Past Repentance?

[ThereMayYetBeHope]

Good morning, (from Los Angeles), I was wondering, how do you know you have reached the point of no return as Esau is described as having done in Hebrews 10? Is there a way you can know?

 

[a mere housewife]

Our opportunity for hearing and obeying is not past or future but 'this day' in Hebrews 3. I think we are not supposed to try to discern some point and figure out if we're past it but to press on this day in crying to Jesus, trusting His promises, and fighting rigorously with our sin. Salvation is not about how much grace we can find in us but how much grace is always present in Jesus -- not about our proven ability to turn from sins, but God's undepleted power to deliver us. He has that power now. The opportunity to cry honestly to him and fight our sins is now.

Our local pastor and church family are very important.

 

[ThereMayYetBeHope]

Amen. Thank you.

 

[RobertYettle]

Our opportunity for hearing and obeying is not past or future but 'this day' in Hebrews 3. I think we are not supposed to try to discern some point and figure out if we're past it but to press on this day in crying to Jesus, trusting His promises, and fighting rigorously with our sin. Salvation is not about how much grace we can find in us but how much grace is always present in Jesus -- not about our proven ability to turn from sins, but God's undepleted power to deliver us. He has that power now. The opportunity to cry honestly to him and fight our sins is now.

Our local pastor and church family are very important.

Wow, that was wonderful.

 

[Joshua]

Good morning, (from Los Angeles), I was wondering, how do you know you have reached the point of no return as Esau is described as having done in Hebrews 10? Is there a way you can know?

These thoughts are not to be considered in lieu of counsel with the overseers the Lord has placed over you for comfort, care, and discipline.

In my estimation of things, warnings given in Scripture are not intended to shut up a man to despair, but -rather- to drive him to Christ, the only Name whereby men must be saved. We must not take these warnings as harbingers of our own personal and sure final estate; rather, we must be soberly reminded of our need, and take hold of those unequivocal Gospel promises given to any man who would recognize his need of Christ, the vileness of his own sin and condition, and a desire to be rid of them by the means God has prescribed. Our sister Heidi has already well-spoken this.

Are we to presume upon God's grace, never acknowledging our sins against grace, against light, against knowledge, and against His many signal benefits? God forbid. However, does this mean we are not to make use of the promises held out to the dying sinner, bereft of comfort, filled with a broken and contrite heart, or -if not having those things- yet desires to have a broken and contrite heart? No, we should strive against both of these conclusions, believing God's promises, being found in the path where God holds out these promises officially to sinners, exhausting all means prescribed for the rectifying of our wretched condition, trusting in the Lord Who makes those means effectual, crying out to him for fresh supplies of His Spirit in new obedience, and trusting in His righteousness alone as the way by which we have favor with Him.

Here are a few quotations (my emphases added) from our Puritan fathers that may be helpful (while never giving leave to presumption).

John Flavel (The Method of Grace, p. 154):

Let all that are under inward troubles for sin, take heed of drawing desperate conclusions against themselves, and the final state of their own souls. Though your case be sad, it is not desperate; though the night be troublesome and tedious, keep on in the way to Christ, and light will spring up. To mourn for sin is your duty; to conclude there is no hope for you in Christ, is your sin. You have wronged God enough already, do not add a further and greater abuse to all the rest, by an absolute despair of mercy. It was sin formerly to presume beyond any promise, it is your sin now to despair against many commands. I would say as the apostle in another case, I would not have you mourn as men that have no hope: your condition is sad as it is, but yet it is much better than once it was. You were once fully of sin and void of sense, now you have the sense of sin, which is no small mercy. You were once quite out of the way and method of mercy, now you are in that very path wherein mercy meets the elect of God. Keep hope, therefore, at the bottom of all your troubles.​

Andrew Gray (Great and Precious Promises, pp. 26, 27):

Since Christ is the Fountain and Original of the Promises, be much in the application of the promises. And here I shall speak a little upon these three things. 1. A little unto the evidences and marks of those that have a right to apply the promises, and shall only name unto these few. The first is, To be a person under convictions of sensible need and necessity of such a promise; have ye convictions of such a necessity? Then from that ye may infer, “I have a right to the promises, and are not these glad tidings? I know there are some that are under such conviction of their sins, that they think it boldness to apply the promises. But I would say this unto you, that if ye were under sensible convictions of your lostness, ye would give a world for an hair of a promise whereby to hang. Believe it, the exercise of misbelief is never at its height, till ye would be content to dig through the earth to get a promise; and till we were at that, that our souls would pursue after them from the one end of the world to the other. And for the ground of this assertion, that sensible necessity giveth a right to the promises; if ye will look to these great promises of the everlasting covenant, are they not given to that Christian that is under a need [( Isa. 55.13* and Matt. 11.28)], where the great promise of the Gospel is given out, and the invitation of Jesus Christ is unto these that are weary and heavy laden. Christ would account it an excellent courtesy, that ye should not dispute, but believe; and that ye would look upon your necessities, as his call to believe the promises.​

*I think, perhaps, Mr. Gray may have meant Isaiah 55.1-3, although the use of v.13 is certainly not out of line​

Andrew Gray (ibid, pp. 72, 73):

