Do You Really Need to Turn From Your Sins?

The Bible teaches we are required to turn from our sins and are capable of doing so. This means that those who say that you cannot and/or need not turn from your sins are liars.

Jeremiah 36:1-3: “And it came to pass in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, that this word came unto Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spoke unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day. It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them; that they may return every man from his evil way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.”

Listen then to what the Lord had said beforehand in the Book of Jeremiah against those who teach otherwise.

Jeremiah 23:14-24: “I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness; they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah. Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets; Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall: for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord. They say still unto them that despise me, The Lord hath said, Ye shall have peace; and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you. For who hath stood in the counsel of the Lord, and hath perceived and heard his word? who hath marked his word, and heard it? Behold, a whirlwind of the Lord is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind: it shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked. The anger of the Lord shall not return, until he have executed, and till he have performed the thoughts of his heart: in the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly. I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings. Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.”

Ezekiel further proves that repentance is indeed turning from sin to God.

Ezekiel 18:30-32: “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord God. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.”

As John the Baptist also made clear as He prepared the way of the Lord, you must repent of your sins and do works fitting for repentance. Sin must be fled from without compromise. It cannot be harbored at all. No one can properly receive Jesus Christ who does not acknowledge their sins before God and wholeheartedly turn from them. Those who claim otherwise are anti-John the Baptists.

Going back to Matthew 3:7-10: “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet (or, fitting) for repentance: And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.”

The Jewish leaders had been called out by John and exposed as wicked people who needed to repent like the tax collectors and harlots did. The harlots had to forsake their harlotry to heed John the Baptist and do the will of the Father. The tax collectors likewise had to forsake their dishonesty and cheating.

Luke 3:12-13: “Then came also publicans (tax collectors) to be baptized, and said unto him (that is, to John the Baptist), Master, what shall we do? And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you.”

Consider also that the overthrow which Jonah warned the Ninevites about was really going to happen if the Ninevites did not repent.

Jonah 3:4-9: “And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?”

It is a really good thing that the voices of easy grace preachers who oppose Jesus’ Lordship and deny the need to turn from your sins in order to obtain His grace didn’t prevail in Nineveh.

Jonah 3:10 then says: “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil (i.e. the calamity), that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.”

The Lord’s verdict is that the Ninevites did indeed turn from their sins. God didn’t change by not bringing the calamity on the Ninevites. The Ninevites rather changed in accordance with what He required of them. The Ninevites surely would have been destroyed and sent to the fire of hell in mass if they had not responded with the trembling, turning from their evil way, and crying mightily to God like we see that they did here. If a preacher’s message wouldn’t have saved Nineveh, then it surely cannot save you nor I nor anyone else on Judgment Day.

Jesus’ words in Matthew 12:38-41 prove that we surely ought to relate the response of the men of Nineveh to Jonah’s preaching with how we ought to respond to Jesus Christ in order to inherit salvation through Him on Judgment Day.

Matthew 12:38-41: “Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he (Jesus) answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly (my note- the word in the Greek text could refer to any large predatory sea creature- it could have been a shark); so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.”

We read in 1 Peter 4:1-2: “Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.”

God’s grace and man’s need to cooperate with His rescue are not opposing concepts like many teach. Christ died to redeem us from our sins. His will is to deliver us from their guilt and power. Man’s regard for sin prevents his rescue and opposes the actualization of this redemption. When one gives heed to the instructions from the Lord which are calculated to their rescue out of sin, they are not working to earn His grace nor devising their own way to save themselves any more than a drowning person who is cooperating with a good Samaritan who is laboring in wisdom and giving them directions to save their life.

If you don’t have to turn from your transgressions of God’s law to be under Jesus’ grace, then you could even be under His grace while blatantly worshiping Satan. Have you heard of a Christian Satanist? The thought of a Christian drunkard or harlot or liar or lover of money should be regarded in the same category. The Bible actually defines a sinner as one with a rebellious, disobedient attitude towards God’s authority (see John 9:31, Psalm 1, Psalm 26:8-11, Psalm 66:18, etc).

One of the verses which people bring up to try to rebuke or mitigate those who call for repentance according to the Bible is 1 John 1:8: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

1 John 1:8 teaches that there can be no true repentance when the guilt of one’s own sin is denied. Yet 1 John 1:8 is not teaching that all people are sinners who are opposed to the Lord’s authority nor is it saying that repentant people inevitably sin all the time anyways.

Consider that King David had been a faithful man who was walking in the light before God until he committed adultery with Bathsheba (recorded in 2 Samuel chapter 11). David would proceed to murder Bathsheba’s husband Uriah the Hittite by deliberately arranging to have him slain in battle in an attempt to cover up his adultery. David was lying before God and men about the sins he had committed in this matter. David eventually received a visit from a prophet named Nathan (recorded in 2 Samuel chapter 12:1-12). After hearing Nathan’s heart piercing rebuke, David didn’t cover his sin anymore. He confessed that the rebuke applied to him. He also submitted to a long process of discipline afterwards in relation to what he had done without complaining and without being otherwise stubborn against the Lord.

Those who try to use 1 John 1:8 to try to claim that everyone, even the righteous who are abiding in Jesus Christ, must sin constantly are doing the very thing which 1 John 1:8 says not to do as they deny their actual guilt by claiming that we all just sin all the time anyways. It is a good thing that David did not use their logic when Nathan confronted him. If he had done so, instead of confessing his own sin with horror and grief directed at himself, he would have rather told Nathan that we all sin constantly anyways. He then may very well have resorted to recrimination and told Nathan that there was surely sin in his own life.

Look at 1 John 1:8 in a context which is a little bit broader.

1 John 1:5-10: “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

We also read in Proverbs 28:13: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.”

Imagine if David had been faithful and never did the things which Nathan rebuked him for. Would Nathan have been sent to rebuke him then? Of course not. David didn’t need such a rebuke before this point because he had been walking in the light of God’s Word until he committed the sins he committed in relation to the matter of Bathsheba. David had to forsake the darkness after he had walked in it. Since David had unrepentant sin which the Word of God testified against when Nathan confronted him, he had to confess and forsake it in order to receive forgiveness and be restored to fellowship with the Lord and fellowship with faithful worshipers of the Lord. If David had said that he had not sinned, then David would have been deceiving himself and the truth would not have been in him. Justifying yourself by excusing and/or downplaying your sin is essentially claiming you have not sinned. There is no true repentance when someone says their sins were inevitable anyways, when they won’t acknowledge they could have and should have done right, and won’t submit to doing what they should have done before.

If the light of God’s Word testifies against you and you resist that conviction, then you are deceiving yourself and the truth is not in you. Let God’s Word be the referee and keep in line with the Word. That is the meaning of 1 John 1:8 (and the parallel statement of 1 John 1:10). These verses were never intended to be a statement that everyone must sin constantly nor were they intended to be a statement that there is no marked differentiation between the deeds of the righteous and the deeds of the wicked. John would say the complete opposite several times on both counts as the Book of 1 John continues. He even did so in the verses which immediately follow as the book continues (1 John 2:1-6).

The Lord rebuked Jerusalem with the following words in Ezekiel 16:48-50: “As I live, saith the Lord God, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters. Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.”

Consider then what repentance for the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah would have had to involve in order for God to spare them. They would have had to confess as evil and forsake their pride, their gluttony, their illicit sexual pursuits, their disregard of the poor and needy, and they would have had to stop justifying the abominable behavior in God’s eyes prevalent among them. How are some so foolish to actually think that repentance for people now wouldn’t have to involve the same?