned to revoke us of our gift of salvation if we sin, instead He has spoken and encouraged the believers through the apostles to walk in the benefits of salvation because Jesus justifies all believers from their sins (Eph 2:8-9; Heb 6:9; 1 John 2:1). The Bible says that not even one person on earth who always does good and does not sin (Eccl 7:20). So according to the Bible, no believer can boast of being sinless at any point of time in his saved life. Yes you are absolutely right in saying that all sin is equally sinful.
Because of our sin nature influence, we might commit any sin that we have committed before we were saved, but because of the new nature God has put in to us, we cannot habitually practice those sin without any regret for having done it (1 Cor 6:9-10, 11; 1 John 3:9). Because we have become righteous by our faith before God, we can practice joyfully only righteousness because we are truly saved (1 John 3:7; Gal 3:11). But as for the sins we do, we will regret for having done it and therefore must confess it to God (1 John 1:7, 9). Then we will be forgiven and cleansed by God, and then God might deliver the believer from it according to his own faith (Luke 7:50; 8:48; 18:42). Some times God delivers a believer from sin instantly for his glory (Matt 9:29; Mark 10:52), still at other times he delays his deliverance to test their faith and make them grow in it (Matt 15:28; John 9:2-3, 7; 11:4, 6, 14-15, 40, 43-44). The original root cause of all sickness is sin, sickness brings death (Rom 6:23). So all these healing event in which Jesus healed people can also be applied to sin symbolically and spiritually.
God expects in the New Testament that no matter what, each believer should keep fighting against sin when it tries to dominate their lives, and He has promised to all believers that sin cannot dominate them once Jesus has set them free when they were born again, and that each one should receive His overcoming grace to be overcomers over sin (John 8:36; Rom 6:14). As faith grows in the heart of believers, no sin will ever be able to stand against them and they will be victorious over it by their faith (1 John 5:4). As more and more grace of God increases in the lives of believers, they will start to reign in this life through Jesus Christ over sin by the grace of God (Rom 5:17, 21).
Whether we like it or not we all sin until we die because of our sin nature within us, and only after the day of rapture we will be given by God a glorious sin-free body to live, then we will never sin (1 Cor 15:56, 54). A man like apostle Paul who was sold out to fulfill the will of God for his life and for the Church was honestly telling that he was not able to control himself when tempted. When he did not want to sin, he did what he did not like to do because of the sin nature working within him (Rom 7:14-20). So to some degree all those who are born again also sin in their motives, thoughts and actions. And according to God, breaking one law is equal to breaking all the laws of God (James 2:10). That means we all fall short of the perfect requirement of God all the times in our lives. The Bible says that if anyone says that he has no sin nature, he is deceiving himself and the truth of God is not in him (1 John 1:8). Then how then can we ever be a righteous person and walk in righteousness? That righteousness with which we can walk in God way's does not come by our own strength but by faith in Jesus who has made us as the righteousness of God in Him and gives us His righteousness to walk day in and day out when we choose not to depend on our own righteousness (2 Cor 5:21; Php 3:8-9). When we believe what God has done for us in Christ Jesus as something done personally for us, that is when we are made righteous before the eyes of God (Gal 3:5-6).
Only by God's empowerment of His grace we can ever be made righteous and can walk in His righteousness, and we can never walk righteously by our own strength before God (Rom 11:6; 3:22). If we try to walk in righteousness by our own strength, then we actually are counteracting the force or effectiveness of God's grace that is available freely for us from God and therefore we make what Christ did for us by dying on the Cross for our sins as something done in vain and of no effect to us personally (Gal 2:21). Christ become the end of the pursuit of all righteousness for all those who believe Him because they themselves have been made the righteousness of God in Him and they will walk in righteousness by letting Christ walk daily in His righteousness through their bodies (Rom 10:4; 2 Cor 5:21; Php 3:9; Gal 2:20; Rom 12:1). God demonstrates His righteousness to all people through our life by letting Christ walk through our lives (Rom 3:26). So if we do not try to work righteousness but instead believe God's way of justifying us through Jesus and let Jesus walk through our lives, even though we are ungodly sinners in the natural state, our faith is then considered as righteousness before God (Rom 4:5). God puts Jesus' perfect righteousness in to our spiritual account which the Bible calls as "the righteousness of the faith", and then seals us with a unique sign of spiritual identity from heaven called spiritual circumcision which is of faith like He did to our spiritual father Abraham in the beginning where He considered him guiltless before Him through his faith (Rom 4:11,16; 9:30). No person who tries to work his own righteousness before God will ever be considered guiltless from sins done by him before God (Gal 2:16).
Even though all our past, present and future sins are all forgiven by God when we believed in Jesus (Eph 4:32), still when we presently sin because of our sin nature, the fellowship with God and His joy in us will be broken by our sin (1 John 1:3-4), so God has made a way to keep our conscience clean through confessing it to God through Jesus our High Priest who is in heaven on behalf of us all (Heb 10:21-23). Jesus Himself is the offering that appeases and satisfies God's anger against our sins every time we do sin and confess it to Him through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior (1 John 2:1-2). Once we confess to God all our present sins in Jesus name boldly, Jesus Christ as our Advocate with the Father settles the issue and bring a clean state of righteousness in our spiritual fellowship and makes us as righteous as God is and also just as if we have never sinned at all (1 John 1:7, 9; Luke 18:13-14). God has made this the living way of righteousness to be happy and prosperous spiritually through Jesus Christ, what more do we need (Heb 10:19-12). So the issue is not whether we sin often or once in a while, it is whether we are humble enough to consider all sins as breaking all of God's laws and immediately run to Jesus to confess it that will bring a clean conscience before God through the blood of Jesus (Heb 9:14). We repent once we are saved, but we confess for a lifetime according to the word of God.
Fearing that we will sin more as we confess and get cleaned by the blood of Jesus is a illogical fear of all men, the question is, "What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not!" (Rom 6:15). The answer continues saying, "And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness." (Rom 6:18), and having become slaves of righteousness, why should any believer willingly would like to become addicted to sin again rather than enjoy the true liberty of the Spirit of God unless deceived by the deceitfulness of the sin of unbelief (Gal 5:1; Heb 3:13, 17-19). If any believer intentionally sins because of unbelief, he will be chastised by God and if still he doesn't turn back, God will judge him physically even to death and he will lose his eternal rewards (Heb 12:10-11; 1 Cor 11:30-32; Rev 3:11), but as for salvation it is not earned by him so it cannot be lost by him (1 Cor 3:15). Jesus has promised not to lose even one sheep of his who are saved for eternity, and has guaranteed that no one including sin or devil can take them out of His hand (John 10:27-28; Rom 8:38-29). So it is not our business to judge, give a opinion or say and determine who is saved and who is not (Rom 14:4). Praise God that we are saved by grace through faith and that it is not a effort of our work, but that it is a pure gift of God from the first day of our salvation to the final day we receive our glorious sin-free body! Or else sinful human being we are, I know for sure that no one of us could ever be saved and could go to heaven. Just enjoy your rest in God by faith.
Thanks and Blessings......
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