“[The truths relating to a genuine conversion do not mean] that a Christian will never sin.
“Repenting of sin doesn’t necessarily mean that you stop sinning – certainly not altogether, and often not in particular areas, either. Christians are still fallen sinners even after God gives us new spiritual life, and we will continue to struggle with sin until we are glorified with Jesus (see, e.g., Gal. 5:17; 1 John 2:1).
“But even if repentance doesn’t mean an immediate end to our sinning, it does mean that we will no longer live at peace with our sin. We will declare mortal war against it and dedicate ourselves to resisting it by God’s power on every front in our lives.
“Many Christians struggle hard with this idea of repentance because they somehow expect that if they genuinely repent, sin will go away and temptation will stop. When that doesn’t happen, they fall into despair, questioning whether their faith in Jesus is real.
“It’s true that when God regenerates us, he gives us power to fight against and overcome sin (1 Cor. 10:13). But because we will continue to struggle with sin until we are glorified, we have to remember that genuine repentance is more fundamentally a matter of the heart’s attitude toward sin that it is a mere change of behavior. Do we hate sin and war against it, or do we cherish it and defend it?
“One writer put this beautifully: ‘The difference between an uncoverted and converted man is not that the one has sins and the other has none; but that the one takes part/[sides] with his cherished sins against a dreaded God, and the other takes part/[sides] with a reconciled God against his hated sin.’”
-- Greg Gilbert, “What Is the Gospel?” pp. 81-82, quoting William Arnot, “Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth” (London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1884), 311.
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