JesusWalk Bible Study Forum: Q4. Sin and Repentance - JesusWalk Bible Study Forum

Q4. (2 Peter 3:9) Why does our culture resist the ideas of sin and repentance? Can there be salvation without repentance? Can you think of a time in your own life when repentance was difficult for you? Why was it difficult?

Our culture resists the ideas of sin and repentance, mainly because of PRIDE. It is not within man to humble himself and admit that He has fallen short of God's standards. Culture stresses the idea that man can be his own god; he doesn't need any God telling him what to do to bring about correction in his life.

Without repentance, it is impossible to be saved. Since this is obvious , I wonder why this question is asked. '''Repentance means going in a new direction with one's life, and an unrepentant sinner
will not respond to the act of repentance.

God made it clear in the Word, "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish". God said to repent, so why would we withhold ourselves from doing so.

Q4. (2 Peter 3:9) Why does our culture resist the ideas of sin and repentance? Can there be salvation without repentance? Can you think of a time in your own life when repentance was difficult for you? Why was it difficult?

Because of callous attitude. Culture depends upon society and vice versa. When the society is not aware of sin and its consequences, then where is the question of repentance. We have become so insensitive to sin that we are no longer aware that we are sinning. That is why we are resistant to the idea of sin and repentance. There is no salvation without repentance. Other religions offer different ways to attain salvation but there is no salvation unless we truly repent of our sins.

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[color="blue"]4a.) In John's prologue in his Gospel, we are told that: "[/color][color="purple"]The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it[/color][color="blue"]." John 1:5[/color]
4b.) (2 Peter 3:9) Can there be salvation without repentance?
[color="blue"]4b.) Jesus tells us: "[/color][color="purple"]Whover has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him[/color][color="blue"]." John 14:21[/color]
4c.) (2 Peter 3:9) Can you think of a time in your own life when repentance was difficult for you? Why was it difficult?
[color="blue"]4c.) Yes. I think the momentary self serving, self gratifying reward is tangible versus the intangible, not in your mortal grasp of the eternal reward. I continue to struggle.[/color]

His Word tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. Therefore sin is a given and the humility to face this fact, this innate imperfection, is a requirement. In today's culture we no longer strive so hard to 'raise the bar' as we do to 'lower the bar'. We do it for good reason, to be inclusive, do avoid discrimination, etc. If SAT scores are falling, do we increase our investment in education to remedy this situation? No. We rejigger the SAT scoring system instead.

And, since it works for the SAT, we think we can apply the same logic to God's standards. We cut ourselves slack. We argue what the meaning of 'is' is. We quibble, we equivocate, we church shop, we 'understand' and we 'tolerate'.

Ours is a win-win society that revels in shades of gray and is intolerant of black and white. Our God is black and white. A thing is right or wrong. The wheat will be separated from the chaff. We will be directed to His right or His left.

Martha Stewart is convicted of lying and cheating, she blames everyone else for this 'miscarriage' of justice, her fans rally to her side, her business booms. I'm not Martha but do you think she thinks, "Wow, pretty slick deal. I'll serve my time. I'll write a book. I'll do the talk shows. I'll be bigger than ever."?

Why does our culture resist...? Because God's standards and expectations threaten it and if you don't acknowledge that a thing is sin then there ain't no reason to repent. And, in our culture, the pool of acknowledged sins is awfully shallow.

Can there be salvation without repentance? Luke 13:3 "...But unless you repent, you too will all perish." What is repentance but an act of humility. If we acknowledge Jesus as Lord then, I believe, we have to acknowledge - and admit - the error of our ways when they depart from His Way.

Can you recall a time in your life...? I still struggle with admitting and repenting of my sins. It was harder, however, when I was younger. It was easier than to justify and temporize - more a happy victim of peer pressure back then I guess. The longer I've believed, the harder it's become to escape the consequences. Repentance, when looked at as more than acknowledgement but as active remediation for my sin, remains difficult. It has become easy to acknowledge sin and ask for forgiveness. The struggle remains in the follow up, the reparation for and the elimination of sin.

Finally, I don't believe that we can or will fully eliminate sin from our lives. But we can continue to strive to do so and in the striving seek God's perfection until we are perfected in His presence.

