4 Things To Do After You Sin
Because of God’s deep love for us we always want to pursue greater obedience and holiness in our lives. Grace is not meant to free us to sin, but free us from sin. In our fallen state we still sin though and we need to have a framework that simulatneously does not crush us, but also does not excuse our sin.
When you do sin and want to repent, here are 4 thoughts:
1- Meditate on the seriousness of sin.
Your initial thought to this starting place might be: “Really Josh? Focus on the seriousness of sin? I am well aware of how bad my sin is and already feel guilty and downcast.”
That may be true, but if we use Psalm 51 as a template for our own repentance and confession of sin, we see David saying:
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sightPsalm 51:3-4
In the right proportion, it is good for us to call to mind the seriousness of sin. I fear we often have heavy thoughts about how bad sin is morally. How it might hurt others or ourselves. But do we lament over the fact that our sin is against God himself? Your sin is a statement of "I do not care about you or your authority over me". You scream that in God’s face every-time you sin. "You're not Lord over me, I am!" To the God who has only done you good.
Be careful that you are grieved over sin because it is against God and not just because it has consequences that make you feel bad. All true repentance and confession stem from hatred of sin, not guilt. It is only in seeing the ugliness of sin that we can see the beauty of forgiveness.
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2- Remind yourself of the Gospel.
Satan tempts you after sin too. He tempts you to be discouraged. To assume God hates you. To believe you are without hope. It’s healthy to feel a bit of discomfort in seeing how serious our sin truly is, but the aim of seeing that is to drive us to Christ all the more. Not to drive us away from Him.
Consider 2nd Corinthians 7:10: “And now I rejoice, not because you were made sorrowful, but because your sorrow led you to repentance… Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation.”
A sorrow for the seriousness of sin is good as long as it leads you to God, not away from God. The key is reminding yourself of the Gospel.
Romans 5:6-9:
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
The question is, what state were you in when Christ died for you? Good? Perfect? Holy? No! You were “weak” and “ungodly”. There was nothing in you drawing the affections of God. He wasn’t up there going “oh, that person is really strong and has been holy for 50 days, maybe we should offer grace.” No, everything in you was screaming “I’m broken and I deserve death”. Remember the seriousness of sin?
But the point of Romans 5 is that it was while you were in the state of weak and ungodly when Christ said “I will die for them”. God looked at you at your worst and said “I want them and I will pay the price to cleanse them, love them, and forgive them even if it costs me my life.”
Your sin does not disqualify you from love, for it was when you were sinful Christ lavished his love on you. After sin, we are prone to have “wrong” thoughts of God. In a desire to take sin seriously, many of us put words in God’s mouth. “He hates me, I did it again.” Or “This was the last one, there must be no more grace for me.” This is why we must have Gospel texts ready to remind ourselves of His love. Here are a few I recommend you look at:
Psalm 51
Psalm 103
Isaiah 53
Ephesians 2
1st John 1:5-9
As you remind yourself of the Gospel, take to heart what it means for God to give you grace:
To live in grace is to live in the knowledge that God’s forgiveness is real and complete. It is stepping out in faith and applying His methods and working to reflect the character of Christ faithfully. Remember an earlier illustration: the prisoner is pronounced free, but he doesn’t experience that freedom until he steps out of the prison and exercises the privileges that are rightfully his. By grace, forgiveness is granted and what is left for us to do is to live in the reality that God looks on us with His favor and in doing so He empowers us to live as He desires us to.
Hines, W. (1996). Christianity and change: steps to growth and healing in Christian counseling (p. 49). Ross-shire, GB: Christian Focus Publications.
Step out of the prison.
3- Confess to a friend/pastor.
Sin thrives in darkness. Souls shrivel in darkness.
The way we bring our sins and our souls into the light is through confession. I implore you to find a trusted, godly friend or pastor that you can confess your sins to. It is only in dragging your beloved sins into the light that they begin to lose their power. And it is only in bringing your soul into the light that it can begin to receive love.
"The responsibility to confess sin and expose darkness lies within you. It's not the job of spiritual mentors to go on a fishing expedition to reel in a confession from those they are trying to help. A person passively waiting to provide answers to specific questions is in a far different place spiritually than a person who is willing to take the initiative to expose their struggles in the pure light of day. "
Heath Lambert Finally Free.
If you deal with your sins alone you will always feel isolated, unlovable, and depleted. Confession in the right places can be a tangible expression of God’s love. When you pour out your soul to a friend and their response is one of love, of compassion, and of “let’s fight this together”. You see and feel love and grace in a tangible way which is a display of God’s love for you. A discerning 3rd party can also help you gauge if you are making too light of your sin or too light of the Gospel.
Confession is life-giving, not life-taking.
4- Examine the root cause.
Repentance is incomplete if you do not begin to cultivate holiness within your life. One of the ways we do this is by examining the root cause of our sins. It’s a bit like putting a Band-Aid on an infected bleeding wound. It might help with the bleeding for a time but the infection will continue.
It’s not until we dig into our own souls and see “Why do I keep doing this sin?” that we will begin to understand how we can pursue righteousness. There are always root causes. You may look at porn because you don’t trust God with your singleness. You might blow up in anger because you are bitter about something. You might steal small amounts of money at work because you think the pleasures of this world are more important than the next.
Examine the root causes of your sins, repent of them, and walk in obedience.
Fighting sin is never easy but holiness is not an optional add-on to the Christian life. Always remember, we fight sin not to earn God’s love, but because of God’s love.
Fighting with you,
Josh.
