Continual Repentance

As I’ve written about repentance confession over the past few weeks, it’s occurred to me that we are prone to two mistakes when it comes to feeling guilty as Christians. On the one hand, some Christians think it is wrong to feel guilty for sin because we are justified and need not fear any condemnation. On the other hand, some Christians don’t feel quite right if they aren’t experience low-level guilt for some infraction. What I’ve been arguing is that we should feel bad for sin, but then we should repent and enjoy God’s forgiveness.

As usual, Calvin puts it well:

Plato sometimes says that the life of a philosopher is a meditation upon death; but we may more truly say that the life of a Christian man is a continual effort and exercise in the mortification of the flesh, till it is utterly slain, and God’s Spirit reigns in us. Therefore, I think he has profited greatly who has learned to be very much displeased with himself, not so as to stick fast in this mire and progress no farther, but rather to hasten to God and yearn for him in order that, having been engrafted into the life and death of Christ, he may give attention to continual repentance. Truly, they who are held by a real loathing of sin cannot do otherwise. For no one every hates sin unless he has previously been seized with a love of righteousness. (Institutes, 614-615 [emphasis added])