The Beautiful Process of Repentance

This episode contains portions of the following programs:

"Conviction over Sin and Genuine Sorrow"

"God's View of Sin"

"An Unlikely Convert, Day 3"

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Dannah Gresh: Imagine this scene with me. You’re a little girl, around five or six years old, and you’re making mud pies in the backyard. You’re having the most wonderful time slapping that mud into shape—that is, until you realize something dreadful. Your clothes are dirty. And I’m not talking a speck of dirt here and there—I’m talking filthy dirty . . . and you are not having it. So you rush inside to find mom and dad, little tears streaming down your face, and you ask them to help you get clean. So dad scoops you up with a gentle smile and mom grabs a fresh outfit for you. Before you know it, all that mud is wiped away, and you’re clothed in a cute new fit. 

Well, this scene is a human picture of what we’re talking about today. Repentance is step one in a beautiful process—one where a gentle God replaces our filthy, sin-stained garments with fresh, clean robes of righteousness. 

Mary Kassian will explain the first step toward true repentance—acknowledging how dirty we really are.

Mary Kassian: Genuine conviction says, “I am conscious of my rebellion . . . and my sin is always before me!”

Nancy will help us understand what it looks like to be truly sorrowful over our sin.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: It's not, “I’m sorry,” but, “O God, how could we have done this to You? We are so sorry."

And Rosaria Butterfield will tell us about the new clothes God gives.

Rosaria Butterfield: When I stand in the risen Christ alone, God doesn't see those sins. He sees a child of God, in whom He is well pleased, standing in His Son's robes of righteousness.

Well, today we’re talking about repentance. This isn’t a popular topic. It’s serious and sorrowful, but we’ll see today that it’s also the hope-filled path to life in Christ. Mary Kassian is a speaker and the author of many wonderful books. She’ll be with us for True Woman '25 in October, but today she’s here to talk about taking the first step down the path of repentance. Let’s listen.

Mary: We're going to look at David’s confession in Psalm chapter 51, and we’re going to talk about some of the marks of genuine repentance.

David wrote this psalm after he was confronted about having an extramarital affair. And, for those of you unfamiliar with the story, David was Israel’s second king. His men were off fighting a war and, for whatever reason, David stayed behind at the palace. 

Looking out of the window one day David caught a glimpse of a beautiful woman taking a bath. Her name was “Bath”-sheba. (laughter) (No pun intended there.) Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah. Uriah was one of David’s elite, mighty fighting warriors. If David were King Arthur, Uriah would have been one of his Knights of the Round Table.

So David summoned Bathsheba to the palace for dinner, and one thing led to another, and he ended up sleeping with her and getting her pregnant. He called Uriah back home from battle in hopes that Uriah would sleep with his wife and claim the baby as his own, but Uriah was a man of integrity, and he wouldn’t break wartime protocol by sleeping with his wife.

So David sent him back to battle, and he instructed another general to withdraw the troops and leave Uriah on the front, essentially having him murdered. And then, David took Bathsheba as his wife. And after this sordid betrayal that reads like some sort of soap opera—messy situation—the prophet Nathan comes and confronts David about his sin, and Psalm 51 is how David responds. David prays,

Be gracious to me, God, according to your faithful love; according to your abundant compassion, blot out my rebellion. Completely wash away my guilt and cleanse me from my sin. For I am conscious of my rebellion, and my sin is always before me (Ps. 51:1–3 CSB).

The first mark of genuine repentance is genuine conviction. David said, “I am conscious of my rebellion. My sin is always before me!” The fact that he had sinned was eating David up. It bothered him; he was aggravated; he was conscience-stricken. He understood that, at its core, sin is an act of rebellion against a holy God!

In Christian circles we tend to use the word “conviction” as an adjective. We associate conviction with the way that we feel. “I’m feeling conviction. I’m feeling guilty. My conscience is bothering me.” But, technically, conviction isn’t an adjective; conviction is a noun. It’s much more than a feeling.

What is conviction? Conviction is a fixed or firm belief; it’s the state of being convinced that I am guilty of wrongdoing. Genuine conviction says, “I am conscious of my rebellion . . . and my sin is always before me!”

Scripture teaches us that sin is failing to reach God’s perfect standard. I sin whenever I do something that God says I should not do, or whenever I do not do something that He says I should do.

