True Repentance - Step Four

Repentance is a foregone conclusion. If you don't do it BEFORE the conclusion of life on earth the opportunity will be GONE. Sometimes the opportunity to change your mind about sin, which is the essence of repentance, comes and goes in this life before the undertaker calls. One cannot shove out of the mind that reminder of Esau's mistake in Hebrews 12. The twin brother of Jacob sold his birthright, which was his rights of inheritance to his father's estate, for a mess of pottage. We read the heartsinking words, "for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears." In death or in life, repentance must not be put on an installment plan or rescheduled for convenience sake. How many have reaped the whirlwind despite given opportunities and calls to repentance, yet still remained in a stubborn condition. Even a car can pass one too many gas stations and be found dead on the road.

To conclude by review, the idolatry of the human heart must be shocked at God's view of the sin. Secondly, repentance cannot be rushed to save face. Grinding the golden calf to pulverized powder is necessary that the transgressor faithfully faces his/her guilt before God. Even the minutest speck of the filth of our hearts must be seen under God's holy magnification to leave no doubt about the abhorrence of the sin. Thirdly, strow it upon the water. Lay it out in such a way before God's redeeming blood that you forthrightly conclude no effort of your own hides or removes the sin. Last, but not least, the children must drink the concoction. It is not an emulsion for such a combining of the ingredients through an emulsifying process would leave neither one distinct. This heavenly concoction leads to genuine repentance when the sinner can honestly and humbly partake of both the shame of the sin and the removing Agent. The latter is harder to swallow than the first. Hasty attempts to avoid contemplation of what it cost the darling Saviour to purchase our perpetual forgiveness in His blood taints the activity of repentance and leaves the sinner at least highly vulnerable for repeated downfalls if not entirely shackled to the damaging effects of that which he is repenting. It was a bitter solution to swallow. It always is but mandatory for real deliverance. In summary, God has drawn the portrait at the base of Sinai for true and complete repentance to follow: great recognition for the destruction of sin, great consternation for the participation in sin, great appreciation for the cure of sin, and great absorption of the bitterness of sin.