Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Forgiveness Repentance and Confessing

Thought about forgiveness and confessing sins.

Are we of the truth if we plan on sinning and then confessing later?

IE does confessing count if our attitude does not line up with our confessing?

Man looks at the outward appearance. God looks at the heart. God looks at what we say and our heart at the same time. We are not going to fool God.

If our heart and our words don't line up we are only fooling ourselves not God.

Then what are we to do? We know something is wrong. We want to stop sinning intellectually but emotionally we don't want to stop sinning.

How do we change our emotions to line up with our understanding?

Two answers that have come to me:

1. Do works in keeping with repentance. Make right what you have done wrong.
John the Baptist discusses this in Matthew 3:8 and Luke 3:8. The works are related to the sin. Zachaeus the Tax collector gave an example of repentance and works by saying to Jesus that he would repay those he defrauded by 4 times the amount.

2. Put your treasure where you want your emotion and heart to go.
The parable of the Kingdom of God and the man finding a treasure in a field. He then rehides the treasure and sells all that he has and buys the field. If we make the opposite of sin our treasure than sinning will become abhorrent to us. Instead of making sin our treasure make Jesus our treasure. It is Jesus that gives life. We learn from experience sin does not satisfy in the long run. Sin is destructive. God is not a God who delights in our suffering. He told us sin is sin, because it will destroy our life.

Acts 26:20 is another verse that refers to this issue. It is within the conscience of humanity that a person should repay the wrongs that he has done.

Some would suggest what I have said is teaching salvation by works. I believe that there is a difference in putting our faith in our own efforts and doing works to show our true repentance.

It is not that we have to work for forgiveness;. Its that our words alone don't change our heart. When we act we are solidifying our decision to change our ways.

What is repentance? It is changing direction. So if we don't go in a different direction after we confess our sins we have not repented.

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Salvation is 2 fold.
1. We are saved from sin and enter the kingdom of God at one point of prayer.
2. We are saved from a life of sin and live for Jesus as a growth process.

Lets work to live a life unto God and not for ourselves.

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