Luke 18:10-14
With good jobs getting scarcer and scarcer, earlier this week I was thinking of what I would do if for some strange reason, I could no longer be a minister. Perhaps I could stock shelves in Asda; perhaps I could retrain as a teacher – in order to feed your family and keep a roof over their heads you’d be willing to do just about anything. But one thing I’d never be willing to do would be to take a job as a gravedigger. The melancholy of the job would get to me after a while with the only definite career progression being one of moving from digging someone’s grave to occupying a grave someone else had dug for you. I’d run a mile from a job offer from Graves Incorporated or Cemetery Limited.
These thoughts were brought into sharper focus when I read a quote from the Puritan Thomas Watson where he says, “sin digs our graves”. We may fear the gravedigger’s job; but if we only knew how true Watson is when he talks of sin digging our graves, the thought that we would sin is the greatest grief and the chief hatred of our hearts! The gravedigger consigns our bodies to the ground; but sin consigns our bodies and souls to hell. And so we run from it in repentance to the living God who alone can forgive us and give us eternal life.
In this third study on the Shorter Catechism’s analysis of the Biblical Doctrine of Repentance, I want to look at how we run away from and turn away from sin. How necessary it is that we turn from sin in repentance – for it is impossible for someone to turn to the light whilst still clinging to the darkness. As then we consider how we turn from sin, we notice that the catechism calls us to do so ‘with grief and hatred of sin’. I want to look at two things this evening together: first, the elements of turning from sin (grief and hatred of sin) and secondly, the exercise of turning from sin – or what it means to turn away from sin. My prayer is that as we examine afresh the repugnance and monstrosity of sin and how it digs our graves, we might pray that God would give us the very grief with which we are to grieve over sin; and the very hatred with which we are to hate it.
[A] The Elements of Turning from Sin
The passage we read from Luke 18 and the confession of the Tax-Collector highlights for us the elements in turning from sin. This man, who we know had lived a dishonest and traitorous life stood afar off, kept his eyes low and beat his breast saying, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.” The two elements of his turning from sin the Catechism emphasises are his grief over his sin and his hatred of sin.
1. Grief – grieving over sin is sorrow for sin. As the Psalmist says in Psalm 38:18, “I am troubled by my sin.” We are sorry because of the defilement it has brought upon us and the disgrace it has brought to the name of Christ. We are troubled because our sins have wounded our consciences but more importantly, they caused the wounding of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on the Cross. It is a shameful thing not to be ashamed of our sin. It should worry and trouble us as Christians when we aren’t grieved by our sins – for they are ugly monsters who dig our graves. Are we sorry for our sin and troubled by it? Let me apply this point of grieving over sin in two ways: first, the grief we feel over our sins is a good diagnostic tool for the progress we are making in the Christian faith. Paul wrote his epistles to Timothy towards the end of his life; these are his mature reflections on a lifetime’s discipleship. One thing is clear – the greater his progress in the Christian faith; the closer he got to Christ – the more his sin grieved him. In 1 Timothy 1:15 he calls himself, ‘the chief of sinners’. Sin bothered him more as he went on in the Christian life, not less. Thomas Watson writes, ‘a gracious soul labours to make the worst of his sin, but hypocrites make the best of them.’ Do you make much of your sin or do you make little of it? Secondly, the grief we feel over our sins varies. The tax-collector was utterly devastated; the sinful woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with her tears was greatly disturbed. And yet, there are others who have a so-called, ‘dry constitution’ who aren’t given much to tears but we dare not question the grief they feel over their sins. Again, Thomas Watson is helpful here when he says, “we are to find as much bitterness in weeping for sin as ever we found sweetness in committing it.” Grief, bitterness and trouble cannot always be quantified by the number of tears someone sheds. And yet, there must be grief over our sin or else we shall not be disposed to leave it behind and turn to God.
