The Cutting Edge Gospel: Repentance March 13, 2013
Posted by Henry in The Cutting Edge Gospel.Tags: faith, gospel, Jesus Christ, repentance, righteousness, sin
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38Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
The gospel of repentance requires us to be remorseful or penitent of our past sins, turning to God and ask for His forgiveness and to seek to live a life of faith in Jesus Christ, recognizing that only His saving Grace can cleanse us from all our sins.
However, we can sometimes deceive ourselves that we do not need to repent of certain sins – these could be our “secret sins”. Sometimes we seek to justify the sins in our lives instead of repenting fully. Just to give a few examples: we want to follow Christ but at the same time we want to yield or succumb to the flesh to commit fornication and seek to justify it. We lust after the things of the flesh and of the eyes; covet our neighbors wife, husband, property secretly; tell little white lies and think it is ok; or refuse to forgive someone who did something to us in the past yet expecting God to forgive us our sins.
A call to repentance means that we must repent of ALL sins and stop deceiving ourselves.
The scriptures says:
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. (Gal 6:7)
Sin cannot enter heaven.
9Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor 6)
Spirit of Discernment 
Your phrase “fully repent” reminds me of this old hymn (which has a pretty catchy tune): “Did you repent, fully repent, of your past sins friend, when you confessed His name on high? Did you believe, truly believe, on His great Name then, or was a doubt, treacherous doubt, lingering nigh? Did you obey all of the way what He commanded, things in His word we’re told to do? Did you confess, fully confess Jesus the Savior? Did you repent, did you believe, all the way through?” Of course the point of this song appears to be that you must question your conversion (or baptism) if you didn’t “fully repent” prior to it. I think that’s a bit silly personally. Instead of thinking “Oh, crap, my baptism wasn’t valid, I better do it again since I hadn’t fully repented,” I would think just make up for the lack of repentance by doing it now. What do you think? Does that make me a libral? Should we search our souls to see if “a doubt, treacherous doubt” was “lingering nigh” at the point of our conversion/baptism and do it over again if we don’t have 100% certainty that it was not?
descriptivegrace,
I am sorry that it has taken this long to reply to your post but I think I must have overlooked it. Thank you for your comment and I do appreciate the criticism as this helps me to reflect. Anyway I think you can appreciate that one can repent and be baptise but after continuing in the faith for awhile they then become either lukewarm or backslidden. This could mean therefore that they continue to worship as a church whilst continuing to commit certain sins. Take for example the Laodecian church in Rev 3:15-19. Would they not have believed the gosple and repented in the beginning to have constituted a church in the first place? But now after they have become lukewarm does Jesus not call them to repent? Hope this clears up any misunderstanding in what I wrote.
I re-read what you wrote. I guess I had interpreted “secret sins” as meaning sins you didn’t even know about rather than ones you were hiding. Some people have that concern and freak out: “What if there’s a sin I don’t even know I did, and I can’t confess it, will I go to hell?” I think that’s what I was talking about in my comment.
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