How do I Know my Repentance is Good enough?

We know that the demand to repent is as basic as it gets in Jesus’ message. It is equally basic to, and almost synonymous with, the command, “You must be born again” (John 3:7). Which brings up the same question…how do I know I got Jesus? Assurance of salvation comes from knowing Him more and more (sanctification). Repentance is similar to that and as we must repent (and believe) to be born-again. In Jesus’ message on repentance is not behavior but the inner change that gives rise to new God-centered, Christ-exalting behavior. So how do we know if my continued repentance is genuine?

In other words, all of us would ask at any given time, "Am I real? Am I playing games? Is my faith real?" And remember, in our flesh, we don’t do anything perfectly, that’s why it all goes back to the person and work of Christ. Jonathan Edwards would say it like this: "So you think you're humble? What if you're boasting in your humility?" And you admit, "Yes, I probably am boasting in my humility." And he would ask, "Well, what if your confession that you are boasting in your humility is really a pretense, and you're still boasting in your humility?" He gave question after question that will make you realize, "There's no ending to this, it’s circular." You just keep going around and around, because you can always ask yourself, "How do you know?" You can always doubt yourself. There's no way, by mere self-analysis, to come to a point where you're looking at something that you can say, "Definitely authentic!" Like one Puritan’s prayer: “Even our tears of repentance need to be washed in the blood of Jesus Christ.”

So where in the world does assurance come from? The answer is that, even though self-examination is commended and wise up to a point (1 Cor. 11:28), the bottom line of assurance comes when you stop analyzing and you look to Christ and you look and you look and you look until Christ himself in his glory and his sufficiency by reflex, as it were, awakens a self-forgetful "Yes!" to him. I will say, that there is a greater assurance when we practice repentance on a daily basis. I use the word practice, but surely we fall short of God’s glory everyday and so short accounts are a needed discipline. As Boreham would say, “Keep short accounts with God! Do not let the arrears mount up! Do not carry anything forward from today to tomorrow! You have lost your temper? Some ugly thought has swept across the pure screen of your fancy? You failed, when the guidance was clear, to follow the gleam? Get the whole thing settled up at once! If we confess, He is faithful and just to forgive! Keep short accounts with God!”^[1]

I will add that our best moments of assurance are not the moments when we’re thinking about our assurance. The reason is because the very moment that we’re thinking about our assurance, we have the capacity at that moment to doubt our assurance (Oh, the flesh is weak!). This little voice, whether it's your conscience or the devil, is saying, "You think you have assurance, but..."

And so the only answer anyone can give and that the Bible declares is, "Look to the cross! Look to Christ!" Look to the object of our faith. And if we're able to look to the cross, if we’re able to see Him as sufficient and satisfying and powerfully able to carry all your sins, and we find ourselves drawn out of ourselves (so simple and yet simple doesn’t mean easy) to say "Yes" to Him, that's what we want. We are assured. He is our assurance at that moment. The way Paul puts it in Romans 8 is that the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. The witness of the Holy Spirit is the work of the Holy Spirit enabling you to look at Christ, feel him as your own, see him as precious, and say Galatians 2:20 personally: "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." It's that “me” that is the settling of our assurance.

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^[1] Frank W. Boreham, “The Man and the Writer,” in All the Blessings of Life: The Best Stories of F. W. Boreham (Eureka, CA: John Broadbanks Publishing, 2010), 115.