Almost everyone would agree that actions like adultery and theft and murder qualify as sin. We’re not shocked that David was convicted of sin. Of course he was! He was clearly guilty! Adultery, murder . . . his sin was obvious! But what about sins like comparison, jealousy, resentment, sensuality, contempt, self-promotion, snarkiness, gluttony, lack of self-discipline, self-indulgence, cowardice, materialism? 

Like it or not, the Bible also calls these things “sin.” And God is the One who defines what sin is—not you, not me, and not popular culture. I sin whenever I fail to love God, whenever I fail to esteem Him and trust Him and wholeheartedly seek after Him. Anything that is not a faith-filled response to circumstances is also sin. 

Therefore my worry and anxiety and fear can be sin. And then there are the sins of neglect: leaving good works undone, failing to use our talents, squandering time, or ignoring the injured and needy. And then there’s the sin of pride. 

Now, we could tend to categorize some sins as “minor.” They’re minor sins; we do them all the time. We don’t even think about them as sin. We don’t feel that they too are the sign of a rebellious heart. The problem with sin is a serious one. It interferes with our relationship with God; it burdens us; it wearies us. It weighs us down!

And unconfessed sin usually leads to more sin. Sin leads to sin. The pile gets higher and higher and higher. The Bible teaches that we get rid of this unauthorized baggage by earnestly and habitually confessing our sin. 

Now, the word “confess” is a translation of the Greek word homologeo, from homos, which means “the same” and lego, which means “to speak.”

To confess means to say the same thing as another or to agree with another. Confession of sin means that we agree with God. We say the same thing about our sin that He says about it. We view it the same way that He does. Do you view sin the same way that God does? Does sin bother you? Or do you tolerate it or shrug it off as inconsequential? Do you take the problem of sin seriously?

Romans 8:1 assures us that there “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” God mercifully forgives and cleanses us from all sin: past, present, and future—but that does not mean that sin is a trivial matter! Anyone who wants to live a victorious Christian life needs to take the problem of sin seriously. They are genuinely convicted about the sin that they see in their lives. 

Dannah: That was a sobering word on conviction and confession from Mary Kassian. I hope you’ll join us to hear her in-person at True Woman '25 in Indianapolis. The conference will be October 2-4, and you can purchase your tickets at ReviveOurHearts.com today. 

You know who else is speaking at True Woman? My dear friend, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. Today, we’re listening as she describes the difference between worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. Here she is now. She’s talking about Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 7:9.

Nancy: He said, “You felt a godly sorrow, so that you suffered no loss through us.” They were made sorrowful to the point of repentance. That’s what the Bible calls godly grief, godly sorrow—the kind of sorrow that leads you to do something about the sin, that leads you to change your mind, that leads you to repent, turning from sin to God, turning from sin to holiness, not justifying behavior, but changing your behavior.

That was godly sorrow. How do you know if your sorrow is godly? Does it lead you to repentance? Does it result in a change of life?

And Paul says in verse 10, “Godly grief,” godly sorrow, “produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief,” worldly sorrow, that’s the other kind, “produces death.”

That kind of sorrow, that worldly grief or worldly sorrow is what we refer to as remorse. A remorseful person may shed tears over their sin, but they’re not repentant in their heart.

What are they crying about? Well, the fact that they got caught, that they committed adultery that broke up their marriage. Now, they’re divorced; they’re having to pay alimony, whatever.

There are consequences. They are mourning over the consequences, or that somebody found out, or they don’t like being the way that they are, but they don’t want to change the way that they are.

When you cry over your sin, when you grieve over your sin, you need to say, “Is this remorse, or is this repentance? Is this worldly sorrow, or is this godly sorrow?”

The sorrow of the world produces self-pity and wounded pride; but it cannot save, it cannot change your life. It brings shame, guilt, despair, hopelessness, and sometimes even death.

And isn’t Judas an example of that in the New Testament? He wept bitterly over what he had done by sending Christ to the cross, but was he repentant? No, he was remorseful, and it ultimately led to his death.

Now, as we look at verse 11, we see seven characteristics of true repentance. I want to run through these and have you catch what they are.

Verse 11: “For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you.” An earnest desire to please God, an earnest desire to be holy—they couldn’t go on with business as usual.

“But also what eagerness to clear yourself.” That’s the second one. A strong desire to make things right, to have a clear conscience—that was an evidence of repentance.

“What indignation,” righteous anger; they were outraged over their sin. This was not a casual response. They realized that their sin was no little thing. There’s nothing trivial about sin. It was a serious matter to them, and they came to detest the sin that they had once cherished and enjoyed.

