THS Theology - The Gift of Repentance

People ask Aaron all the time: "How do I care as much as you do about sharing the gospel?" His answer might surprise you — it starts with repentance. 

In this solo episode, Aaron reframes repentance not as guilt-driven self-punishment but as the engine of Christian joy, walking through Acts 3:19, Augustine's four-fold framework, and a three-step process for repenting in a way that actually leads to the "times of refreshing" the Bible promises. If you've ever wondered why your evangelism feels flat, this episode is for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

My name is Aaron Rosa. I'm the Hood Shepherd. And today I wanted to talk a little bit about a question that I get all the time. Being an evangelist, people automatically assume that I'm very good at what I do, that I just I go sharing the gospel with people, and people come to faith. And yes, sometimes that happens, and it is really awesome to be a part of. But a lot of times, most people don't necessarily care about that. You know, Ephesians 4 11 says, For the Lord gave apostles, prophets, shepherds, evangelists, and teachers to the church for the equipping of the ministry. And if me being really good at my job doesn't really mean anything if I can't make you really good at the same thing, there's a reason why the Lord brings someone like me to a church, which is to make you just as good at what he wants done as far as the witness and the mission of the church as me being kind of a solo artist that's out there. The whole point of bringing someone like me to a church is to make you better at what you do. One of the questions I get all the time is how do we get our church to be more evangelistic? Or in the kind of individual sense, I'll have somebody come up to me usually after I do a teaching or they come to uh a Bible study or something and they say, How do I care as much as you do? Or how am I able to share the gospel in the way that you do? And it's a really valid question. I have a particular set of training, I've been to seminary, I've worked in ministry for many years, I've done work in all kinds of different contexts, and so I have a wealth of experience to draw from, but not everybody has that. And so what I wanted to talk to you about today is something that I don't think anybody associates with good evangelism, which is good repentance. Okay, repentance. What do we mean by this? If I mention the word repentance to you, you probably have some sort of idea made up in your mind of a man in a brown robe and he's lying prostrate on the ground and he's whipping himself with some sort of like flagellum. Or you might think of people who are just perpetually, just verbally down on themselves and saying, like, oh, I'm a sinner. You know, a lot of people associate this with kind of like a Calvinistic uh worldview where it's like I just can never be happy because I'm always a sinner and I need to know that I'm a sinner in order to know my proper place before God. Now, both of those are caricatures. I was being dramatic about all of those things, but in some ways we see images like that every time we think of the word repentance. If I were to say to you, however, that repentance is actually the engine of Christian joy, or if I were to tell you that the main goal of repentance is for you to be refreshed, you would probably look at me and think that I've completely lost my rocker. But this is what the Bible actually teaches. If you turn to Acts 3.19, you will find a very interesting statement. Now, I'll give you the context. In this particular moment, Peter and John have just healed the man in the temple. A lot of people came by, they've known that this guy was paralyzed for over 40 years, and so they're trying to figure out why. And then Peter stands up and he gives a gospel presentation that's nothing like anything you probably ever would do. It's very antagonistic, it's very direct. He says things like, You killed the author of life, and you killed the Messiah, the one that was said by God. These things don't exactly preach from pulpits today, but they're very appropriate because this is the same crowd that would have been gathered in the same place to yell out, crucify them towards Jesus. So, in a very real sense, these were the people that actually killed the author of life. These were the people that did deliver him up to be betrayed. So, what is the message that Peter gives to these people? I love it. It's in Acts 3.19. In Acts 3.19, the people ask, they say, What do we do? And Peter says, Repent therefore. Now that is no news to us. We know repent therefore. We get that. We've heard that from every Bible preacher for the last 150, 200 years. Repent therefore, that your sins may be blotted out. That sounds awesome. We understand that. We understand this idea of, you know, Jesus died for my sins. Many times I will just talk to people in neighborhoods or on the streets and I'll say, Oh, you know, what who's Jesus to you? And they're like, Oh, Jesus died for my sins. Everybody knows Jesus died for your sins. It doesn't mean anything to them because they don't necessarily have the categories to understand truly what that means. But the idea is that it is very prevalent to know that Jesus died for your sins and that you can be washed away. In fact, most people actually have a problem with the ease by which your sins may be washed away. I would argue those people haven't really read the passion narrative and seen what it costs Jesus to do that. But the point remains that most people understand this whole point of repentance is taking away of sins. But here's the part that people don't actually understand. The next thing that Peter says, repent, therefore, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of God. Times of refreshing. This