Sensitiveness to sin

If, as we have seen, a leading feature of revival preaching is the setting forth of God’s holy character, and his righteous law, and his judgement against sin, then it follows that the experience of those being revived will be characterise by repentance.  If revival is to be defined as the coming back to life of something very nearly like a corpse, then it follows that the first act which must be performed is to mourn and confess the spiritual lifelessness from which we would be delivered.

A deep dense of sin is therefore an essential feature of revival, especially at its outset.  This is attested by a number of key writers on the subject:-

No upsurge of religious interest or excitement merits the name of renewal if there is no deep sense of sin at its heart.

Packer, God in our midst, 28.

When revival comes, an intense spirit of conviction will be felt immediately.  Conduct that has always seemed acceptable will appear unbelievably wicked.  Prejudices that have characterised professing Christians for decades will be revealed for the grievous sins that they really are.  Private indulgences upon which a person has looked with favour for years will suddenly seem to merit all that wrath of God poured out forever.  Prayerlessness, ignorance of Scripture, sins of omission, and failure in good works will no longer be defended by a myriad of excuses, but will be laid open before the God ‘with whom we have to do.’

Roberts, Revival, 23.

When you have a revival you see men and women groaning, agonising under conviction of sin.  They are so conscious of their unworthiness, and their vileness, that they feel they cannot live.  They do not know what to do with themselves.  They cannot sleep.  They are in agony of soul.

Lloyd-Jones, Revival, 41.

Nor does this repentance consist merely in ‘acknowledging’ that one is a sinner.  It involves deep contrition, even agony:-

Conduct that has always seemed acceptable will appear unbelievably wicked…words carelessly spoken will rise from the forgotten graves to haunt and torment, until such a wave of conviction is felt that it will seem impossible to stand before it…Indeed when revival comes, so powerful will be the conviction, that persons who once thought themselves well worthy of heaven will stand in wonder and amazement, that they are not already burning in the fires of hell.  When revival comes, the agony over sin will be so great that the thought of prolonging life in the midst of such wickedness will be intolerable.

Roberts, Revival, 23.

And this new sensitiveness to sin begins to lead to a radical change of attitude and behaviour:-

The newly revived remembers sins long ago forgotten, but now is unable and unwilling to conceal those sins any longer.  As the light of God’s truth shines upon him he knows what he must do.  He begins apologizing for lies, paying long overdue debts, and making restitution whenever and wherever needed.

Roberts, Revival, 26.

Some biblical examples

A number of Scripture passages illustrate the relationship between repentance and revival.  For example, the revival under Samuel was accompanied by a heartfelt expression of repentance on the part of the gathered people:-

1 Sam 7:5f  Then Samuel said, “Assemble all Israel at Mizpah, and I will intercede with the Lord for you.”  When they had assembled at Mizpah, they drew water and poured it out before the Lord.  On that day they fasted and there they confessed, “We have sinned against the Lord.”

Kaiser comments on this moving passage as follows:-

Verse 6 notes that after the people assembled, ‘they drew water and poured it out before the Lord.’  There is no parallel to this act in the Old Testament.  The Targum renders this phrase paraphrastically, saying ‘They poured out their hearts in repentance before the Lord.’  Apparently, the significance was that just as water poured to the ground could not be collected again, so the commitment of their lives indicated a similar desire.  But perhaps even more to the point was the later expression in Lamentations 2:19, ‘Pour out your heart like water,’ or the one in Psalm 22:15, ‘poured out like water.’  Surely this act signalled a deep contrition and humiliation for their sin.  The water in this case may have reflected the tears, grief, and sorrow, the misery that their sins had caused them and for which they were now sorry.

Kaiser, Quest for renewal, 58f.