We have deluded ourselves into thinking that there is no god to punish us for our sins. So, trere is no need to repent of our sin-in fact there is no sin to repent of. Just the laws of man to obey. Life becomes "no holds barred", as we live to please ourselves. Even if there is a god, it would be inconvenient for us to ponder our behavior, leave alone to bow down and ask for forgiveness. It would appear that in these fast paced times, most of us want only to do our own thing.
Sinning without repenting is an offence to God. We offend Him at our peril. For many years I lived a life similar to the one I just described. I knew that I was living a life at odds with my salvation.Since I could'nt apologize to God without committing to Him that I wound change my life for Him and try my best to do better, I just kept sinning without measuring the consequences. When at last I came to truly accepting Jesus as my lord and Master, the light shed on my past life and secret sin was overwhelming for me, and seemed too much for me to bear. Thankfully, the holy Spirit working in me gave me the strength and courage to confront and begin to vanquish my sinfull life. Thus I finally began to walk in the light. All praise to our awesome God, a God of love that through the saving grace of Jesus, took me back as His!!

Pastor Ralph, on Jul 27 2004, 11:02 PM, said:

Why does our culture resist the ideas of sin and repentance?
[color="blue"]We have grown cold as a people because we live in a world of everything goes and if it feels good do it.[/COLOR

Can there be salvation without repentance?
[COLOR=blue]NO[/color]

Can you think of a time in your own life when repentance was difficult for you?
[color="blue"]Yes, there are lots of times when my pride over road my repentance. [/color]

Why was it difficult?
[color="blue"]It’s very hard to come to terms with our sins, to not be in denial and to walk in the truth. I felt very much in control in my prideful times. But I now realize I have control over nothing, it’s humbling and sobering and freeing[/color].

Q4. (2 Peter 3:9) Why does our culture resist the ideas of sin and repentance? Can there be salvation without repentance? Can you think of a time in your own life when repentance was difficult for you? Why was it difficult?

Sin poses some difficulty to our modern culture because both sin and forgiveness have lost their meaning in the secular and superficial age in which we live.

For the modern man, the concept of sin is indeed an offence to reason because it injures his pride and sense of greatness. We have therefore invented a number of very clever euphemisms to replace the word sin: weakness, habit, orientation, tendency, and fixation.

Our culture resist the ideas of sin and repentance because that means that they will have to make some significant changes in there lifestyle and the word sin and repentance does not appear in their vocabulary. Also, some denominations do not use the words “born again or save” in there teaching. So many people walk around blind to the fact that they need a Savior and that it comes only when we acknowledge Jesus as Lord and seek forgiveness of our passed sinned.

Luke 5:32 tells us that:

“I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

There is no forgiveness of sins unless it involves repentance. That means that salvation only comes to those who come as sincere penitent to God through His Son Jesus Christ.

When I was in my late teens repentance was difficult for me as I did not want to change my sinful ways. Everyone wants to live their own life according the human fleshly desires. But God in His great mercy changed all of that and I was truly transformed and I am a now partaking of His divine nature and holiness is a way of life not an option.

Q4. (2 Peter 3:9) Why does our culture resist the ideas of sin and repentance? Can there be salvation without repentance? Can you think of a time in your own life when repentance was difficult for you? Why was it difficult?

Sadly we live in a society where anything goes. The excuse given is "get with it this is 2004." Well, what was a sin in the 40's, 50's ,60's and so on is still a sin today. We are just more accepting of it today. It seems like character and morales are way down on the list of what is important in our daily lives.

I do not beleive that there can be salvation without repentance. We need to ask God for forgiveness of our sins if we are to reach the gates of heaven. He will forgive us anything, but we must ask and really mean what we are saying. We need to do this on a daily basis since no one knows when their last day will be.

In our culture we chose to do as the do without any regard or throuhrt to the hereafter. we have choices to make right or
wrong we cannot be both right and wrong at the same time. we must repent to recieve salvation no repentence no salvation.
Yes there was a time in my life that I just refuse to give up the life of infidelity because to me that was a glamorus to live.
Iloved the challenges of it. But I started listening to the word of God.then one day something something happened to me in the bathroom and I haven't been the same. whoever read this reply may think that I revealed too many personal detail,
but I want the world to know that when Godtouch you you've been touched.

Q4. (2 Peter 3:9) Why does our culture resist the ideas of sin and repentance? Can there be salvation without repentance? Can you think of a time in your own life when repentance was difficult for you? Why was it difficult?

