The Spiritual War Is Lost Because of Unrepentance, Not Sin

1/31/2023

Dr. Charlton has published an excellent piece in which he calls upon Christians to become "Martyrs of Repentance":

We are all sinners; and sin over and again all through our lives - because sin is whatever is Not aligned-with God's creation.

. . .

Yet, no matter how deep in corruption and no matter the societal pressure towards evil; if a Man can recognize, acknowledge, and repent his sins and accept whatever the consequences - then, at that moment (and for eternity, if martyrdom is his fate), he becomes a light to dazzle The Enemy and push-back the darkness in this world.

The one thing that has perplexed me more than anything else over these past three years is the open and vehement resistance Christians put up when it comes to repentance.

I'm under the impression that Christians have begun to regard repentance as a sign of stupidity or weakness or, worse, as something that is somehow inherently un-Christian or ant-Christian.

I can't -- for the life of me -- wrap my head around this palpable resistance to repentance.

At times, I think the resistance may stem from the discomfort of having to acknowledge that one has sinned.

At other times, I feel it must emanate from diluted conceptualizations of what qualifies as sin.

Overall, I sense it emerges from the misguided notion that to acknowledge sin is to lose a decisive battle in the spiritual war; that the spiritual war can only be won by avoiding and overcoming sin.

Perhaps repentance makes Christians feel like losers rather than winners.

Let's set something straight - the two sides of the spiritual war do not consist of a side of sinners versus a side of sinless saints.

Sinners comprise both sides of the spiritual war!

The only meaningful difference between the two is that the side that is for God and Creation consists of repentant sinners, while the ranks opposed to God and Creation teem with unrepentant sinners!

What many decent, church-going, Bible-thumping, obedient, humble, intelligent Christians fail to understand is that unrepentance is how decent, church-going, Bible-thumping, obedient, humble, intelligent Christians like them end up on the wrong side of the spiritual war.

What seems to have gotten lost in the mix is the simple reality that repentance is one of the best possible ways to overcome sin and win the spiritual war. As such, it is something Christians should embrace rather than resist.

Every opportunity to repent should fill our hearts with a surge of fire and life, and we should welcome it with open arms. We don't win the spiritual war by trying to be or pretending to be sinless, but by repenting sin. By sincerely acknowledging and repenting sin.

It really is that simple.

So, the only remaining question for me is: Why the massive resistance to repentance among Christians?

11 Comments

nellperkins

1/31/2023 14:16:08

I don't know but I suspect it's because they associate it with the left, as in land acknowledgments and so forth. They know repenting on behalf of others is stupid, but it's made them forget that they still need repentance themselves.

Francis Berger

1/31/2023 20:42:57

@ nellperkins - Leftism certainly has had a negative influence, most prominently through value inversion -- to the point that some Christians outright reject the need to repent obvious sins because they do not consider them sins.

Dynamic

2/1/2023 03:54:30

It is ironic that the left finds it so easy to repent on behalf of others, mostly long dead, but is unable to seek repentance for things that they have done themselves in the very recent past, isn't it?

Regarding the article in general, I do think that the influence of Calvinism on Protestantism is a factor. Either you're saved or you aren't, whether you repent doesn't really come into play, and if you are one of the elect, you probably wouldn't have committed that sin, would you have? So let's just pretend that sin didn't happen. Probably a bigger factor, though, is that people are bombarded with messages everywhere (including in many churches) telling them that sin is not sin, sinning is good, and even that they should compound their sins by taking pride in them, so people are often barely conscious that they are sinning at all.

2/1/2023 13:39:10

@ Dynamic - Yes, the inversion campaign has been highly effective, particularly among middle class and upper middle class vocations in education, health, law, finance, media, etc.

ben

1/31/2023 15:11:01

I wonder if it has to do with people thinking they're already saved rather than the saving being something that happens after death by choice and requiring a complete rejection of all corruption. No need to worry if salvation is already assured by God. It's already handled.

So the assumption of pre-death salvation achieved by merely identifying as Christian would be having a deranging effect on other things.

1/31/2023 20:46:55

@ ben - Yes, that's probably part of it -- at least for some Christians. These assumptions -- predestinatin, pre-death salvation, and other such theological "already saved" concepts make no sense to me because they work against freedom and agency, which I consider to be of vital importance.

bruce g charlton

2/1/2023 22:50:35

The predestination idea is so extraordinarily anti-Christian, I wonder at the motivations of those who read it into the faith, and try to insist on its centrality.

I suppose it is one of those things that derives from an absolute and primary commitment to monotheism and the omni-go - into which Jesus's teachings and work must *somehow* be fitted by ultra-selective proof-texting.

Nimrod Maroon

2/16/2023 17:45:05

Ben, related to your comment...I have known Christians who believe, in effect, that any need for repentance is a "works theology". Even if the only "work" that is necessary for salvation is repentance, those who believe it's necessary deny salvation by grace only (so they say). I would say that they need to read the Book of James, but that epistle nearly made Luther throw his Bible in the Rhine, so garden-variety mullet will likely avoid it, or believe that there has got to be a "work-around".

Kathlene

1/31/2023 19:44:26

Sorry - I posted the following comment under the wrong post. It was meant to go under this post about the spiritual war so I am resending this.

Longtime reader here who has commented a few times at Dr. Charlton's blog as KatM:

From my experiences with Protestantism, it seems the lack of repentance is related to the belief in "once saved, always saved." Which means I can keep on sinning right up to death because all I need to do is simply say I'm sorry which trivializes sin and turns "repentance" into saying the right words only without changing the heart.

For Catholics (of which I was one), sins are categorized as venial and mortal, meaning that some sins are worse than others for their impact on our souls. I am supposed to examine my conscience and confess all sins. In reality I tended to focus on the big sins especially because I had been in confessionals where the priest seemed absolutely bored with small sins I had brought up. This then deterred me from wanting to go back to confession until I could come up with big obvious sins. Catholics confess to a priest for absolution and penance, but I didn't understand why it was not equally valid to confess directly and sincerely in prayer to God with the intention to change my heart.

The focus on big obvious sins seems to trivialize the erosive impact that small sins have. Small sins are entry points into much greater sins. Christians overall have lost their understanding of vices and virtues.

2/1/2023 13:42:30

@ Kathleen - "Christians overall have lost their understanding of vices and virtues."

That's what it boils down to in the end.

Steven

2/1/2023 23:57:51

Many of our 'churches' believe and teach that the Ten Commandments (or some of them) were 'done away with' at the cross, that 'grace covers all'. No commandments= no sin. No sin= no repentance needed. Simple enough that anyone can believe it, but wrong.

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The Spiritual War Is Lost Because of Unrepentance, Not Sin

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