Sometimes, it falls to an individual to make confession to the Lord on behalf of a sinful and backslidden people.  So Ezra is found, sitting speechless for whole day, then making his heartfelt prayer to the Lord, and then to be joined by the people themselves, acknowledging and confessing their sin:-

Ezra 9,10  Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered round me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles.  And I sat there appalled until the evening sacrifice.  Then, at the evening sacrifice, I rose from my self-abasement, with my tunic and cloak torn, and fell on my knees with my hands spread out to the Lord my God and prayed: “O my God, I am too ashamed and disgraced to life up my face to you, my God because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens….”…While Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of the God, a large crowd of Israelites – men, women and children – gathered round him.  They too wept bitterly.

There are other important references to repentance in connection with revival in the Old Testament.  Of particular note are the prayers of Nehemiah (Neh 9) and Daniel (Dan 9), certain passages in the Psalms (eg Psa 79:8ff; 85:4), and many passages in the Prophets (eg Hab 3:2).  Of great importance too is the way in which the Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit was accompanied by deep contrition on the part of many who heard the gospel (Acts 2:37).

Perhaps this new super-sensitivity to sin helps to explain what happened in the case of Ananias and Saphira (Acts 5):-

A divine judgement, certainly; but what account of it should we give in human terms?  The most natural view is that in that revitalized community, where sensitiveness to the presence of God and hence to the foulness of sin was exceedingly strong, the realisation of what he had done so overwhelmed Ananias that his frame could not stand it, and he died of shock; and Saphira the same.  They literally could not live with their sin.

Packer, God in our midst, 30

Some examples from Christian history

An apparently spontaneous sensitivity to sin was apparent to a minister during the 2nd Great Awakening in America:-

I…began to make family visits in different sections of the town….I found…many persons of different ages, under serious and very deep impressions, each one supposing his own burdens and distresses of min, on account of his sins, to be singular, not having the least knowledge that any others were awakened.  It was evident, that the Lord had come into the midst of us in the greatness of his power, producing here and there, and among young and old, deep conviction of sin.

in Sprague, Lectures on revivals, App, 46.

Individuals and groups of people can be suddenly overcome by conviction of sin, as in Wales in 1858:-

On October 3rd, 1858, Humphrey Jones preached at Ysbyty Ystwyth.  The preacher’s message was based upon Amos 6:1, and it was delivered with a sense of urgency and solemnity but the atmosphere was cold and the congregation unresponsive.  [In the church meeting which followed] the preacher complained bitterly of the frigidity of the religious atmosphere, and turning to the elders, said, ‘Not one of you helped me with so much as an “Amen”.’  One of them…rose, and replied, ‘It is very difficult for a man, when the ministry condemns him, to dry “Amen” with it.’  Overcome by sudden feeling, the old man burst into tears, and fell into his seat as if in a swoon.  He was a man of undoubted piety, and unfailing faithfulness in all departments of Christian work; and when he was heard acknowledging his guilt in the face of the sermon, the entire church was struck by an overwhelming wave of emotion, and, as if by a simultaneous impulse, every face was bowed low and bathed in tears.

Evans, Revival comes to Wales, 53.

The same revival yields the following anecdote, which movingly illustrates the way in which older people sometimes found repentance:-

There were many old people in the congregation at Blaencefn.  One of these, William Thomas, ‘a man of blameless walk, a great reader, a fine theologian, the best teacher in the Sabbath-School, and a man who conducted family worship regularly, was the last of the veterans to bend.  One evening he rose in his pew to leave, halted for a space by the big seat, then hardened his face and proceeded as far as the door, turned back, hesitating, but finally passed out into the court in front.  He pulled up there again for a few minutes, then dragged his unwilling feet as far as the gate leading to the roadway.  Once he stopped short again, listening to the music within.  Stepping forward, his white locks floating on the breeze, he was heard soliloquizing despairingly, “Oh! there is no one on the road but the devil and myself!”  A few moments later he added, “This is the most terrible war I was ever in!”  Before day-break David Evans, shoemaker and deacon, heard a loud knock at his door, and a peremptory cry- “David Evans, how can you sleep in such a storm as this?”  The distracted veteran was admitted, and after the reading of Scripture and prayer, the tempest-tossed soul found Him who is a hiding-place from the wind.’

