God Wants More Than the Sorrow of the World

https://www.pcog.org/articles/3559/god-wants-more-than-the-sorrow-of-the-world

The traditional customs surrounding lent have an ancient origin, but also carry a deep lesson concerning repentance. Should Christians observe them?

Satan’s Counterfeit

Satan, the god of this world, has blinded all mankind (2 Corinthians 4:4; Revelation 12:9). These festivals are part of that deception. What kind of penalty is the “giving up of sweets, or television” for 40 days? The penitence of Lent is a form of worldly sorrow over the things that smite one’s conscience. But conscience is not a sufficient guide to right or wrong. The penitence of Lent is a counterfeit of genuine repentance of sin.

The Bible defines sin as “the transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4)—God’s law! God’s law defines right from wrong!

In the lead-up to God’s spring festivals, true Christians are admonished to examine themselves, to measure themselves against God’s law. They are to search out the sin in their lives and remove it. The Days of Unleavened Bread symbolize putting sin out of our lives. But mankind desires the temporary pleasures of sin and prefers to then do penance for them. Penance means to give up something in payment for sin. That is why the pagans, flocking wholesale into the professing Christian church, ousted the celebration of the Days of Unleavened Bread and substituted it with Lent—40 days of penance, of denying oneself certain physical pleasures in return for enjoying sin for the other days of the year!

God hates sin and doesn’t want us to show remorse for our excesses and acts of moral turpitude only to return to that way of life as soon as we have supposedly paid for our sin with self-punishment. Sin exacts the death penalty (Romans 6:23). No amount of self-reproach can pay for sin—only Christ’s blood can! God doesn’t want penance, but repentance.

As we approach the God-ordained spring festivals and begin to examine ourselves, let’s understand this counterfeit and deepen our understanding of why Paul admonished the Corinthians to let “godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of,” and how this “sorrow of the world” only “worketh death” (2 Corinthians 7:10).