No one likes to admit they are wrong or responsible. It's too common these days to try to put the blame elsewhere or to put the blame on "environmental" factors. In other words, our upbringing or other things that have happened to us in our lives are to blame. "It's not my fault!"

So if we start admitting we sin and admitting that we need to come to repentance we are accepting responsibility for our mistakes, for our wrongdoings and evil ways. So, how can anyone be saved if they don't think they need to be saved? How can anyone be saved if they don't repent and admit they need to change their ways? Jesus would be a "minister of sin", so to speak, if He saved people just so they could keep on sinning. That's would be a blasphemy to even suggest it!

Yes, just recently it was very hard to repent after an argument with my wife where I felt I had taken the "high road" but found later I was just trying to win the argument. Pride, foolish pride is the reason it was difficult.

Our culture resists the ideas of sin and repentance because we believe as long as you live a clean life and are a decnt person that you will be forgiven. There cannot be salvation without repentance. I can think of a time in your own life when repentance was difficult for you. It was difficult because I wanted to blame everyone else except for myself.

I think I jumped the gun and answered the first two questions in my former post, but I will tell of a time when it was difficult for me to repent.

I was angry at God because things didn't go my way. I had plans. I was impatient. I had fear of things other than God as well, which all put together, is probably why things weren't working out. Looking back now, I can see that the problems started well before the **** hit the fan, but I was too busy doing things MY way to really listen and just let God "BE" and work things out in His time. I was doing the "shoulds", "need tos", "supposed tos" trying to clean myself up rather than wait on Him to direct me. I had some serious issues to deal with , and He knew the best way, but I was too caught up in "the vanity of my mind" I think, not allowing His grace to do it's work on things that were way too big for me at the time--trying to be what I thought He wanted. (He just wanted me to be myself. and let Him work it out.)Then when I couldn't live up to my own high expectations, I was burdened by guilt, 'till one fateful day, when I'd had enough of the whole bit, and I quit altogether. No praying, no study, and I was going to do whatever I wanted. Since at the time I thought all God wanted for me was a life of pain and misery and service, I figured I had just as good a chance doing that on my own (and boy did I). Nothing I had previously wanted had worked out anyway. So for several years, I did it MY way, ALL the way, with no desire to repent, having one "hell" of a time. Wound up so far from everything that was ever important to me it's hard to fathom. Finally, I'd had enough of making myself miserable, and asked God for help. He did. Repentance came not too long after when He so lovingly picked me up, started setting my life straight, showed me how much He could forgive, and that He had loved me and wanted good things for me all along.
What a wonderful Lord we have!
How grateful I am for His grace, patience, and faithfulness. I am forever humbled before Him.
Repentance hopefully will never be something I am unwilling to do again. There are still things we are working on, of course. I ask for forgiveness as soon as I realize I have made a mistake. Sometimes it's hard to acknowledge though. We all hate being wrong, don't we. I just claim His promises all the time, and thank Him for getting me there, and do my best to follow His lead. I'm just so glad I don't have to be the one to fix me. I was all jacked up! Definately a job only God can do!

Our culture resists the ideas of sin and repentance because people do not want to accept the fact that they are sinners and they need a Savior. The average unsaved person sees himself or herself as a good person not deserving of judgment.

When we see ourselves as lost sinners and that we need Jesus Christ to save us from our sins we are repenting when we come to Him for salvation.

There have been times in my own life when it was difficult to repent but GOD's Holy Spirit convicted me until I asked for forgivness. It was difficult because I did not want to admit that I had done wrong.

1. For some feel they are not worthy, some feel they could not meet Gods standards (Do any of us), some feel they will be giving up to much
2. No
3. Yes, For fear of grieving the Lord by repeating the sin, For I know 70x7, He will forgive, but if you keep doing it over and over I feel our hearts will be hardened, blessings taken away, crowns removed.

Not wanting to admit that we are sinners and doing wrong.
There can not be salvation without first admitting that we need a savior. We must repent and God will cleanse us from the inside out. If it doesn't line up with God's Word then it is sin.
Because of our prideful nature it is difficult to ask for forgiveness.
The Lord is a God of compassion for sinners who sincerely repent. God doesn't want any to die in their sins. Believers should share in this desire.
I repent of anything that the Holy Spirit convicts me of. It is always difficult because sometimes I don't realize it as sin. Thank God for His Saving Grace!!

