Two words—repentance and unrepentance—the latter is our problem and the former our solution. In Luke 24:45-48, Jesus commissioned His disciples, and in doing so commissioned His church, to preach repentance to all nations. The message has never changed. The message of the Old Testament prophets was repentance. The message of John the Baptist was repentance (Matthew 3:1-2). The message of Jesus was repentance (Matthew 4:17). The message of the apostles was repentance (Acts 2:38). And the message Christ has commissioned His church to preach to the world today is still repentance (Luke 24:47).

Although repentance is what Christ has commissioned us to preach to the world today, no message in the world today is more readily and roundly condemned. The moment you call for repentance—for people to turn from their sin with a broken heart and to turn to Christ with all of their heart—the big black hat of intolerance is put on your head. Though you preach repentance out of love for sinners and in hope of them turning from their sin to the Savior for salvation, you will immediately find yourself condemned for doing so as a hate monger, spewing hate speech, and possibly inciting hate crimes. In the end, you will find yourself wondering what hope there is for sinners today when the very prerequisite for their salvation is intolerable to their ears and censored and condemned throughout our world as hateful intolerance.

Indispensable to repentance is confession. Before we can repent of our sins we must first confess our sins. Sin must be owned up to before it can be turned from. As we are promised in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The only sin God will not forgive is the one you will not confess. Here, we learn, contrary to popular opinion, that God’s forgiveness, unlike His love, is not unconditional. Although God loves everybody, not everybody is forgiven by God. Only those who have confessed their sins and repented of their sins are forgiven of their sins by God.

The contemporary church, for the most part, is under the false illusion that Christians, unlike Christ, are to practice unconditional forgiveness. We, unlike our Lord, are to forgive everyone for their every sin, regardless of whether or not they’ve confessed and repented of their sins. Granted, Jesus taught us that we are to forgive our “bother” who sins against us “seventy times seven” times; that is, indefinitely (Matthew 18:21-22). However, He did not teach that we are to do so unconditionally. As He clearly teaches elsewhere in the Gospels, we are to always forgive our “brother” who has sinned against either us or the church, but only if and when he confesses and repents of his sin; otherwise, we are to separate ourselves from him and expel him from the church (Matthew 18:15-17). None of this is to be done out of spite, however, but only in the hope of it bringing our brother to his senses, so that he will confess and repent of his sins and we can be reconciled to our brother.

A good example of this is found in the Apostle Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians 5:1-13, Paul demands that the church expel a member who was sleeping with his own step-mother. Obviously, such a scandalous sin by a professed Christian was a black eye to the cause of Christ. Therefore, Paul called upon the church to immediately expel its unrepentant member and to disassociate itself with any such scandalous sin, lest its own reputation be soiled and it no longer be able to serve as a proper representative of Christ in Corinth. In 2 Corinthians 2:5-11, Paul takes the church to task, because the incestuous man had apparently and most sincerely confessed and repented, but the church had refused to forgive him or to be reconciled with him. According to Paul, the devil had now pulled the rug out form under the whole church, since it was failing to represent our Redeemer, whose redemption is the very heart and soul of our Christian Faith. 

We, like our Lord, should stand ever ready with wide-open arms to receive any sinner who confesses and repents of their sins. Like the angels in Heaven, the saints on this earth should also rejoice over the repentance of every sinner (Luke 15:10). What greater joy is there than the reconciliation of a sinner with God and of an estranger brother or sister in Christ with us and Christ’s church? Still, we are to forgive others as God has forgiven us (Ephesians 4:32), which means we are to forgive conditionally, those who have confessed and repented of their sins, not unconditionally, those who refuse to confess and repent of their sins. 

In light of all of the above, ask yourself this important question: How can God or even you be reconciled with an offending sinner who refuses to confess or repent of their sin? Can either God or you really reach reconciliation with them by climbing over their unrepentance? After all, will their unrepented of offenses not remain between you and them as irremovable barriers to any real reconciliation? Truly, any attempt at reconciliation with the unrepentant only enables them to continue to offend with impunity and without accountability, which only emboldens them in their sin and desensitizes them to it. As a result, their heart will grow harder, their iniquity will abound, and their wickedness will wax worse, which are all characteristics the Bible predicts will characterize the perilous times of the last days (Matthew 24:12; 2 Timothy 3:13).

We are living in the unrepentant perilous times of the last days, when stiff-necked sinners refuse to confess their sins, much less repent of them. Indeed, they not only insist that they are innocent of any offense against God or others, but are also incensed and enraged at the mere suggestion that they have committed any offense for which they need to confess and repent. To make matters worse, the contemporary church has all but stopped preaching what Christ commissioned it to preach; namely, the message of repentance, because its preaching of it greatly offends today’s self-professed “offenseless” world. Consequently, this offensive and out of control orb upon which we now find ourselves is rushing helter-skelter into the depths of unrepentant depravity, inescapable destruction, and inevitable judgment.