FYI: Yesterday’s post (appropriately enough, on a Lord’s Day) was post number 1,000, by the way. Onward and, hopefully, upward.
Experience of sin does not teach us “knowledge of sin” in this sense; it only hardens our hearts. Nor is it repentance to call one’s self harsh names, nor is overdone self-depreciation. As a pastor, I have been first reader of two suicide notes which were self-depreciating to the point of black despair. Not every negative change of thinking (it may be called remorse, regret, sorrow) is, in itself, saving repentance. “The sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Corinthians 7.10, KJV) – as the suicides of King Saul and of Judas illustrate. Judas decided he should not have betrayed Jesus for money (Matthew 27.4). “I have sinned” was acknowledged by still hard-of-heart Pharaoh (Exodus 9.27), by vacillating Balaam (Numbers 22.34), and an insecure Saul (1 Samuel 15.24), as well as by remorseful Judas. Pronounced by Jesus “son of destruction” (John 17.12), Judas repented in this sense only (Matthew 27.3, KJV; better: “seized with remorse” NIV; or, simply, “changed his mind” ESV; metamellomai is used).
From: Systematic Theology: Biblical and Historical by Robert Duncan Culver (Fearn: Mentor, 2005), p. 710.