We're in a "It's all about you" culture (self-help books, talk shows, etc..) . A Me-ism society. What's in it for ME? Satisfy me NOW! Why settle for less? Many companies would go out of business if everyone repented and stopped sinning and became totally selfless. If we accept Christ as our saviour and continue sinning without repentance we will eventually fall from grace. Repentance is absolutely necessary to obtain salvation. As humans we sin, but we must sincerely seek forgiveness and not do it again. If we do it again, we must sincerely seek forgiveness again - as Peter asked Jesus how many times must he forgive....

Repentance was difficult because I had been sinning for so long that I became hardened. It was coming to a place where I really had to know my behavior was wrong and not regret that I could no longer do it again. The bible and other Christians helped me a great deal. God softened my heart over time.

Q4. (2 Peter 3:9) Why does our culture resist the ideas of sin and repentance? Can there be salvation without repentance? Can you think of a time in your own life when repentance was difficult for you? Why was it difficult?

Our culture resist the idea of sin and repentance because of the false teaching that Peter warned the church of. Our society is bent on doing it my way and not God's way.

Can their be salvation without repentance? If we look only at John 3:16 and Romand 10: 9,10, it would appear so. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. The word believe requires an action. You do what you believe. To believe on the Lord Jesus would mean to do what He says and repent.

Repentence is difficult when I do not commune with God and can no longer see my self as God sees me. When I look through my eyes, I can justify my sin and find no need for repentance. When I allow God to search me, He reveals my need to repent.

Our culture rejects the Word of God. They think Scripture is a book of stories with no real power. Therefore they reject the idea that God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. A lot of the people I talk to have this idea in their mind of a God they have created. He’s not a bad guy. They are convinced God would never let anyone perish. If you try to talk to them about the nature and attributes of God as revealed in Scripture they come back with “I don’t believe all that”. I grieve for them, some of them daily, because I know them. They don’t want to consider sin or repentance. They don’t want to consider the gospel.

I think that the Scriptures are clear that saving faith involves repentance. There is nothing that I can do to save myself or keep myself saved. Accepting the work of Christ on my behalf is a free gift. Repentance means a "change of mind" and is followed by a decision or action because of that change. Genuine repentance is the result of the convicting work of the Holy Spirit and is often accompanied by sorrow. Repentance is more than just sorrow, however. It involves a change of mind about guilt and the penalty for sin, one's need of salvation, and the Savior's sacrificial provision for salvation on the cross. While it is associated with salvation, repentance alone is not salvation. Faith and trust in the work of Christ on Calvary is the needed result of repentance. It must be followed by faith in the Lord Jesus to save from sin and to give spiritual life. Emphasizing only repentance leaves the unsaved with an incomplete message that does not give clear understanding of salvation.

Repentance has been difficult for me because I really never understood it. At a time in my life I ignored the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. I think that I felt if I couldn’t stop sinning altogether that I couldn’t have true faith in Christ. What I didn’t realize is that the blood of Christ was my only hope for deliverance. I couldn’t stop sinning altogether. I will always be a sinner with faith in Christ alone for eternal life.

Our culture is post-Christian-pagan. In other words there was a rebellion against the Christian precepts of our parents of the fifties. The flower generation rebelled and did not teach their children what they had been taught about God on the grounds that it may inhibit them. They are now experimenting with all sorts of religions - including atheism - in order to satisfy the needs of theirs souls for some sort of answers. We have developed the "if it feels good do it" culture. Religion basically rationalises what we want to do, and are going to do anyway! Anything which includes concepts of self-control are anathema in our culture. The ideas of sin and repentance are not nice and definitely not embraced. Absolutes are said not to exist and each man is his own authority (little tin god) for how he wants to live.

John the Baptist proclaimed the highway for Jesus, which is the highway of repentance. There is no other way to God, because we all have sinned and need to be forgiven and come under the Blood of Jesus.

Repentance is always difficult for me when habits need to change. New habits don't come easily. They involve a time of disciplined action over a period of time until they are properly installed. By nature we tend to avoid such things. Yet learning and developing is an ongoing process until the day I go to be with my Father. Changing into the likeness of Jesus Christ is the door to the world of revival and miracles, joy and fruitfulness. We can never give up on it.