One time my wife and I (Henry) were driving to Detroit, where I was engaged to speak. At one point in the trip my wife said, “Henry, you are going the wrong way.”
I felt defensive and replied, “Don’t you think I know where Detroit is? Look, do you want to drive this car, or do you want me to drive this car?”
We both sat in silence, staring straight ahead. After a while, we came to an exit. A huge sign with an arrow pointed in the direction we were going. Above the arrow was the word Chicago. That was the opposite direction from Detroit.
In my pride, I chose to ignore the sign.
We came to the next exit, some distance from the last one. Again the sign had a big arrow pointing toward Chicago.
I began to feel that I might be wrong. But I did not want to appear mistaken in front of my wife after what I had said. So I decided to try one more exit.
The next exit was the same. There was that arrow pointing toward Chicago. Now I was sure that I was going the wrong way, but hoping to save face, I started trying to figure out some way to get to Detroit without turning around.
I finally gave up and turned the car around. If I had been willing to humble myself earlier, we would not have gone many miles out of our way and had to backtrack.
That’s the way it is with repentance. The New Testament word for “repent” means to turn around—we turn 180 degrees away from sin and toward God. The longer we delay in making the U-turn of repentance, the harder we make it on ourselves.
After adopting a correct view of God and revising false beliefs, step three in the process we are outlining is to repent of your sinful habit.
Over the years, I (Henry) have defined a five-part process of repentance that we can use when we are dealing with a habitual sin we are prepared to turn away from. Each of the parts of the process can be summarized in a particular prayer offered to God. The five prayers are progressively more difficult to say and to mean, but each is a vital part of repentance.1 (This five-part process dovetails neatly with Bill’s concept of “spiritual breathing.”2)
Bill and I have prayed these prayers many times when we have sinned. If you have sinned, do the same. Breathe spiritually and pray these five prayers of repentance.
Prayer 1: “God, I am wrong.”
Repentance begins with acknowledging before God that we have willfully violated His holy standards. We must understand what we have done and we must admit it to God.
The little word “I” that begins this prayer is more important than its size might lead one to expect.
Some of us might be too quick to feel guilty or to feel more guilty than we deserve. Many others of us, however, have a tendency to look around for someone else to shift our blame onto. Blame shifting will never do. Others may be at fault too, but we have to admit our own part in the wrongdoing. We pray, “I am wrong.”
The word wrong is important too. What we are talking about is sin. If we have broken the law of God, it is not an “error in judgment,” a “peccadillo,” or a “misdemeanor.” We stand in the position of a wrongdoer before God.
“Self-knowledge is the first condition of repentance,” declared Oswald Chambers. Without knowing ourselves as sinners, we either will not see a need to repent or else any supposed “repentance” of ours will be a selfish attempt to manipulate God. It is not enough to say, “I messed up” or “I lost my head”; we have to say, “I am wrong.”
The apostle John implied the importance of acknowledging our wrongdoing when he wrote, “If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that His word has no place in our hearts” (1 John 1:10).
Prayer 2: “God, I am sorry.”
Admitting wrongdoing (the first prayer) is no easy thing. Yet there is a number of reasons why someone might admit to doing wrong without really being sorry for it. A person might mean to go back to wrongdoing as soon as it is convenient—that is not being sorry. Or a person might be sorry for getting caught but not be sorry for the sin itself. Or someone might be sorry about hurting other people but have no sense of having grieved God.
A lack of sorrow over one’s sin is revealed when we quickly begin to make excuses. “Yeah, I was wrong, but ___________ [fill in the blank].” “Someone else drove me to it.” “That’s just the way I am; I can’t help it.” “This was nothing compared to what’s been done to me.” Contrary to such excuses, repentance requires us to feel truly sorry for what we have done and to say so to God.
We live in a society that places a high value on feeling good as much as possible. But when we have sinned, it is appropriate to meditate on how we have hurt ourselves, other people, and God by what we have done. In other words, that is the time to let ourselves feel the bad feelings for a while. As the apostle James urged his readers, “Let there be tears for the wrong things you have done. Let there be sorrow and gloom and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy” (James 4:9).
Did you know that feeling remorse for sin is a lot like grieving a loved one’s death? We see this, for instance, in one of Jesus’ parables when a repentant tax collector “beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner’” (Luke 18:13). Beating one’s chest was an extraordinary sign of mourning in Hebrew culture. The only other time it is mentioned in the New Testament is when Jesus’ friends “beat their breasts” at His death (Luke 23:48 NIV). Our grief over the way we have let down God with our sin should be this deep.