2. Hatred – hatred over sin is the loathing of sin. There are many disturbing, troubling things in the world – personal suffering, persecution – but of them all, we find our own sin the most hateful. Watson writes, ‘Christ is never loved until sin is loathed.’ There are a plethora of reasons why the Gospel-motivated Christian hates his sin – and most of them have to do with the majesty and grace of the God against whom he is sinning. We hate those things which grieve the Father who loves us, the Son who died for us and the Spirit who sanctifies us. I think I told you the story of a young man in the Highlands who recently drowned. The man had an alcohol problem and on the night in question, was blind drunk. He fell into the sea and because he was so inebriated, couldn’t swim and so drowned. At his funeral, the minister warned his congregation over the dangers of alcoholism and drunkenness. But after the man had been buried, there was a reception at a hotel at which all his friends themselves got blind drunk. Given that it took the life of their friend, you would think that they would have hated getting drunk. Given that sin took the life of our Lord Jesus, you would think we would hate it – do we? Or do we cherish darling, precious, respectable sins like gossip, selfishness, power-games, the love of money, lust and greed? I want to apply this by asking how we may know if we truly hate sin. We might hate sin for the wrong reasons – for its effect upon us or for the punishment of it. The right reasons for hating sin is that it causes offence and grieves God. How can we know if we have the right attitude to our sin? Suppose our sin remained undetected by our consciences or by the Spirit of God; suppose there was never to be any punishment for our sins – would we still hate sin – the sins we commit and the sinners we are? Do we hate sin because of its inherent and intrinsic ugliness and offensiveness before God – because it is an offence to His love; His sacrifice and His holiness? Sufficient are the reasons for God to command us in Psalm 97:10 – “Let those who love the Lord hate evil.”
The Pharisee made little of his sin; the Tax-Collector much. The Tax-Collector grieved over his sin and hated it. But the Tax-Collector left the temple justified and right with God. The Tax-Collector repented unto life. The Christian is called to hate sin and to grieve over it – he’d rather lose his life than have a sinful life. Glimpse the holiness and love of God; gaze at the sacrifice of Christ; cooperate in the inward sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit and repentance will never be far away.
[B] The Exercise of Turning from Sin
Assuming that to one extent or another, we each grieve over our sin and hate it, I want to give some practical applications into how we turn away from sin. Good ideas and intentions are one thing; turning away from sin is what counts. Briefly, there are three levels in the exercise of turning away from sin: first, internal and external; secondly, immediately and enduring and lastly, individual and everything.
1. Internal and External – the chief place we should mourn for sin is in the heart. The problem the Pharisees of Matthew 6 had was that their repentance was all external – they looked the part of penitent sinners. But there was no broken and contrite heart, as David puts it in Psalm 51:17. Be careful of those who make a public show of their humility and repentance – who wear faces saying, ‘I am a sinner’ rather than, ‘I am a saved sinner.’ Rather, just like our sins come from the heart, so our grief and hatred of sin must begin in the heart. Our hearts, according to Thomas Watson, are ‘seminaries of evil’ – let them also be colleges of repentance. Yet, whilst avoiding overt displays of public grief over private sins, there are times when we cannot but show our grief and hatred of sin. For example, when we have committed a public sin it is right that we publicly express sorrow. Likewise, it is wrong for a Christian who despises sin inwardly to rejoice in sin outwardly. Again I say that we should be careful of those who pride themselves on their unworthiness, and yet if we hate sin in private, we must also hate it in public.
2. Immediate and Enduring – turning from sin can be an immediate action. We do something wrong and we immediately know it to be sinful. Immediately, our heart fills with sorrow over what we have done and we confess it to God. It is an immediate turning to God. On a larger scale, perhaps that’s what many of us did when we were savingly ‘converted’ – we saw that magnitude of our sins and were granted the grace of one-off repentance. However, just like being filled with the Spirit is both a one-off action and a permanent state; so repentance must also be enduring. We grieve over our sin at the beginning of our Christian lives; we hate it even more at the end – the more we grow as Christians, the more we despise our sin; and as long as we live in this sin-sick world and in this sin-sick body, we must continually exercise repentance unto life with its grief and hatred of sin.
3. Individual and Everything – there may be times when God shows us individual sins which we are committing. It may be that, through the regular reading of the Bible, God shows you that you have a problem with violent, uncontrollable anger. God shows you that sin so that you may grieve over it, hate it and turn to Him from it. Again, you may have a problem with greed for money and God afflicts your conscience through His Word and you begin to grieve over your greed so that you repent. But other times, you can point to no specific area of your life where you are sinning by omission and commission. At times like these, we must pray for God to show us more of ourselves – but in the meantime, we grieve over our generic sinfulness. We grieve that, having been shown so much grace by God through Christ and in the Spirit, we show so little gratitude. We grieve over single sins and over the seminary of sins; over individual sins and the collective.
We live in an ultra-tolerant, pluralistic society. Could it be that we have become too tolerant of sin in our lives – so much so that we do not grieve over it and hate it like we should? If, in the Scriptures and by prayer, we should gaze at the glory of the love of the giving Father; the glory of the grace of the crucified Son and the glory of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, it won’t be long before we realise how monstrous a thing sin really is. Thomas Watson writes, ‘sin is a cursed thing; it is the mis-shapen monster’. Let’s be rid of this cursed thing, this mis-shapen monster – let’s put into practice the elements and exercise of turning from sin in repentance unto life. If, in the next while, you get offered the job of digging your own grave, just say no. AMEN
