Repentance is Spiritual Medicine
Jonah’s message to Nineveh sounds pretty bleak: “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overturned.” But the word “overturned” can either mean “destroyed” or it can also mean “be turned around.” I think the ambiguity serves a dual role in how we understand the call to repentance. If you don’t repent of your sin, you will be destroyed. Or you can hear the warning and turn around from all those things you put your trust in. The choice is yours.
The Puritan Thomas Watson wrote a short and tightly argued deep dive into the doctrine of repentance, simply called The Doctrine of Repentance. He says that repentance can be spiritual medicine for our healing and gives six ingredients:
1) Sight of sin.
We must first see our sin as sin. It is not a weakness or something we’re working through. Surely we do have weaknesses as creatures. These are not what we’re talking about. Sin is rebellion or disdain or neglect to God. We must see it as such.
2) Sorrow for sin.
Sorrow is a “holy agony”. It is a broken and contrite heart. Just as a cut stings when alcohol is applied, so also sorrow results when the beauty and worth and grace of Jesus is applied to our wounds.
3) Confession of sin.
This is not simply a confession that we messed up (a problem of performance with reference to us as the performer). Confession is a humbling of ourselves before God by naming specifically how we have broken God’s commands and heart. I would also argue that there is great healing in the confession of your sin to a trusted friend or pastor of your church. Too often Protestants have protested against confessing to a spiritual director because they have a bad taste of the Roman Catholic practice of confessional booths. The purpose, though, ought to be considered. Verbally confessing your sin to another human requires that you name the sin and bring it out of hiding and into the light.
4) Shame for sin.
As Watson writes: “Blushing is the color of virtue. When the heart has been made black with sin, grace makes the face red with blushing” (p.39). Our sins have brought shame to Christ. As we are in him, we ought to also feel that shame.
5) Hatred of sin.
We ought to consider sin as a lactose intolerant person views milk. By taking part, our soul will become sick and swollen. Watson writes, “One may leave sin for fear, as in a storm the plate and jewels are cast overboard, but the nauseating and loathing of sin argues a detestation of it. Christ is never loved till sin is loathed. Heaven is never longed for till sin is loathed” (p.45). Until you and I loathe sin for what it does to our souls and how it devastates our communion with God, who is our very life, we have not truly understood the depths of our sin so as to hate it with a holy passion.
6) Turning from sin.
As with all words and actions, repentance begins in the heart and comes to fruition in our hands and feet and eyes and ears and mouth. We must renounce all sin. That is, there is benefit in naming specific sins (see above), but it is a forsaking of our own way. The following of our own hearts and minds. Instead, opting to have our mind and heart transformed and conformed to the mind of Christ. Watson concludes, “Turning to God [is] for our profit. Our repentance is of no benefit to God, but to ourselves. If a man drinks of a fountain he benefits himself, not the fountain. If he beholds the light of the sun, he himself is refreshed by it, not the sun. If we turn from our sins to God, God is not advantaged by it. It is only we ourselves who reap the benefit…If we turn to God, he will turn to us. He will turn his anger from us, and his face to us” (p.58).
What great news indeed! Come to the fountain of life for refreshment and drink until you are full.