When we sense the true gravity of what we have done, we are ready not just to admit our sin but also to tell God we are sorry—and mean it. Certainly, we do not want to overdo our sorrow over sin, groveling in it and refusing to get past it; nevertheless, feeling remorse is an important stage to pass through. This sort of sorrow over our sin is what Paul was referring to when he said, “God can use sorrow in our lives to help us turn away from sin and seek salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow” (2 Corinthians 7:10).
Prayer 3: “God, forgive me.”
Once people feel the full weight of what they have done by their sin, they often move into fix-it mode. They want to do a greater amount of good than the harm they have done. They may even want to penalize themselves in some way, as if they could pay for their wrongdoing. In my counseling experience, I (Henry) have often heard people say things like “I’ll be good from now on,” or “Can’t you see I’m crying?” and “I hate myself.”
Some people would like the third prayer of repentance to be “God, watch me make up for what I have done.” But no, that will not do. All such efforts must be futile. We can only go to God in faith and plead, “Forgive me.”
God’s forgiveness is an extraordinary thing. Because of His unmatched love, it comes as a free gift to those who are prepared to humble themselves before Him. One person, indeed, did have to pay for sin (other people’s sin)—that person was Christ dying on the cross. Now He has the power to forgive our sins when we turn to Him in repentance. Freely He grants this forgiveness.
The sacrificial system of the Old Testament era offered a set of rituals by which one could seek forgiveness. But as the book of Hebrews says, in Christ, we have a better way. “He came once for all time, at the end of the age, to remove the power of sin forever by His sacrificial death for us” (Hebrews 9:26). The work has been done. All we have to do is ask for forgiveness, and it will be given to us. Our guilt is gone!
The prayer for forgiveness is so important that Jesus made it a part of the model prayer He gave us: “Forgive us our sins” (Matthew 6:12). As often as we need to pray this, we can pray it. And as often as we do pray it in sincerity, God will grant our request for the sake of Christ.
John expressed the free nature of Christ’s forgiveness of sin when he wrote, “If we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong” (1 John 1:9).
Prayer 4: “God, cleanse me.”
Sinners often feel dirty. Habitual sinners may feel covered by layer upon layer of dirt. We do, in fact, stain our spirits when we sin. Christ gives us clothes, “Made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14), and we blemish them with roadside mud. How sad!
A wise teacher asked, “Who can say, ‘I have cleansed my heart; I am pure and free from sin’?” (Proverbs 20:9). Answer: no one. We are all sinners and none of us can remove the spiritually staining effects of our sin. We need the supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit to spiritually wash us clean, when we repent. “God, cleanse me,” we ask. And He says, “I will!” Yet some do not want to proceed to this stage of repentance.
I (Henry) spoke with a man who for ten years had held a grudge against a former friend of his who had failed to repay a loan. This man went through stages one through three of repentance with little trouble, but he balked at the idea of being cleansed from his sin. He said, “I’d rather keep on hurting than give up this grudge.”
Here is the Lord’s promise to all who sense themselves blemished by their sinful wrongs and desire to be cleansed: “No matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can remove it. I can make you as clean as freshly fallen snow. Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you as white as wool” (Isaiah 1:18).
King David understood the need for cleansing from sin. After his sin of adultery with Bathsheba, he composed Psalm 51 as a hymn pleading for purification on the basis of his “broken and repentant heart” (verse 17). He invited God to purify him with hyssop and wash him “whiter than snow” (verse 7). He asked God to create in him “a clean heart” and renew in him “a right spirit” (verse 10). The opening of the psalm runs like this:
Have mercy on me, O God,
because of your unfailing love.
Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins.
Wash me clean from my guilt.
Purify me from my sin. – Psalm 51:1-2
There is no better feeling than to know you are purified and able to stand before a pure and holy God.
Prayer 5: “God, empower me.”
When we pray for cleansing, we are asking for the spiritual effects of our past sin to be wiped away. When we pray for empowerment, on the other hand, we are asking for God’s help to avoid a repetition of our sin in the future. This is the fifth and last prayer in the process of repentance.
As we have said, the five prayers of repentance are progressively more difficult to say and to mean. So if we successfully make it through the fifth prayer, we can know that our repentance is complete. That’s because to say “Empower me” is to admit that we need God’s help if we are to remain clean after our repentance.
One time a student came up to me (Bill) and said, “I have given up. I can’t live the Christian life. There is no hope for me.”
I replied, “Good. At last, you have recognized that you cannot live the Christian life. Now there is hope for you, for the Christian life is a supernatural life, and the only one who can live it is Jesus Christ Himself.”