completely blows our category of repentance. We have no idea what this means, you know, practically in our own lives. If I were to ask you to think of the last sin that you committed, or the last habitual sin that you participated in, right? And I were to say, you know, when was the last time you repented of that? You would probably think back to a particular incident, a particular time, and you would think back to, oh man, I'm going to my quiet time, or I'm about to read my Bible, or in bed at night. I feel so guilty or feel so much shame for what I did. And I say, Lord Jesus, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to do that, or I don't want to do that. Take this desire away from me, I'll never do it again. And then a day, two, three, four days later, you're right back in the same place, saying the same exact thing. And it can be very demoralizing. What if I were to tell you that you're repenting all wrong? This is actually amazing news. And it actually has something to do with evangelism. So let's get into it. Do you know how wine is made or any sort of really strong drink? If you're not familiar with it, the process is you take a sugary substance. It has to have lots of sugar in it. Think of a grape juice, right? If we're going to make wine, you take a lot of crushed grape juice, something that's very high in sugar content. And what you do is you break it all down, you smooth it on, and you start out with very sugary grape juice. Then you take a certain substance and you put it in it. You put yeast in it. Now, yeast, if you're not familiar with what yeast is, yeast is it's a tiny microorganism and it's actually a living thing. And what the yeast does is the yeast goes and chews its way through the sugar because yeast lives off of sugar. It chews its way through the sugar and then it poops out on the other side, alcohol and carbon dioxide. It's a byproduct of the digestive system of yeast. This is why, if you look at videos, you might see documentaries of wine being made, or beer, or even soy sauce, anything in which fermentation occurs, and you look at the big cauldron of it, it's bubbling, it's it's coming up. You see the people like mixing it or stirring it, and they see all these bubbles coming up to the surface. The bubbles coming to the surface are the carbon dioxide that's released by the yeast. Now that goes up and it goes out into the atmosphere, but what's left behind is the alcohol. And at some point, the yeast eats all of the sugar that it can get its hands on, and it ends up dying. And what we end up with is wine. We end up with a fermented beverage. That process of fermentation is the same exact process of repentance in the world. What do I mean by this? We think about it this way. If you read the story of Jesus and you read the story of the resurrection, and you see that Jesus has done this wonderful, amazing thing. All authority on heaven and earth has been given unto him, he has conquered Satan's sin and death, and then he ascends and he leaves the disciples there. He leaves them on this mountaintop. Now, if you're being honest, I would probably look at Jesus and say, Hey, what the heck, man? How come you left me in a sinful world? You told me not to sin anymore, and I am beholden to the sin that's in this flesh. Like I can't help but sin. That seems kind of messed up. Either you didn't do what you were what you meant to, either you're just kind of screwing me over a little bit, or you have some other bigger plan in place. Now we know those two, just based off of the character of Christ, can't necessarily be true. So what's the bigger plan that has in place? Well, the answer to that is the answer to the yeast question. A long time ago, there was a uh a church father named Saint Augustine. So Saint Augustine classified people across different epics of redemptive history. What do I mean by this? Okay, when we look at the garden, we see everything is perfect, everything is good. There is no there is no sin, there's no bad. So, what Saint Augustine classifies human beings as is they are non-sinners who are capable of sinning. So they had not sinned, yet they had the capacity to sin. That makes sense, right? Because we just we we see later on in Genesis 3 that they actually do sin. So they are non-sinners who are capable of sinning. Now, after the fall, after they have sinned, they become, and this makes sense, they become sinners because they've sinned, who are incapable of not sinning. That's really interesting. They're incapable of not sinning. This is where our doctrine of regeneration comes from. Our doctrine of regeneration says that the human heart with sin in it is so completely and thoroughly corrupted and broken that there is no way that a human being can do anything good without some sort of external vivification, some sort of external force upon the heart that brings it back to life. This is what Paul talks about in Ephesians 2 when he says, For you are once dead in your sins and trespasses. There's no, it's not like you were on life support, it's not like you were sick, you were dead. So now let's look at those who are in Christ. So those who have experienced the gift of regeneration, those who have met Jesus, those who do submit to the message of the gospel, they become sinners. You're still a sinner, right? You you still have sin, right? But you are now capable of not sinning. You see the distinction there? You are now capable of not sinning. Before you were incapable of not sinning, now you are capable of not sinning. So when Paul says, you know, flee youthful lusts and passions, he doesn't mean that in a way that it's like a rhetorical question. He means like you actually can flee youthful passions. And the way we do this is through the influence of the Holy Spirit, through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. And