Session 2: Repentance and Works

1. Session 2:Repentance and Works

2. Goals for this session • Repentance • Faith and Works • How to Fight Sin

3. How can I be right with God? • By faith—”turning to God” • But it also includes “turning away from sin!” • Isaiah 55:7 : “Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him, and to our God, for He will freely pardon.”

4. Repentance CONVERSION IS A SINGLE ACT OF TURNING FROM SIN IN REPENTANCE AND TURNING TO CHRIST IN FAITH

5. Repentance • 1 Thessalonians 1:9 says: “you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God.” • Acts 26:18-20: “to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins … that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance.”

6. Repentance • Arturo Azardia: “How does the New Testament define a Christian? A Christian is defined as a person who is believing in Jesus Christ. And it would be every bit as accurate to say a Christian is a person who is repenting of sin.”

7. The Elements of Repentance • Repentance has three aspects that affect: • The mind • The will • The emotion/heart

8. The Elements of Repentance • Repentance is a change of mind: • Repentance must have an intellectual understanding and agreement that sin is wrong.

9. The Elements of Repentance • Repentance is a change of will: • It calls for a personal decision with full purpose to turn away from sin and to follow obediently after God.

10. The Elements of Repentance • Repentance is a change of heart (emotions): • Our feelings towards sin must change from enjoying it wholeheartedly to grieving over sin and hating it.

11. Repentance • 2 Corinthians 7:10: “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.” Sin leads to sorrow, but what type? Worldly Sorrow Godly Sorrow Death Life

12. Repentance • The opposite of godly sorrow is not “no sorrow at all,” but rather worldly sorrow • 2 Corinthians 7:10: “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.”

13. Repentance • The root of the problem in worldly sorrow is motive

14. Repentance John Piper: “Worldly regret is when you feel sorry for something you did because it starts to backfire on you and leads to humiliation or punishment. It's the reflex of a proud or fearful ego. Pride will always regret making a fool of itself. And fear will always regret acts that jeopardize comfort and safety. So feeling sorry for something we have done is in itself no sign of virtue. But godly regret is the reflex of a conscience that has wounded God's ego, not its own. Godly regret grieves that God's name has come into disrepute. The focus of godly regret is God.”

15. Repentance • Examples of “Worldly Sorrow:” • Luke 18:23: “But when he had heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.” • Matthew 27:3: “Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders.” • Hebrews 12:17 says of Esau: “For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.”

16. Repentance • Grief over sin does not equal repentance

17. Repentance • What is Godly sorrow? • Godly sorrow is not the same thing as repentance: v 10: “sorrow according to the will of God produces repentance” • But Godly sorrow is the first step towards true repentance • The test of godly sorrow is repentance

18. Repentance • What is Godly sorrow? • It enacts true repentance, which is without regret • True repentance then leads to salvation • V 10: “Sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation.”

19. Repentance • The chain of 2 Corinthians 7:10: Godly sorrow  repentance  salvation • Acts 11:18: “repentance leading unto life.”

20. Go to God for repentance! • Lamentations 5:21: “Turn me, O Lord, and I will be turned.” • Acts 5:31: “He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.”

21. Faith and Works Works are not the root of salvation, but the fruit ofsalvation

22. Faith and Works • James 2:17: “Faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.”

23. Faith and Works • Ephesians 2:8-10: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

24. Faith and Works • True faith cannot continue in unrepentant, habitual, life long patterns of sin • 1 John 3:9: “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him, he cannot go on sinning because he has been born of God.” • It’s not the perfection of your life but the direction of your life!

25. Faith and Works • Millard Erickson: “If there are no good works, there has been neither real faith nor justification.”

26. Fighting Sin in our Lives • What is the nature of sin? • John Piper: “Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God. No one sins out of duty. We sin because it holds out some promise of happiness.”

27. Fighting Sin in our Lives • Sin offers pleasure • If sin only offered pain, we would do everything we could to avoid it

28. Fighting Sin in our Lives “[Sin’s] promise enslaves us until we believe that God is more to be desired than life itself. Which means that the power of sin’s promise is broken by the power of God’s. All that God promises for us in Jesus stands over against what sin promises to be for us without him.” --John Piper

29. Fighting Sin in our Lives • Our battle with sin ultimately comes down to a battle of faith • Which promise do we believe will satisfy us more? God’s Promise or Sin’s Promise?

30. Fighting Sin in our Lives • Hebrews 11:24-26: “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward.”

31. Fighting Sin in our Lives “There are two ways in which a practical moralist may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world—either by a demonstration of the world’s vanity, so that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment, so that the heart shall be prevailed upon not to resign to an old affection, which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old affection for a new one.My purpose is to show that from the constitution of our nature, the former method is altogether incompetent and ineffectual, and that the latter method will alone suffice for the rescue and recovery of the heart from the wrong affection that domineers over it.” --Thomas Chalmers

32. Fighting Sin in our Lives • The only way to conquer an old affection is to replace it with a new and better one. • We are justified and sanctified by faith; the same faith that saved you also has the power to sanctify you.