“What fear” it produced in you, this godly repentance, this godly sorrow. Fear? Fear of what? Fear of God. A holy dread and reverence and dread of a holy God, who is offended by sin.

Then he said, “It produced in you longing.” The King James says there “vehement desire.” An intense yearning to see things made right, to have the relationship with Paul restored, longing.

And then it produced zeal, a zeal for holiness and a hatred for anything that would harm God’s glory.

And then he says that it produced punishment. What kind of punishment? Well, the New American Standard says, “avenging of wrong,” or the New International “a readiness to see justice done.”

I think that refers to the follow through. They accepted the consequences of their sin, and they wanted to see sin avenged. They were willing to make restitution. They were willing to do whatever they had to do to make it right.

So Paul says, “See what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment.” Vindicating the truth.

“At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter.” That doesn’t mean they were innocent initially. It means they had repented. They had changed their lifestyle. They had changed their mind.

They had changed their heart attitude. They didn’t just claim to have repented. They gave evidence of true repentance.

Revelation chapter three verse 19, “Be zealous, therefore,” Jesus said to the church, “and repent.” That’s the kind of repentance you see in the Corinthians. Zealous in repenting.

That word zealous means “to seek earnestly or eagerly to desire.” They longed to repent. They were zealous in their repenting, not, “I’m sorry,” but, “O God, how could we have done this to You? We are so sorry. We grieve. We mourn. We apologize to You. We have sinned against You. Please forgive us.”

You don’t see that kind of zeal much today, do you? You know, in the old-time revivals, you see some of these old newspaper clippings, and they have what was called a mourner’s bench.

I wonder if we don’t need to put some mourner’s benches back in our churches today, places where “penitents,” they were called, would go and kneel, and they would cry out to God, and sometimes they would cry very loudly, repenting, crying out to God.

Now, how loudly you cry or how many tears you shed doesn’t indicate how repentant your heart is. No use kneeling and weeping and sobbing and screaming at the mourner’s bench if your heart is not repentant.

That’s remorse. That’s worldly sorrow. That leads to death. But godly sorrow, true mourning, true repentance leads to life.

Dannah: “Godly sorrow leads to life.” It’s true, friend. I’ve experienced it. And you know what? Every true follower of Jesus will experience it, too. In Matthew 5:3-4, Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Those who experience godly sorrow are blessed.

I’m confident our next guest would agree. Rosaria Butterfield was a tenured professor at Syracuse University and a lesbian activist. That is, until God used a pastor and his wife to introduce her to Jesus around their dinner table. Now Rosaria is a pastor’s wife and author of Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. She sat down with Nancy to share what she’s learned about repentance and the radical transformation it brings. Here’s Nancy:

Nancy: Okay, repentance is the threshold to God. What do you mean by that?

Rosaria: That's how you come to God. And this is really important because we live in a Christian age that seems to say, "Claim Jesus as your Savior, and then lean on His grace." But I was learning that you couldn't bypass repentance to get to grace. So I needed to learn what repentance meant.

I'm a word person. I'm a reader. I learned in this crucible that there's a difference between admitting sin and confessing sin.

Nancy: Explain that.

Rosaria: Well, admitting sin means that you did it. "Lord, I did it. I've had illicit sex with men, before I came out as a lesbian, and then after that with women. I did it."

But confession means owning the condemnation of that. Part of why it's very important to confess your sin, especially sexual sin—we live in a world that loves to flatten everything out and say, "Well, all sin is the same." From some perspectives, that's true. From the perspective of the blood of Christ, the blood of Christ covers all sin. That is absolutely true.

But from a biblical, ethical point of view, there are differences in sin. I think we just innately know that. We innately know that the sin of sexual abuse is different than the sin of lying.

Nancy: Right.

Rosaria: We just know that the sin of murder is different. Things that attack a creation ordinance are different because they kill. I needed to really understand that until I confessed my sexual sin, part of me was still deeply excusing it. It was excusing it sort of like this: "This feels good to me. This feels right to me."

When I came out as a lesbian, I thought I'd found my real self. "Hey! I'm an informed lesbian. I tried having sex with men. I didn't like it. Don't I know myself better than this ancient Book? Don't I know myself better than a God I can't see?"