then finally, when we die and our sanctification is complete and we find ourselves with Jesus, Augustine classifies us as non-sinners because we've been fully sanctified, fully pressed into the image of God, right? And we have resurrection bodies. So we are non-sinners who are incapable of sinning. You're incapable. As impossible as it seems for you to be able to live a pleasing life to God right now, that's how impossible it will be for you to live a displeasing life to God in a glorified state in the new creation. Now, what does all of this have to do with evangelism? I would argue it has a tremendous amount to do with evangelism, because evangelism is a logical overflow of a proper understanding of the gospel and an encounter with Christ. Everyone in the Bible who evangelizes, nobody ever has to be taught about evangelism. The woman at the well, the Ethiopian eunuch, Lydia in Philippi, all of these people who encounter Christ go out and they just naturally tell other people, come and see the man who told me everything that I'd ever done, right? That's the woman at the well. And then the people in the village, they say later on in John 4, they say, first we believe because of your testimony, but now we've encountered him, and now we also believe. So evangelism is a logical overflow of a proper understanding of the gospel, a proper understanding of the good news, what Jesus has done for you, and an encounter with Christ, because it makes it personal, it makes it for you. It's good news to you. The gospel is always good news to a person. I'll give you an example of this. Um, I sat down with a young man once and he was a missionary kid. He grew up overseas and he was bullied a lot because he grew up in Taiwan and he didn't speak Chinese, and it was a really bad situation. He was very angry at his circumstances because he was angry at his parents for bringing him to this other civilization, this other culture where he didn't fit in. He was angry with the bullies that were bullying him. But, you know, he grew up a good missionary kid and he professed the gospel and he went off and he went to the Naval Academy. And while at the Naval Academy, that's where I ended up meeting with him. And I sit down with him and I say, Hey man, and you could tell just by looking at his face, you can tell like this guy had some issues. And I just asked him, I said, Hey man, can you share the gospel with me? And he goes, What do you mean? I was like, you know, that one thing that every Christian's supposed to be able to tell other people. And he goes, Okay, well, Jesus died on the cross for my sins and like he lived the life I couldn't live, so I could, you know, live another one. I was like, gee, dude, like tamp down the enthusiasm, right? Like, that's how you know it's not good news to the person because they don't talk about it like good news. You tell someone their student loans are forgiven, that's good news to them. They will react accordingly. But this was not good news to him. You see, the gospel has many different facets, and one of them is one of community, God coming to stand up for the weak and the oppressed and the one who has no voice, right? So, what's good news to this guy is not atonement. Like, and and unfortunately, that's the one that we all use, but you know, atonement is not good news to this guy. What he needed was someone who suffered alongside with him when he was in a Chinese school, someone who was outcast just as he was, someone who submitted to the will of his parents, even though he knew that it was painful to him. Like that's a Jesus that he can actually empathize with. And so, therefore, the good news is that the place that he is in right now where he's frustrated and angry at the world and he feels hurt and full of a sense of justice, the good news is there's a God who understands that sense of justice, and there's a God who one day will restore that and restore and wipe away every tear and bring him into the fold and bring him into a community. And for right now, but until that day comes, he has given us the church in which the person can have a place where he can find other people who have felt outcast, who will see him based off the basis and work of Christ and not necessarily the basis and work of his linguistic ability in Chinese. That's good news. You see how that's very different from atonement. Okay, repentance is a cycle of living out the gospel in your own life. Do you want to know how to repent? I'm gonna teach you how to repent. Here's how you repent properly in a way that leads to times of refreshing that come from the presence of God. Okay, case in point. Buddy of mine. A buddy of mine calls me up one day and he says, Hey man, I'm really going through it right now. I feel like God is punishing me for my sin. I say, Oh, okay, now we know that's not true. So interesting. Why? He says, Well, there was a life I had before I became a believer, and I was talking to an ex-girlfriend of mine, and she brought up all those things. She said, You're the exact same person. She said, You should never be allowed to do certain things. And he said, and she had a point, like, I am that person. I said, Oh, okay. Man, that's rough. So I asked him, I said, Do you feel sorry for the things that you did? He's like, Yes, I never wanted to do that. It's not me. I know that. Okay, okay, okay, okay. I say, I agree with you. You know, scripture is very clear. Before you're a believer, you're a completely different person. Now you're a completely different person. You're you've been reborn. I've seen that in your life. I say, Okay, so the Holy Spirit has convicted your heart of sin. All right, but that's not the last step. It's one of three steps. I go, the second step here is for you to identify what the penalty