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Sin spins webs of confusion. Repentance breaks those webs and replaces sin with clarity, but sin does real damage, I have done real damage. Repentance means more than saying you are sorry. According to puritan thomas Watson and the doctrine of repentance, true repentance is distinguished from counterfeit repentance by 6 ingredients.
Recognition of sin. Luke 15:17, Acts 26:18,
Sorrow for sin. Psalm 38:18 51:17, Zechariah 12:10, 19:8
Confession of sin Nehemiah 9:2, 2 Samuel 24:17, Daniel 9:6, 1cor 11:31
Shame for sin. Ezekiel 43:10, Luke 15:21
Hatred for sin. Psalm 119:104, Ezekiel 36:31, Roman’s 7, 15:23
Turning from sin. Isaiah 55:7, Ephesians
Because sin is a matter of the head, heart,
And hands, it corrupts our thinking, feeling, and doing. Repentance is known by its fruit. Some believe falsely that because Christ has covered our sin and taken our shame on the cross, we should have no consciousness of shame. Others falsely believe that saying you are sorry and then continuing on with no real change, business as usual. But the most dangerous and most insidious misconception, is from those who believe that sin is only a matter of practice, not also, internal desire. Oh! If only sin was so small an enemy as this. Theologian and pastor Mark Jones explains, “Sin is a parasite of the good. It feeds off of what God created. Sins nature is therefore understood as an ethical problem, not a physical problem. The false belief that sin exists as a physical problem, and that it can be domesticated or stewarded for good, is not a biblical idea. It is hell-bound. Thomas Watson comments “loving of sin is worse than committing it. A good man may run into a sinful action unawares but to love sin is desperate. To love sin shows that the will is in sin and the more of the will there is in sin the greater the sin. Willfulness makes it a sin, not to be purged by sacrifice.” Our language reveals the sins we love. The reason that loving our son is worse than committing it, we WILL commit the sins that we love eventually. Repentance must go to the root, to the reckless godless love of sin.
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