But when we confess our sin, it does feel a little bit like we're hanging off of a limb, and in a way we are. We're a little bit like an Alzheimer's patient who, in a moment of mental lucidity, signs over all rights to interpretation to an able-minded care giver. We're saying that the Lord had the right to interpret what we do and why we did it. So confession actually owns it as a guilty act.

Nancy: At which point you become a candidate for the grace, for the blood of Christ.

Rosaria: Exactly! And before that, you aren't

Nancy: Because the blood of Jesus doesn't cover mistakes or problems or patterns.

Rosaria: No.

Nancy: It covers sin.

Rosaria: It covers sin. Absolutely. And so, for me, it was sort of a two-fold thing. When I started to confess my many, many sins, I learned that pride was the root sin of my lesbianism.

Nancy: How so?

Rosaria: Because I didn't want any man to have any authority over me and my body ever. And that was a sin because my God is my Father. But I'll tell you, when I started to confess the sin of my lesbianism . . . I had to get there. I had to get to the sin of sexual crimes. Right? Of transgressive sexual acts, and of the many people I now have harmed because of that.

At first, the sinfulness of my sin was not clear to me. It's not that the day after I became a Christian I stopped feeling like a lesbian. The sinfulness of my sin at that point just unfolded in the authority of the Bible alone, in the growing union I had with Christ, and in the sweetness of that sanctification that told me that even though these temptations still raged pretty deeply, I had God's kind company as I walked through the valley of the shadow of death with those temptations.

Nancy: Yes, but there were some layers to dealing with all of that.

Rosaria: There were some layers. But it did get hard pretty quickly, and what I mean by that is, as I started repenting of sin, I found all of the sin that I had never seen before. It was almost like looking at something under a microscope. There are things that aren't visible to the eyes of flesh that are only visible to the eyes of faith. It was overwhelming. But it was in repentance that I knew I was a child of God.

That's why I'm so confused when people say, "Oh, repentance gives me post-traumatic stress disorder," or "Repentance gives me shame." It was for me it was just the opposite. Repentance was giving me relief and hope. And it wasn't shameful because all it was saying was this: "God was right all along." And that took the pressure off of me to invent myself.

If I was really going to live as a child of God, I wasn't inventing this way of living. I was doing my best to follow my Lord.

Nancy: So you brought up the shame word.

Rosaria: Yes.

Nancy: Was that not an issue for you at all? You said, "I am and always will be Rahab, a woman with a past."

Rosaria: Right.

Nancy: And then you're trotting around the country now, telling this story over, and over, and over again for the last sixteen years. Where does shame come into that? Is it something you've grappled with? I know a lot of our listeners do.

Rosaria: Yes. Right. Absolutely. Well, shame had been my closest friend before I was a Christian. I was constantly trying to kind of re-write myself and re-write my wrongs and re-make my image and protect my reputation. And it was exhausting. I mean, it was exhausting.

But in repentance of sin, what happens in repentance of sin is repentance is a gift from God that says, "Rosaria, you are My daughter in whom I am well pleased. And this is not what I have for you. You can lay this down at the cross, and it is covered in My blood."

Now, what happens in life then, is that Satan the accuser comes and says, "Oh, yeah, Rosaria, you are guilty of this, that, and the other thing."

But when you are in the posture of repentance, you get to say to your accuser, "Well, you are right on that and a few other points. I am guilty of that and so much more. And you are right that every sin I have committed is worthy of death. But here's what apparently you don't know: Romans 3–6 is me. When Jesus was arrested, I was arrested with Him. When Jesus was scourged, I was scourged with Him. When Jesus was nailed to the cross, I was on that cross with Him. When Jesus died, I'm dead. And when Jesus rose again, and when I lay hold of the means of grace every time, I can stand in the risen Christ alone. And when I stand in the risen Christ alone, God doesn't see those sins. He sees a child of God, in whom He is well pleased, standing in His Son's robes of righteousness."

Nancy: Amen! Hallelujah!

Rosaria: And we only get there through repentance.

Dannah: Wow, that was Rosaria Butterfield proclaiming the marvelous truth of the gospel. Her dirty clothes have been replaced with Christ’s robes of righteousness. 

Like that little girl who ran to her mom and dad all covered in mud and asked for a clean outfit, we can run to our Father in heaven. He won’t turn us away because our clothes are dirty. He’ll scoop us up gently, cleanse us, and give us his Son’s robes instead.

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We’ve received so much grace because of the gospel. Join us next weekend as we talk about choosing to extend this grace to others instead of gossiping about them. 

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

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