Application of justification dependent upon repentance?

[TryingToLearn]

I was talking with someone who was using Anthony Burgess to argue that grievous sins not specifically confessed always damn. So suicide would always automatically place one in Hell, but it’s the case that God has decreed no Christian to ever commit suicide.

In thinking about this, I realized that what I find strange about this is specifically that it makes the application of justification to certain sins dependent upon repentance for those sins. I suppose in my mind, I was always thinking that sins are just forgiven us as soon as we commit them since the application of justification is made immediately, but by a necessity of the precept, we are still commanded to confess our sins and repent so in that way one could conceivably commit suicide and assuming it wasn’t a habitual and reigning sin, such a sin would be forgiven even though lacking repentance for that sin.

Am I wrong? Is the person I'm discussing with wrong? How should we think of the relationship between justification and repentance?

 

[TryingToLearn]

And to clarify, the reason I’m thinking sin is immediately forgiven is because I understand the instrument that applies justification to be habitual faith specifically and since we always have habitual faith, it seems justification is always applied to us.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

Seems like another effort at "worrying" folk into dutiful repentance, meticulous introspection, and doubtful justification, in order to goad them into a sweaty sanctification. Scare them straight? How does this approach not devolve into justification-because-sanctification? The believer is only free to rest in Christ, if he has assured himself that he is presently of holy comportment, full of grace and abundant fruit of the Spirit.

To use the "suicide example," the instructor would dare his pupil to do so evil a deed, only if he would dare God to save him. Being successful, God will not save him; so do not dare.

There is no encouragement for the person already despairing and thinking of taking his own life: "You are not your own! You were bought at a great price; Christ has redeemed and justified you (who believe, and have been given ample proofs beside), so there is no great sin which you have committed that is too high a price for the blood of the Son of God. Whom he justified, he also glorified, taking pains to sanctify him between those points."

Instead, a man is left to wonder if this sin or that is too gross; and if forgotten and unconfessed (unlike peccadilloes, which are safely covered) is he quite lost? That strict instructor will warn the man not to spare his conscience for any sin: it may be too serious. "Always be nervous over whether you be in the justified state. Work, work, work; never rest."

The life of faith, that same is the life of repentance. It may leave the living doubtful if faith was present (and also repentance) in one who kills himself; but if a man was a believer (though grievously weak) then he was also repentant even of his suicide. Indeed, he now IS a believer, and he IS repentant of that wickedness; as he never ceased being a believer. Those who remain behind struggle with their uncertainty, which will not be relieved until they--hopefully not by their own desperate hand--arrive in heaven to inquire.

But one who is in Christ presently, will never and cannot lose his status of being united to his Redeemer. The quality of a man's repentance is not the measure of his salvation; but whether he is truly repentant or not. There is no measure we can take for the "truth" of our repentance, as if by some special act of contrition or many penances our hearts might be assured. A habit of sin ought to be frightening to the soul that so indulges itself; for every such act might be the last while (from the human standpoint) repentance is possible. Not in the sense that death could intervene thus preventing a requisite reversal; but that there is for some "no more room for repentance," Heb.12:17, after which the heart yearns no more for the mercies of reconciliation.

Repentance is a gift, Act.11:18, accompanying faith and all other benefits of a spiritual life, for one born of the Spirit. We should not put the Lord to the test, nor burden our loved ones with doubts about our profession of faith--not by a suicide, nor by any other life that threatens to falsify the external claim to be a child of God. Least of all ought we to make a liar of our own heart, by putting repentance away: habitually, or bringing it out by rote in order to dismiss it, or thinking of it as something once done and over with.

Instead, we should say with Luther and others, "Today, I am a sinner, and a saint. Today, I drown my old man in the water of my baptism, and repent of all his dead works. Today, my life is hidden with Christ in God, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith." Thanks be to God. The justified life is a life of faith and repentance.

 

[erickinho1bra]

wow, your friend has such a small view of what Christ has done on the cross. There is a misunderstanding there on so many front including, but not limited to:
1. The nature of justification/imputation
2. Our union with Christ
3. Ordo Salutis vs Historia Salutis
4. TULIP
5. At least 3 of the 5 Solas
6. Grace

I think I could write an essay on how each one of those issues are being utterly discounted. This sort of thinking sounds so semi-Pelagian/Arminian (and even Roman Catholic).

