Today’s Scripture: Romans 2:4

“God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.”

As we begin to mortify a particular sin, we’ll often fail more than we succeed. Then we must realize that we stand before God on the basis of his grace rather than our performance.

I realize there’s a fine line between using grace as an excuse for our sin and using grace as a remedy for it. John Owen had keen insight on this: “here then is where the deceit of sin intervenes. It persuades us to dwell upon the notion of grace and diverts our attention from the influence that grace gives to achieve its proper application in holy lives. From the doctrine of assured pardon of sin, it insinuates a carelessness for sin. the soul—needing frequently to return to Gospel grace because of guilt—allows grace to become commonplace and ordinary. Having found a good medicine for its wound, it then takes it for granted.”

The way to stay on the right side of the fine line between using and abusing grace is repentance. The road to repentance is godly sorrow (2 Corinthians 7:10, NIV). Godly sorrow is developed when we focus on the true nature of sin as an offense against God rather than something that makes us feel guilty. Sin is an affront to God’s holiness, it grieves his Holy Spirit, and it wounds afresh the Lord Jesus Christ. It also gratifies Satan, the archenemy of God. Dwelling on the true nature of sin leads us to godly sorrow, which in turn leads us to repentance.

Having come to repentance, we must by faith lay hold of the cleansing blood of Christ, which alone can cleanse our consciences. In fact, it is faith in Christ and the assurance of the efficacy of his cleansing blood that leads us to repentance.

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