Particularly for the self-reliant type of person, the temptation is strong to attempt to remain pure through self-control alone. And of course, an exertion of our will is important in avoiding sin; we have our part to play. But in the end, it is Christ’s power, through the Spirit, who enables us to walk away from sin. The power of sin, no matter how great it may seem to us, is no match for the power of God.
The apostle Paul, suffering from a “thorn in the flesh,” prayed for deliverance.3 God responded by assuring the apostle, “My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness.” Paul was then able to declare, “Now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses.… For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10). Paul declared that we believers have available to us “the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead” (Ephesians 1:19–20). This resurrection power is the mighty power that we have experienced many times—and that you can experience too.
“The power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you through Christ Jesus from the power of sin that leads to death” (Romans 8:2). Believe it!
Doing Business with God
Having identified the five prayers, we want to make sure we have not left a false impression with you.
While each of the five prayers represents a crucial part of repentance, we have to remember that repentance is not a mechanical process but rather a personal process and spiritual process. In practice, the different aspects of repentance blend into a single spiritual turnaround. Thus each of us needs to approach repentance within the context of an honest, ongoing relationship with God.
Since this process takes place within a relationship, it is not one-sided; God has a role in our repentance too. We can be certain that if we are sorry for our sin and want to embrace God, He will embrace us in return. “The LORD your God is gracious and merciful. If you return to Him, He will not continue to turn His face from you” (2 Chronicles 30:9).
Isn’t repentance a marvelous gift of God? He knows we will do wrong, and our sin hurts Him, but He loves us so much that He provides the means to repair the relationship existing between us. Repentance becomes a decisive step in enabling us to resist the temptations that trouble us.
It has been said that the problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar. But as we remain ready to repent of our sin, spiritual breathing (out with guilt, in with grace) can become almost as automatic as physical breathing. We can learn to repent quickly and move on. How wonderful!
Still, there is one more aspect to turning from our sin that we must consider. It is the companion to repentance and the result of spiritual breathing: apologizing to others.
Saying We Are Sorry
Just as we need to make things right with God, so we need to try to make things right with those whom we have hurt by our sin. In fact, Jesus said that reconciliation is so important that it is worth interrupting worship for. “If you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God” (Matthew 5:23–24).
Unlike in our relationship with God, we do not repent to other people when we have wronged them by our sin—but we do apologize to them. The same humble attitude is required whether we are healing our relationship with God or healing our relationships with other people.
We can take the first three prayers of repentance (“I am wrong,” “I am sorry,” “Forgive me”) and turn them into statements of contrition to use with other people. Someone who has gossiped about a friend, for example, can go to the friend and say, “I have wronged you by telling stories about you behind your back. I am sorry for that. Please forgive me.”
Of course, when we apologize like this, we do not have control over how the other person will react. For our part, we open the door to reconciliation. Perhaps the other person will slam it in our face, or perhaps he or she will step through. All we can do is be ready to embrace the other if we get permission.
And then, along with reconciliation, another part of making things right is restitution.
When a crooked tax collector named Zacchaeus put his faith in Jesus, he volunteered, “Half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold” (Luke 19:8). Perhaps Zacchaeus was inspired by provisions of the Old Testament law stipulating that thieves were to pay back two or more times what they stole. (See Exodus 22:1–4.)
Stealing provides a clear-cut measurement for restitution: if I have stolen a thousand dollars, I need to return the thousand dollars—if not more. With other kinds of sin, restitution may not be so easy to measure. But that does not mean we cannot find ways to make amends.
Did you react in a burst of anger toward an erring child? Make up for it with kindness that is equally as extreme.
Were you insubordinate to your boss? Be a more dutiful employee than ever before.
Did you fail on your promise to keep the apartment clean? Amaze your roommate by how neat you become.
In these ways, we can set the stage for the Holy Spirit to heal the damage our sin has done to other people and to our relationships with them. Along the way, we will also be completing our duty toward God, who cares not only about how our sin has affected Him but also about how it has affected others. In this way, making things right with others can be considered a part of our repentance to God.
Repentance is essential when we have been caught in a web of sin. It takes us one long step toward the healing of the soul. But it is not the last step. We cannot relax yet, because some of the fiercest fightings may lie directly ahead.
Life Reflection
1. In your own words, what is repentance?
2. Of the five prayers of repentance, which is hardest for you to pray sincerely right now, and why?
3. To whom do you need to apologize? How can you reconcile with, and make amends to, this person?
Visit www.SoulPrescription.com for more insights and resources, and to download a free leader’s guide for small group Bible studies.