At the moment of our salvation, all our sins are paid for (past/present/and future). We don't incur new debt every time I sin or else we'd all go to Hell. Can you think of a single moment in your life when you perfectly loved God and loved your neighbor? And what if you had died before you asked God to forgive you of that life of passive disobedience?

 

[TryingToLearn]

wow, your friend has such a small view of what Christ has done on the cross. There is a misunderstanding there on so many front including, but not limited to:
1. The nature of justification/imputation
2. Our union with Christ
3. Ordo Salutis vs Historia Salutis
4. TULIP
5. At least 3 of the 5 Solas
6. Grace

I think I could write an essay on how each one of those issues are being utterly discounted. This sort of thinking sounds so semi-Pelagian/Arminian (and even Roman Catholic).

At the moment of our salvation, all our sins are paid for (past/present/and future). We don't incur new debt every time I sin or else we'd all go to Hell. Can you think of a single moment in your life when you perfectly loved God and loved your neighbor? And what if you had died before you asked God to forgive you of that life of passive disobedience?

A big part of his argument is from Dordt 5.5:

By such enormous sins, however, they very highly offend God, incur a deadly guilt, grieve the Holy Spirit, interrupt the exercise of faith, very grievously wound their consciences, and sometimes lose the sense of God's favor, for a time, until on their returning into the right way of serious repentance, the light of God's fatherly countenance again shines upon them.

And affirmations from Beza, Burgess, and others that were David to have died before he repented of his adultery, he would have been damned.

This puts me in a weird position because I want to say in a very real sense we’re David to have died in that state, he actually wouldn’t have been damned since he had habitual justifying faith in that state. But then I’m disagreeing with the Reformed here it seems.

 

[MyCrows]

A big part of his argument is from Dordt 5.5:

By such enormous sins, however, they very highly offend God, incur a deadly guilt, grieve the Holy Spirit, interrupt the exercise of faith, very grievously wound their consciences, and sometimes lose the sense of God's favor, for a time, until on their returning into the right way of serious repentance, the light of God's fatherly countenance again shines upon them.

And affirmations from Beza, Burgess, and others that were David to have died before he repented of his adultery, he would have been damned.

This puts me in a weird position because I want to say in a very real sense we’re David to have died in that state, he actually wouldn’t have been damned since he had habitual justifying faith in that state. But then I’m disagreeing with the Reformed here it seems.

This is interesting, as Dordt 5.5, being in the Fifth Head of Doctrine, is pertaining to the perseverance of the saints. It is about God's providential preservation of His people, even in the midst of their sinning.

5.5 isn't saying that the saints can be damned if they don't repent of these sins, it's saying that God chastens them, as a loving father, to bring them to repentance.

"By such enormous sins, however, they very highly offend God, incur a deadly guilt, grieve the Holy Spirit, interrupt the exercise of faith, very grievously wound their consciences, and sometimes lose the sense of God's favor, for a time, until on their returning into the right way of serious repentance, the light of God's fatherly countenance again shines upon them."

Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. - Hebrews 12:11 KJV

 

[TryingToLearn]

This is interesting, as Dordt 5.5, being in the Fifth Head of Doctrine, is pertaining to the perseverance of the saints. It is about God's providential preservation of His people, even in the midst of their sinning.

5.5 isn't saying that the saints can be damned if they don't repent of these sins, it's saying that God chastens them, as a loving father, to bring them to repentance.

"By such enormous sins, however, they very highly offend God, incur a deadly guilt, grieve the Holy Spirit, interrupt the exercise of faith, very grievously wound their consciences, and sometimes lose the sense of God's favor, for a time, until on their returning into the right way of serious repentance, the light of God's fatherly countenance again shines upon them."

Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. - Hebrews 12:11 KJV

Yes, the argument certainly isn’t that saints can be damned, but that were they to die in such sins they would be. Thus suicide (assuming there’s no mitigating circumstances) would always show one to have been unsaved