Tactic Of The Day: Attacking Repentance
There are certain words in the christian belief system that really are absolutely critical to understand. Repentance is one of those words. There is a stereotypical belief of what repentance is but we are going to dive in biblically and look at it.
Let’s start with scripture and look at 2 Corinthians 7:9-10
yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 2 Corinthians 7:9-10
These 2 verses in 2 Corinthians give us an insight on why repentance is important. Repentance is such a heavily used word in christianity so much so it can almost be off putting and the enemy and his army have a huge attack on repentance in general.
First let’s think about why Satan was ejected from heaven. In Isaiah 14:12-13 we see Lucifer was ejected from heaven and it was because in his heart he wanted to ascend past God and become the most high.
“How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!
For you have said in your heart:
‘I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
Isaiah 14:12-13
Why is this critical to repentance though? It is because pride is the opposite of repentance. The reason Lucifer was because in his heart he wanted to be the most high and think about the pride behind that thought. Here you have one of the most beautiful things God created, catch that, God created and this angle that is now fallen wanted to be greater than the very one who created him.
This mentality of ego and pride is natural in our fallen blood line and something we have to constantly manage and regulate.
What does it really mean to repent though? We can look into the Greek for a great understanding of this word. The Greek word for repentance used in scripture is “metanoia”. The meaning of metanoia means “a change of mind”.
So as we look at this word we can see in general our idea of what repentance can be a lot different then what the word really means. Most people say “well if I can just repent then I can do what I want and then repent for it later”. This idea that repentance is admission of guilt is not fully accurate.
Yes, to have a change of mind there would need to be acknowledgment that there was something needing changing but the idea that you can just admit you did something wrong is not repentance. The full definition would be to see the action you did is wrong then make an active change in mind to change towards God’s nature.
Now this is where our verses from 2 Corinthians come into play. These verses are amazing because they show the whole point of repentance.
yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 2 Corinthians 7:9-10
As we read through these verses again we see apostle Paul tell us that we are made sorry and our sorrow leads to repentance. Once we become repentant our “Godly” sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation.
Let’s break down how biblical repentance should transpire.
First of all we do an action that is done outside of God’s nature, as that action happens God puts on our heart that action did not meet his standard.
Now that you have in your heart you did not meet God’s standard you are moved in the direction of repentance. Think about it from this perspective. Have you ever talked to someone and they did something rude but didn’t think they did anything wrong? This is what would happen if God did not put sorrow on our heart. We would just go around transgressing against God and have no emotion towards the fact that when we break God’s moral law it hurts His heart.
Just think of a time where you stepped out of line and God put sorrow on your heart. A time you hurt someone’s feelings, or treat someone poorly. The acknowledgment of this comes from God putting Godly sorrow on your heart.
After that Godly sorrow we see in our hearts that we did something wrong and it leads us to a genuine want to change our heart. Without the Godly sorrow we just continue to transgress and hurt God’s heart without any care in the world. Picture you had a friend and you two got in an argument. At the end of the argument they smacked you in the face afterwards they tell you they are sorry and you forgive them. Now if the same thing happened a week later would you believe that they were sorry? No, because they did the same action that was a violation of your friendship.
This is how we need to view repentance, every day we are transgressing against God. God systematically shows us our wrong doing and sanctifies us over time. Now If God showed us something we did was wrong and we continued to do that thing we would not be moving towards true repentance and we would be abusing our relationship with God. We would be like that bad friend that abuses the friendship.
This is where our change of heart comes in with accountability on our end to commit to not hurting God’s heart and moving towards a change of mind that we were in the wrong.
Why is this all important, it’s because that Godly sorrow leads to repentance that then leads to salvation. This is where people that are not accepting Jesus in their life are living as the person actively doing things that hurt God’s heart and transgressing against God. When they get that Godly sorrow put on their heart they have 2 options, they can choose to admit they were wrong and move towards salvation through Jesus Christ, or they can say that they don’t care and let their pride and ego take control.
Now what option would the enemy and his army want you to pick? Always death, always separation from God. This is where as believers that have opened our heart to God we need to not emulate that nature. We as people that are saved will constantly still transgress against God but we need to have an open heart and a change of mind when corrected that what we were doing is wrong.
We need to keep in mind in the battle of spiritual warfare that the enemy and his army of evil will always push you towards pride and ego, they will always make you think you’re right or correction isn’t needed. This simply is a tactic to lead you into separation from God.
This tactic of attacking repentance is sinister but the hope for us is that God is greater. We are the dirt that the seed of God grows in and if we can keep our hearts and minds open then God will work amazing things in us. So keep your eyes open to your pride, notice when you struggle with not moving towards repentance and use that as motivation to see the tactic of torment and change your heart to be better for the kingdom of God.