Impenitence before the Searching Demands of Christ
Perhaps you are ready to admit your need and escape the accusations of a condemning conscience, but there is another reason why you will not come to Christ. Perhaps you are one who remains impenitent before His searching demands.
Christ’s call to come to Him is also a command to leave your sins. “You shall call His name Jesus,” said the angel to Joseph, “for He will save His people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). He will not save them in their sins, but from their sins. “I have come to call sinners to repentance,” Jesus said in Luke 5:32. The terms under which you may be wedded to Christ are terms of complete divorce from your sins. Nor can you separate repentance from faith and forgiveness. Paul affirmed the authentic Gospel message to be “repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). God exalted Jesus as Prince and Savior, Peter told the Jews in Acts 5:31, in order to “give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.”
Your problem may not be insensitivity—in fact, you may be miserably aware of your desperate need for pardon and peace. But you are not ready to leave your sins and come to Christ on His terms. This was the problem of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19. He sincerely desired eternal life, and he came to Christ looking for it. But Jesus, in His omniscient knowledge of the human heart, focused on one issue: the man’s love of possessions. Jesus must be his only master: “Go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But the rich young ruler was unwilling to yield to the searching demands of Christ, and the narrative says, “he went away sorrowful.”
We must not think that the issue is always a call to forsake riches, for Jesus called at least a few rich men like Matthew and Zaccheus and never made that particular demand upon them. But when He dealt with any sinner, like the woman of Samaria in John 4, He found his or her darling sin and boldly staked His claim. Jesus says to each one that eternal life is to be found in supreme attachment to Himself. “You cannot serve God and the things of this world” (Matt. 6:24). “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mark 8:34).
Do you see that impenitence before the searching demands of Christ is inexcusable? The perfectly holy Lord of glory calls you away from your sins in order to give you eternal life, and you refuse to leave them. But those sins to which you are clinging, what will they do for you in the end? “The wages of sin is death,” says the apostle in Romans 6:23. Salvation through Jesus Christ is intended to deliver you from the penalty, power, practice, and one day, blessed be God, even the presence of sin. Why do you cling to those sins which will only drag you to hell?
Jesus knows how costly separation may be. He spoke of sins as dear as a right eye or a right hand. He knows that true repentance, confession and forsaking of sin may cause embarrassment, misunderstanding, financial loss, and the pain of breaking off close relationships. When He said to those Jews, “You will not come to Me,” He knew that they loved to receive honor from one another (John 5:44). To follow such a despised teacher was more than their proud hearts could bear. Jesus knew their struggles but never compromised His flesh-withering demands.
Do you see that such impenitence is not only inexcusable, but also irrational? Consider all the evidence against a life given over to sin. Look closely at the scarred and twisted lives of those who resisted God’s gracious call in their youth—people who are the very fulfillment of God’s prophetic words in Isaiah, “The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. ‘There is no peace for the wicked,’ says my God” (Is. 57:20-21). “The way of transgressors is hard” (Prov. 13:15). Look at the terror-filled deathbeds of those who die in their sins. Look at the coming Day of Judgment, when the great ones of the earth will cry for mountains and rocks to fall on them, to hide them from “the wrath of the Lamb” (Rev. 6:16). Look into hell itself, as unrepenting sinners are cast into the furnace of fire: “There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 13:42). “The smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever” (Rev. 14:11).
Finally, look at the cross. Behold the Lord of glory, the only man who ever lived a sinless life, who, there on the cross, was made to be sin for His people. Look at the price Jesus paid for the sins which you love. Look upon His sufferings at the hands of wicked men. Mark His greater, indescribable agony under His Father’s wrath for human sin. Stand and look until you can say with John Newton:
“A bleeding Savior I have viewed, And now I hate my sin.”
If such meditations are not enough to turn you away from those sins which now seem so dear, it will be right in that last great day for God to say to you, “Depart from Me, you cursed” (Matt. 25:41). “Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone” (Hosea 4:17). Do not sink down into hell, clinging to your darling sins. Come to Christ on His terms, that you may have life.