Christ is easily to be gotten, if ye will but take him: Ye will get Christ, if you will but hear; yea, for one listening of your ear to his voice, ye shall get him; according to that Word, Isa. 55.3, “Hear.” And what of that? “And your souls shall live.” Is not this to get Christ at an easy rate? Isa. 45.22, “Look unto me all the ends of the earth, and be ye saved.” Have ye a desire to take Christ? Ye shall get him for that desire; according to that word, Isa. 55.1, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, let him come; and he that will, let him come.” Will ye but consent to take him, ye shall have him, and what can ye have at a lower rate than this? Shall never your cursed hands take the pen, and put your name to the blessed contract of marriage? Shall never these cursed hearts of yours cry forth, “Even so I take him, and do promise to live to him, and to die to him”?​

O strange! Will ye not do it? Upon what terms would the world have Christ? Is it possible to have him without a consent to take him? Oh! if ye would but open to him, he would condescend to come in unto you, and sup too with you, and ye with him. Do ye but stir to open, Christ hath the keys in his own hand, and he will help you to open.​

Oh! What if Christ, the precious gift of heaven, the eternal admiration of angels, that branch of righteousness, shall be despised, being offered upon so easy terms? Then cursed eternally shall be the person that thus undervalueth Christ, it had been better for him that he had never been born; cursed shall ye be in your birth, and in your life, and in your death; all the curses of the persons of the Trinity will light upon you; yea, believe it, O wife that hath a believing husband, in the day that great sentences of eternal excommunication from the presence of the Lord, shall be passed against the undervaluers of Christ, a believing husband will say “Amen!” to that sentence, even to his wife that did thus undervalue that noble Plant of Renown, and the wife, upon the other part, will say, with hearty consent, “Amen!” to that sentence, against the unbelieving husband, and the father to the son, and the son to the father.​

Andrew Gray (ibid, pp. 151, 152):

O! if Christians knew to judge of themselves, by what they are in Christ, and not by what they are in themselves, that with one eye they might look to themselves, and cry out, “I am undone,” and with another look to Christ, and cry out, “There is hope in Israel concerning me.” That is, with one eye they might look to themselves, and blush, and with another eye they might look to Christ, and hope. That with one eye they might look to themselves, and weep, and with another eye they might look to Christ, and rejoice. O Christian! wilt thou judge always of thy self, by what thou art in Christ, and not by what thou art in thy self: Yea, I would say this to thee by the way, when thou meetest with tentations that put thee to dispute thy interest, do but send them to Christ to get an answer and say, “O precious Christ, answer this tentation.” For this is Christ’s way with the soul. The Law must bring us back to Christ, and Christ must send us back to the Law, and deliver us over to it, not to the condemning power of it as before, but the directing and guiding power of it as a rule of holiness: So that a Christians’ whole life must be a sweet and constant travelling between Christ and the Law. When thou hast broken the Law, flee unto Christ to take away guilt, and when thou hast closed with Christ, come running out again in his strength, to perform the Law.​

Samuel Rutherford (Letters, pp. 34, 35):

I have heard your Ladyship complain of deadness, and want of the bestirring power of the life of God. But courage! He who walked in the garden, and made a noise that made Adam hear His voice, will also at some times walk in your soul, and make you hear a more sweet word. Yet, ye will not always hear the noise and the din of His feet, when He walketh. Ye are, at such a time, like Jacob mourning at the supposed death of Joseph, when Joseph was living. The new creature, the image of the second Adam, is living in you; and yet ye are mourning at the supposed death of the life of Christ in you. Ephraim is bemoaning and mourning (Jer. 31.18), when he thinketh God is far off and heareth not; and yet God is like the bridegroom (Song 2.9), standing only behind a thin wall and laying to His ear; for He saith Himself, “I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself.” I have good confidence, Madam, that Christ Jesus, whom your soul through forests and mountains is seeking, is within you. And yet I speak not this to lay a pillow under your head, or to dissuade you from a holy fear of the loss of your Christ, or of provoking and “stirring up the Beloved before He please,” by sin. I know, in spiritual confidence, the devil will come in, as in all other good works, and cry “Half mine;” and so endeavour to bring you under a fearful sleep, till He whom your soul loveth be departed from the door, and have left off knocking. And, therefore, here the Spirit of God must hold your soul’s feet in the golden mid-line, betwixt confident resting in the arms of Christ, and presumptuous and drowsy sleeping in the bed of fleshly security. Therefore, worthy lady, so count little of yourself, because of your own wretchedness and sinful drowsiness, that ye count not also little of God, in the course of His unchangeable mercy. For there be many Christians most like unto young sailors, who think the shore and the whole land doth move, when the ship and they themselves are moved; just so, not a few do imagine that God moveth and saileth and changeth places, because their giddy souls are under sail, and subject to alteration, to ebbing and flowing. But “the foundation of the Lord abideth sure.” God knoweth that ye are His own. Wrestle, fight, go forward, watch, fear, believe, pray; and then ye have all the infallible symptoms of one of the elect of Christ within you.​

 

[ThereMayYetBeHope]

Wow. Those are some great, powerful quotes. Thank you for sharing brother.