Thought Control: Architect of Character
Many sincere but confused persons use substitutes for true repentance. A careful analysis of sinners’ reactions to their sins reveals at least seven possible ways of misconstruing what true repentance is. By reviewing and discussing these seven things that repentance is not, I hope to clarify what authentic repentance actually is.
1) Repentance is not simply “practicing religion.” As a Puritan once remarked, “Even Judas heard Christ’s sermons.” The Pharisees and Sadducees faithfully “practiced religion” but neglected to produce “fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8). They claimed that their status as children of Abraham was enough for their spiritual security. But John the Baptist, baptizing “with water for repentance,” saw their hypocrisy and called them a Brood of vipers” (Matthew 3:7-9; Luke 3:7-9). As it’s been said, true religion comports the afflicted but also afflicts the comfortable.
2) Repentance is not simply professing the faith of Christianity. Philip baptized Simon the sorcerer and awed him with his miraculous powers (see Acts 8:13). But Peter admonished Simon, “Your heart is not right before God.” Repent, for “I see that you are full of bitterness and held captive by sin” (22-23, NLT).
Many Christians today also harbor bitterness and resentment and are “captive to sin” – that is, under bondage to sins such as marital infidelity, the use of artificial birth control, sexual sins, accepting the atrocity of abortion, reading astrology columns and so on. Their “cafeteria Christianity” – choosing only what they want from doctrines and moral norms – tricks them into thinking that they have true faith. Saint James, however, points out that “even the demons believe – and shudder” (James 2:19). Paul says that the person who repeatedly refuses to heed warnings “is perverted and sinful, being self-condemned” (Titus 3:11).
3) Repentance is not merely being convicted of one’s sins – although this is an essential component. Jesus reminds us in John 16:8 the Holy Spirit himself convicts us of sin – that is, convinces us of our guilt. The crafty teachers of the law and the Pharisees who wanted to stone the adulteress must have been convicted by their consciences when Jesus announced, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). Silently slinking away, one at a time, I suspect they were “convicted” but not truly repentant After all, a true repentance turns one toward Jesus, not away from him.
4) Repentance is not based on natural motives. A “worldly” form of sorrow – that is, mere regret, natural remorse or shame for sin – is not enough. Paul gave the Corinthians an important teaching about two kinds of sorrow for sin (neither kind is full repentance, in itself but one kind can lead to repentance):
[Y]our grief led to repentance; for you felt a godly grief….For godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation and [therefore] brings no regret but worldly grief produces death…For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation [at wickedness]. What alarm [at sin’s danger], what longing what zeal, what punishment [readiness to see justice done]. (2 Corinthians 7:9-11).
Thus Paul teaches that compunction for a failing could be either a natural or a supernatural form of remorse. Natural remorse (“worldly sorrow” or false repentance) arises from the experience of, or dread of, suffering in this life that results from sin, rather than the fact that God has been offended. This “worldly sorrow” is experienced by persons like the conscience-stricken tax dodger and the intemperate drinker who is sorry because of his hangover or embarrassment at his drunken behavior or being fined or jailed for drunk driving.
Others give us examples or “worldly grief”: the thief who regrets only that he got caught, the adulterer who regrets only the shattering of his marriage and the subsequent child support costs and the glutton who regrets only the bodily damage that results from his sin. Such “sorrow” is a spurious as the “crocodile tears” shed by the reptile in its “grief” for its devoured prey.
Scripture abounds in examples of such shallow repentance. The pharaoh expressed merely natural remorse (fear of resultant natural suffering) when he told Moses to “[p]ray to the Lord to take away the frogs from me and my people” (Exodus 8:8). The Israelites showed this form of defective repentance for their rebellion when they begged Moses to ask God to stop the punishing plague of venomous snakes (Numbers 21:7). King Jeroboam pleased with the prophet to beg God to restore his instantly withered hand (1 Kings 12:6). Simon the sorcerer showed a false repentance (merely natural remorse), even in asking for Peter’s atoning prayers, because he feared impoverishment by Peter’s imprecation: “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God’s gift with money!” (Acts 8:20).
Even when asking others to pray for God to lift the punishment due to sin, such “worldly sorrow” is usually merely self-pity. Godly sorrow, on the other hand, comes by grace. This supernatural remorse will lead you to “repent…in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 2:38), while being aware that it is the Lord who “bless[es] you by turning each of you from your wicked ways” (3:26). Godly sorrow is aware that “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance” (Romans 2:4).
But this supernatural remorse lends itself to yet another distinction. If it focuses on God’s justice in his wrath, it is called “attrition” or “imperfect contrition”; if it focuses on God’s goodness, which draws us to love him, then it is “perfect contrition.” Saint John explains this distinction implicitly in his fear-versus-love-motivation passage: “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts our fear, for fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (1 John 4:18).
To have “not reached perfection in love” is to be imperfect. Hence the catechetical term “imperfect contrition.” Those whose love for God is the motivating factor in their regret for sin have “perfect contrition” – that which validates the most meritorious form of repentance. Walter Hilton intuited this aspect of contrition: “When thou attackest the roots of sin, fix thy thought upon the God whom thou desirest rather than upon the sin which thou abhorrest. *
Yet ever “imperfect contrition” – precisely because it is not “worldly” but godly or supernatural – is sufficient for the valid reception of the Catholic sacrament of reconciliation or penance (common called confession). Both forms of “godly” or supernatural contrition are expressed in the wording of the Catholic formula for the Act of Contrition: “Because I dread your just punishments [imperfect contrition]. But most of all, because I have offended you, My God, who are all good and deserving of all my love [perfect contrition].”