is. You don't have to tell me what the sin is, but tell me what the penalty is. And he goes, I mean, by him telling me what the penalties were, I could kind of extrapolate what the sin was, but I didn't ask him for the sin. And I said, okay, look, what do you think that a fair judge would give you as a punishment for what you did? And he goes, Well, at the very least, I should never be allowed to be in a relationship. I should not be allowed to have kids, and I should be cut off from the church and cut off from the believers. Okay, cool. I would ask you to ask yourself the same question if you're thinking about a particular sin that's nagging at you. And the reason why I tell you to do this is because your heart already knows what your punishment should be for that. And whether or not you admit it to yourself or not, you are going to exact that same punishment from yourself. You will do this through cutting yourself down, you will do this through cutting yourself off from the presence of God, you will do this by verbal or emotional self-flagellation, right? But you know what the punishment is, and you're going to get it. Your justice will be served. And so I told them, I was like, okay, it is very important that you articulated those three things. And then what I did was I took him to scripture and I showed him in Isaiah 53 where it says he will be cut off from his offspring. Okay, he's not allowed to have kids. Jesus wasn't married, Jesus died alone. He did not have a wife to mourn him when he died. Okay. And then I showed him the place in scripture where it talks about he's cut off, he was counted as a curse for us. So he's cut off from the congregation of believers. All three of those things are exactly what he had told me. And I asked him, I said, Why are those things in scripture? And he's like, Oh, because Jesus died for our sins. I was like, Yes, but Jesus died for your sin. You see, the reason why Jesus had to die is such a horrific death, why he was tortured to death. We think of execution, we think of lethal injection, it's over in a couple minutes. No, he was tortured to death over the course of hours. When the full creative horror of the Roman Empire came down on him, why did he do that in those particular ways? It's because it's for your sin. It's for that one particular thing. And so, therefore, any judgment that you put upon yourself, you who's watching this, or my friend who I was talking to, anyone who any punishment that you put on yourself for that has already been paid for. And so you're exacting more than what is just for that thing. And I said, the very things that you say that you deserve, they're already paid for right here. I show it to him in scripture. Okay. But that right there is not enough to get you good news. That's okay news. That's oh man, I'm not going to get punished for this. But then in the back of the mind, you're thinking, well, what about in the future? All right. Then I tell him there's a third step, which is there's a two-way imputation on the cross. You bring your sin to Christ and he pays for your sin, right? But then you also take his reputation and you put it on you. So when we talk about Jesus as a good father, right? When God says he is a father to us, that's the reputation you have as a good father, my friend. When we talk about Jesus as the good husband, the one who is faithful no matter what, to his church, to his bride, we're talking about you. When we talk about Jesus as being eternal life, we're talking about you. And so therefore, only when you choose to believe based off of the finished work of Christ and not your own conscience and not your own self-condemning attitude, when you look at where your sin was paid for and you look at what is presented to you, and you choose to live in that reality, only then, and to the degree that you work that in your heart, will you truly understand that that is good news. Why am I talking about repentance when I talk about evangelism? Because what evangelism is, is kind of like a person doing CPR on another person. The person can't breathe. You are breathing for them. The person's heart won't beat. You are beating their heart for them. So when you do evangelism, remember we talked about they're incapable of not sinning. What you are doing is life support on their heart for repentance. You are showing them exactly where their sin is paid for and what life could be like as it is applied to that for that time of refreshing. And that, my friends, is life giving. So when you go out to share the gospel with someone, someone shares their story with you, and they share the frustrations that are on their heart, the deep concerns that they have of their relationship with Christ. You should probably have a Rolodex in your heart of that same exact thing that you've had to repent of and apply the good news to. And so, therefore, you can just pull from that and you can give to them. Um the event that kicked off the Protestant Reformation was Martin Luther's um nailing of the 95 Theses to the Doran Wittenberg. And the very first one of the 95 Theses was when God calls us and says that we are to live lives of repentance, he means we're to live lives of continual repentance. I want you to think about this. God leaves us behind in a sinful world knowing that we can't help it to sin, but he gives us yeast in our hearts to be able to eat up the sin of the world and to somehow poop out joy, to somehow poop out renewal and repentance in the world. And see, here's the wonderful thing is that by leaving that yeast inside a sugary, sinful world, the more we eat through that sin, the more we repent it out, the more we fill the world with joy, the more we actually participate in the renewal of the world. That's the gift of repentance, and that is how you become good at evangelism.