The Importance of Repentance

A dangerous doctrine has emerged among some Christians whereby they have come to believe they can sin with impunity because once they are saved, they are saved forever, no matter what they do. While it is true that Christ’s act of sacrifice for the atonement of sins is final and complete for all who believe in him, one’s personal salvation hinges on one’s acknowledgement that salvation is necessary in the first place. To live in perpetual sin, without expressing any repentance, is to deny the need for a savior. It is this sort of reckless way of living among those who profess to be Christians yet remain comfortable in their sin that Jesus is addressing when he said: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” Matthew 7:21.
 
Let me clarify that I am not suggesting that Christian’s should rest their hope of salvation in following the Laws of God over trusting in Grace. No human, save for the mortal incarnation of Jesus, is capable of perfectly following the Law. We have all sinned and we will all continue to stumble and fall into sin over the course of our lives, even after we are saved.
 
This brings me to another point of clarification – just because you continue to struggle with sin does not mean you lose your salvation. The key is that you are “struggling” with sin and not surrendering to it without a fight or worse yet, embracing it.
 
What one must remember about sin is that sin is not simply a breaking of a rule that has been established by God. Sin is separation from God. By sinning you are actively separating yourself from God. This is because at its core, sin is defiance against the very truth of God. And what is the truth of God? It is that God is the author of all creation and the definer of reality.
 
A life of sin is a life devoted to a lie. The rules God made for us are not arbitrary. They were put in place to protect us from harming ourselves or harming others. One can pretend that these rules do not exist or protest that they are unfair, but the result is the same – if you break the rules, you will suffer the consequences. You will do so not because God is angry or vengeful (although there are instances where the offenses of sin are so great that it does incur the wrath of God), but because God's laws are based on the unchanging truth of the reality he has defined as creator of the universe and all that is in it.  If I build a stove and tell you not to touch a hot burner, yet you do it anyway, you get burned, not because I am angry at you for disobeying me, but because it is the inevitable consequence of touching something that is hot.
 
God’s laws expose the tragic folly that led to the banishment of Adam and Eve from Eden and the fall of humanity. Adam and Eve chose sin over God. They chose to believe the lie that they could define their own reality in place of God’s reality. They chose to replace God’s truth with what they wanted to be true.
 
When a Christian lives in sin without repentance, that Christian is in danger of following in the footsteps of Adam and Eve. Sin without repentance leads to defiance. It begins by defying reality. You ignore or rationalize away the harm it is doing to you or to others. You silence the voice of your conscience, which for Christians, is the Holy Spirit attempting to guide you. Once cut off from the Holy Spirit, you transition from surrendering to sin to embracing it. Your sin becomes a defining aspect of your identity. As such, any criticism of that sin becomes a criticism of you. You begin to challenge and even despise anyone who would state or even imply that your sin is somehow wrong. You begin to call the evil of your sin good and the good intentions of those who would point out the truth of your sin evil. You might even attempt to convince other Christians that your sin really is not sin and that they too should embrace it. In the end, you reject the salvation of Christ because accepting it would mean that your sin is wrong and that is something that you refuse to admit.
 
A life without repentance leads to an eternity of separation from God. This is why repentance is so important. Repentance is an acknowledgement that you have lost a battle with sin, but you are committed to continuing to fight against it, trusting that the final victory has already been won by Christ.