Falling Out of Repentance

Anytime I’m asked about my wife—whether at work, at school, or elsewhere—and what she does, I always excitedly reply, “Well, she’s a counselor; a Biblical counselor.” I labor to make the point—so as to ensure no one is left confused or misinformed—that all her work as a counselor must be understood within an explicitly Biblical worldview. This conversation starter typically makes for an easier transition into further conversations with the individual about God, the Bible, and the Gospel. They might not like it (hint: they seldom do), but at the very least this clarification sets the tone for the rest of the dialogue.

By emphasizing the Biblical counselor’s emphasis on sin, the need for repentance, and the hope of the Gospel through faith in Jesus Christ, it becomes somewhat more natural in conversation to then turn the focus back onto the individual I’m speaking with and emphasize their own need for reconciliation with the Lord. Although, as you can imagine, folks tend to tune out or have mysterious appointments to keep—“Oh look at the time, I have to go!”—the moment words like “sin” and “repent” are introduced into a conversation. Indeed, people perk up when they hear my wife is a counselor because they are eager to talk about themselves and their feelings, only to withdraw the moment the focus is drawn away from their emotions and onto their own sin. People love to recount their lives in these sorts of conversations, but shut down all dialogue out of hatred for the very thought that they will have to one day give an account for the way in which they lived their lives before the Lord Jesus Christ.

Elaina, my wife, has been in the counseling world for a number of years now, though it’s been only over the past year that she’s begun counseling in an official capacity. However, it took no time at all to discover that, as a woman who only counsels other women, the majority of her counseling sessions were going to be with women who were struggling in their marriages. These marital struggles come about for a myriad of reasons and are often times exceedingly complex to tease out—we are, after all, selfish sinners who are boundless in our capacity to destroy ourselves and others outside of the grace of God. But, setting aside all these nuances, permit me to speak absolutely plainly for a moment when I say that most of these marital issues, as seemingly complex as they may at first appear, are in reality far more simple than we’d like to admit: namely, it really all comes down to a failure and refusal to repent.

Marriages grow cold not because husband and wife begin falling out of love, but because they begin falling out of repentance. The failure to repent is the failure to love; and the failure to love is, you guessed it, tied to the failure to repent of sin in your marriage. The sin-swept wane of many years and the hardening effects of bitterness left unchecked and unrepented of render many husbands and wives cold and callous, unable and unwilling to turn from sin. Unwilling to turn towards a living and loving Savior in Christ who stands ready to forgive those who forsake their sin and cling to Him for lasting healing. If you find yourself falling out of love, rest uneasily in the fact that you’ve fallen out of repentance well before this point.

Contrary to popular belief, even popular ‘Evangelical’ belief, love is a choice; an act of the will that sets aside self, preferring rather the glory of God and the good of the other. Feelings come and feelings go, but love cannot go. Love must remain, it is commanded to remain: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord... Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:22, 25). In the words of C.S. Lewis,

“Love as distinct from ‘being in love’ is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit.”

In like fashion, repentance is also an active choice of the will. There are times, many times, when it feels easy to love. By contrast, we never feel like repenting. If we waited for our feelings to align in order to repent of sin in our marriage against God and our spouse, I fear we would never be moved sufficiently to do so. That is why repentance is, first and foremost, like love, an act of willful obedience towards God and not an action only taken provided the appropriate emotions are first present as some sort of “feeling fuel” in our hearts. To repent is to love. Keep short accounts with the Almighty and with one another, it really is that simple.

Dear brother and sister, the reality that both love and repentance are not enslaved to feelings is a truth that is wonderfully and infinitely freeing to the soul. If you are in Christ—if you have believed on His name for the remission of your sins and have placed your hope in Him, if His Spirit has taken up residence in you—then “you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). As a son or daughter of the Living God, we are no longer consigned to wandering in the wilderness of impulse, apathy, and dead emotionalism, but free to love God and others from a heart that has been renewed and remade. Just do the right thing, no matter how you feel, “for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

As Elaina and I approach our third wedding anniversary next week, I find myself overwhelmed by God’s goodness and faithfulness to us in all that her and I have navigated together as husband and wife. I praise and glorify the Lord for the faithful friend He’s given to me in Elaina, and for the faithful friend He’s been to us both. Marriage to her is so natural, so sweet, and so much better than either one of us could have possibly asked, imagined, or contrived on our own. I praise the Lord that she is so very easy to love and delight in. And when disagreements or conflicts arise between us, as they often do in even the very best of marriages, or when our sight is clouded by sin, I am thankful for the well-worn paths of love and repentance that the Lord has walked us through time and again.

As husbands and wives, we may not always feel like loving, repenting, or asking for forgiveness, but here’s a little secret: the more we put these truths into practice, the more natural and heartfelt they will become and before you know it, the right and Godly feelings are swift to follow in due time as the right habits take root. Through the continual putting off of self and the putting on of Christ, you shall indeed become more like Him. In the meantime, keep obeying the truth and loving one another deeply from a pure heart (1 Peter 1:22). Be swift to repent and quick to ask for forgiveness when you fall short of the calling Christ has called us to as ambassadors of that Heavenly marriage of which we shall all one day take part.

“Love is patient and kind;

love does not envy or boast;

it is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way;

it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice at wrongdoing,

but rejoices in the truth.

Love bears all things,

believes all things,

hopes all things,

endures all things.

Love never ends.”

—1 Corinthians 13:4-8

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