5) Repentance is not presumed freedom from guilt. Such a presumption is prideful self-righteousness, typified by the prayer of the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable: “ He prayed about himself: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers…..I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income’” (Luke 18:11-12).
We see the counterpoint of that mentality in the simple prayer of the tax collector, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (verse 13). If our repentance lacks humility, it is not authentic repentance. Hence Jesus closes the parable with the paradox: ‘[A]ll who exalt themselves will be humbles, but all who humble themselves will be exalted” (verse 14).
James reinforces this theme: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands you sinners and purify your hearts you double-minded….Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (James 4:8, 10). Old Testament advice parallels this norm: “[I]f my people….humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin” (2 Chronicles 7:14).
A surprising number of people cannot even get to the point of acknowledging their own guilt. I think of the lady in a fender-bender accident who berated the other motorist, “Why can’t you drivers watch where you are going? You’re the fourth person I crashed into today!” Carlyle wrote: “The deadliest sins were the consciousness of no sin.” *
6) Repentance is not simply acknowledgement of one’s sin. Failure to acknowledge guilt is one fault Judas didn’t have. After betraying Jesus he went back to the chief priests and elders with his thirty pieces of silver and admitted explicitly: “ I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” However, his admission of sin obviously did not equate with true repentance, for he despaired and “went and hanged himself” (see Matthew 27:3-5).
In fact, Judas Iscariot manifested most of the prerequisites of repentance. He certainly acknowledged his sin; he also had conviction of sin (awareness of a need to receive forgiveness); he had “religion” as a Christian, a follower of Christ; he had faith, at least from having witnessed Jesus’ miracles; he restored the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders; he even expressed sorrow and remorse. But to grieve over sin is one thing; to repent is another.
Judas’ tragic end shows that he fell short of authentic repentance. His repentance was vitiated by his despair. Which was his refusal to accept the loving compassionate mercy of God, a refusal that is one form of the “unforgivable sin.” Loving mercy as offered to him up to the end, for Jesus called Judas “friend” at the very moment his lips were blistered with a traitorous kiss (see Matthew 26:50). Judas’ despair crushed within him the virtue of hope and rendered useless all the prerequisites of repentance that he met.
7) Repentance without a firm purpose of amendment is not genuine repentance. Martin Luther once said, “To do it no more is the truest repentance.”* But is this ideal possible?
Someone has opined that the only persons who don’t sin are those who lie in the cemetery. They just don’t stop sinning but they rebound from their failures. The proverb writer reminds us that “though they [the righteous] fall seven times, they will rise again” (Proverbs 24:16).
As I mentioned earlier, the Greek fathers of the church called this kind of radical turnaround (even though it may be required repeatedly) metanoia. It looks on the past with a weeping eye and on the future with a watchful eye. Hence a sincere intention to change elicits a double action: turning away from the sin and turning toward God. As pointed out in the previous chapter, repentance is not a detour but a U-turn.
Certainly no one expects to remain sinless for the rest of his or her life, but anyone can sincerely intend to remain sinless. Sincerity is couched in the will, not the intellect. The intellect sees realistically the possibility of future failure, but in spite of this the will can intend honestly (resolve) not to fail again. It helps to rethink often the capstone of the beautiful Catholic formula of the Act of Contrition. Note the act of the will (resolution): “I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to sin no more and avoid the near occasions of sin.”
A backwoods preacher once said that sin is like capturing a bobcat up in a tree. “Ya don’t need much he’p to catch ‘im, but ya shore need lots o’ he’p to make him leggo!” Letting go of habitual sin requires graces, given only to truly repentant souls with a firm purpose of amendment.
In the term firm purpose of amendment the key word is firm. Unless one has consistently firm resolve, one’s sincerity can be questioned. Saint Francis de Sales wrote “Weak, lazy penitents abstain regretfully from sin for a while. They would very much like to commit sins if they could do so without being damned.” * That type of resolve is fear-based and not firm enough to validate “perfect” contrition or deep repentance.
In describing strong resolve, Saint Augustine said, “We make a ladder out of our vices if we trample those same vices underfoot.”* Yet in some way there is an element of gradualism in this progression. Intuiting this, Henry Ward Beecher observed, “Repentance is another name for aspiration….Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.” *
*Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, quoted at www.martinisrael.u-net.com.
* Thomas Carlyle quoted in 12,000 Religious Quotations, p. 406.
*Martin Luther, quoted in 12,000 Religious Quotations, p. 377.
*Saint Francis de Sales, quoted in Jill Haak Adule, The Wisdom of the Saints (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 148.
* Saint Augustine, Sermon 3.
*Henry Ward Beecher, first part quoted in Your Utlimate Success Quotation Library downloadable software; second part quoted at www.quotationspage.com
This excerpt is from the book The Awesome Mercy of God, by John H. Hampsch,C.M.F., originally published by Servant Books. It and other of Fr. Hampsch's books and audio/visual materials can be purchased from Claretian Teaching Ministry, 20610 Manhattan Pl, #120, Torrance, CA 90501-1863. Phone 1-310-782-6408.