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“I can’t even repent correctly!!”  This may sound shocking and false, but it is actually plain and true. 

Let me step back and broaden the scope for you.  I am a sinner; totally depraved, having no goodness or righteousness or positive ability/proclivity for anything.  I am created; therefore, finite, limited, bound and temporal.  I am saved, by grace through faith in Christ as a gift from God.  Apart from Christ, I am insufficient, inadequate, incomplete.

Why did Christ come?  He himself says he came “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15).  It is required to be fully righteous to be in relationship with God.  I am grateful that Jesus Christ is my righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:9)! 

Why did Jesus have to undergo the baptism of John the Baptist?  I appeal to Matthew 3, where Jesus identified that he must ‘fulfill all righteousness.’  What was John’s baptism, other than a baptism of repentance?  Jesus did not sin; he did not need to repent.  Why was it a fulfillment of all righteousness to be baptized by John?  It is because my (your) repentance isn’t good enough on its own!!  It isn’t good enough at all.

I may deeply grieve my sin, feeling and expressing great remorse and regret, fostering genuine hatred for my sin, allowing godly sorrow to lead me to repentance (2 Cor. 7:10).  But that repentance does not lead to forgiveness/salvation without Christ.  My repentance is not truly righteous without Christ making it so.  Jesus underwent a baptism of repentance to fulfill the righteousness I need to be saved and have right relationship with God.

As I grow as a believer and think back on past sins of which I have repented, I can see how I could have “repented more.”  And sometimes I express this deeper level of repentance to God as my spiritual knowledge, understanding and wisdom exposes it.  This does not at all mean I hadn’t repented previously; or that now I have truly repented.  I trust that as I continue to grow in my faith relationship with Jesus that I will yet be able to repent to an even greater extent/degree still.  No matter how many iterations of this may take place, I still require Christ to make my repentance acceptable to God.

I don’t share this to discourage you or to share that I am discouraged.  I share this because I am encouraged and want to encourage you!  Praise God for his grace in Jesus Christ and the truth of his gospel that I don’t have to manufacture an acceptable repentance!  Jesus Christ the Righteous (1 John 2:1) is my (your) acceptable repentance.  Just as he is the sum and substance of my (your) faith.  There is no work of mine to contribute, it is all HIS work.

To be clear, it is not me doing 10% and Jesus supplies the lacking 90%...NO, Jesus provides the 100%.  Jesus plus nothing equals everything.  This does not remove my (your) responsibility to repent and believe, but do not put false hope in your own repentance and faith.  Instead, fully and gratefully, rest in the true hope of Christ’s fulfillment of all righteousness on your behalf.  And then “walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2:6), “fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work” (Col. 1:10), “which God prepared beforehand, that [you] should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).

Will you walk (and grow) in repentance with me?