Yes, yes, and no.
The first yes is the easiest. It is a gross misunderstanding of the gospel to believe that our sins are only forgiven as long as we keep up with them perfectly. We don’t enter into a state of grace when we pray for forgiveness then fall out of it when we sin. Too often people reason that those who take their own lives cannot enter the kingdom for this very reason- they didn’t have time to repent. The truth is all of our sins, past, present and future are covered by the blood of Christ the moment we rest in His finished work alone. And nothing can change that.
Which brings us to our second yes. It is precisely because we are sinners in need of grace that we are so profoundly ignorant of how sinful we are. If our repentance, in order to be genuine, required that we have an exhaustive knowledge of our sins, no one would ever be forgiven. We’re so bad that we haven’t the first idea of how bad we are. We’re so bad, in fact, that one of the ways the devil discourages us is by harnessing this counter-intuitive truth- the better we become the more aware we become of how terrible we are. To put it another way, the closer we get to the goal, the more fully we understand just how far we have to go.
Is there value in looking deep into our own sin? Of course there is. I’m not saying, “You’ll never be able to see them all, so don’t bother looking.” The glory of pursuing a deeper understanding of our own sin is that it gives us a deeper grasp of the beauty and scope of His grace. It also encourages us to greater patience over the sins of others. Best of all, the more aware we are of our own sin, the better able we are able to fight against it.
So where is the “no”? We can’t go to heaven with unrepentant sin when we are confronted about our sin, have no remorse over our sin, and make a decision to cling to it, rather than to Jesus. We all, I trust, struggle with what we call “besetting sins,” sins that seem to not want to let us go. That’s not what I’m talking about. For while we may often lose the battle against these sins, we are battling them. It’s when we give up that we are in trouble.
Please don’t misunderstand. I am neither saying that the ground of our forgiveness is the purity of our repentance, nor that a believer can lose his salvation by refusing to repent of a sin. What I’m saying instead is that a refusal to repent for a known sin is a sign that one has not in fact embraced the work of Christ. It doesn’t make you lose your salvation; it demonstrates that you never had it. Our peace with God is grounded in the finished work of Christ for us. That work becomes ours when we repent and believe. That repentance and belief both continue to grow as we begin the process of being remade into the image of the Son.
If you are struggling with a besetting sin, keep struggling. If you are struggling with the fear that your repentance isn’t good enough, repent for thinking it ever could be. It’s always a good thing, after we have repented, to repent for the weakness of our repentance. If you are struggling with a fear that a sin might sneak in between your last repentance and your death, repent for having such little faith in Jesus. If we are in Him, we are safe. Give thanks.