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Luke 18:9-14
“The tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (vv. 13–14).
Repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin, as it were, that occur decisively at our conversion to Christ and then daily thereafter until we see God face-to-face. We remember that faith has a certain priority even though it is inseparable from true repentance, since repentance involves turning away from sin and faith involves turning to Christ. After all, we cannot truly repent unless we first believe that God is willing to be merciful, and the Lord does not wait to receive us until our repentance—or even our faith, for that matter—is perfect. If He did wait, He would never receive us, for the quality and strength of our faith and repentance increases over time and is not perfected before we are glorified.
Not everything that people call “repentance,” however, is actually biblical repentance. Paul distinguishes between the godly grief that leads to true repentance and the worldly grief that does not (2 Cor. 7:10). Fundamentally, there is a difference between being sorry for sin because it has offended God and has hurt our neighbor and being sorry because we are suffering consequences for our sin. But how do we recognize genuine repentance? Westminster Shorter Catechism 87 will help us here in its definition of “repentance unto life.”
The catechism says, “Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience.” We will consider the first part of this statement today. First, note that real repentance begins when a sinner comes to a true sense of his sin. Repentant people recognize what sin is and that they have committed it. They understand that before sin is anything else, it is a violation of the law of our holy God (see Ps. 51:4). Those who repent see where they have broken God’s law directly and where they have done so more indirectly by not living up to its standards. They realize that they have committed “cosmic treason,” as Dr. R.C. Sproul has stated. By following their own way and not the Creator’s law, they have sought to replace Him as the Lawgiver.
In true repentance, those who recognize their sin also have an “apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ.” They understand, as the tax collector does in today’s passage, that the Lord is willing and ready to forgive (Luke 18:9–14). They know that they will be saved by confessing their sin and resting in Christ (Rom. 10:9–10).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
When we feel sorrow for sin, we need to make sure that our sorrow is grounded in the fact that we have broken the law of God and offended Him. We should also be sorrowful for the effects of sin on ourselves and others, but if we do not recognize that the fundamental evil in sin lies in breaking the Lord’s commandments, we have not exercised true repentance.
For further study
- Proverbs 28:13
- Micah 7:18–20
- Luke 15:1–7
- James 2:10
The bible in a year
- Isaiah 24–26
- Ephesians 5