Evans, Revival comes to Wales, 103.

Younger people too experience deep conviction, as a story from the 1859 revival in Ulster shows.  A Coleraine schoolboy was observed to be under deep conviction of sin:-

The master, seeing that the little fellow was not fit to work, advised him to go home, and call upon the Lord in private.  With him he sent an older boy, who had found peace the day before.  On their way they saw an empty house, and went in there to pray together.  The two schoolfellows continued in prayer in the empty house till he who was weary and heavy-laden felt his soul blessed with sacred peace.  Rejoicing in this new and strange blessedness, the little fellow said, ‘I must go back and tell Mk -.’  The boy, who, a little while ago, had been too sorrowful to do his work, soon entered the school with a beaming face, and, going up to the master said, in his simple way, ‘O Mk -, I am so happy; I have the Lord Jesus in my heart.’…The attention of the whole school was attracted.  Boy after boy silently slipped out of the room.  After a while, the master stood upon something which enabled him to look over the wall of the playground.  There he saw a number of his boys ranged round the wall on their knees in earnest prayer, every one apart.  The scene overcame him.  Presently he turned to the pupil who had already been a comforter to one schoolfellow, and said, ‘Do you think you can go and pray with these boys?’  He went out, and, kneeling down among them, began to implore the Lord to forgive their sins, for the sake of Him who had borne them all upon the cross.  Their silent grief soon broke into a bitter cry.  As this reached the ears of the boys in the room, it seemed to pierce their hearts, as by one consent they cast themselves upon their knees, and began to cry for mercy.  The girl’s school was above, and the cry no sooner penetrated to their room than, apparently well knowing what mourning it was, and hearing in it a call to themselves, they, too, fell upon their knees and wept.  Strange disorder for schoolmaster and schoolmistress  to have to control!  The united cry reached the adjoining streets.  Every ear, prepared by the Spirit, at once interpreted it as the voice of those who look upon Him who they have pierced, and mourn for Him.  One and another of the neighbours came in, and at once cast themselves upon their knees and joined in the cry for mercy.  These increased, and continued to increase, till first one room, them another, them a public office on the premises, in fact, every available spot, was filled with sinners seeking God.  Clergymen of different denominations, and men of prayer, were sought, and they spent the day in pleading for the mourners…Thus passed hour after hour of that memorable day.  Dinner was forgotten, tea was forgotten, and it was not till eleven o’clock at might that the school premises were freed from their unexpected guests.

in Gibson, The Year of Grace, 49f.

Similar scenes of conviction were seen in Wales in 1904.  Of a meeting involving the revivalist Evan Roberts we read:-

Order gave place to confusion.  Some were shouting, ‘No more, Lord Jesus, or I die!’  Others cried for mercy.  The noise of weeping, singing and praising, together with the sight of many who had fainted or lay prostrate on the ground in an agony of conviction was as unbelievable as it was unprecedented.

Evans. The Welsh Revival of 1904,

China, too has seen periods of deep conviction, as in 1932:-

In China, certain prisoners, who were tortured mercilessly, stubbornly refused to admit their wrong doing.  During the 1932 Shantung Revival, when the same prisoners came under the convicting influence of the Holy Spirit, they confessed their sins and crimes immediately.  What torture could not do, the Spirit of God accomplished.

Egerton, Flame of God, 60.

Pastoral implications

Our consideration of the place of repentance in revival has a number of practical implications.  First, it reminds us that conviction of sin is an essential pre-requisite for spiritual growth, in the individual as well as in the Christian community:-

Many times I have observed spiritual growth in others begin with…a sobering vision of the depth of personal sin.  Such ‘dark nights of the soul’ can be painful and even terrifying, but they are also purifying – ‘purgatory arriving early,’ as Luther said.  It takes times to get used to living with the clear truth about ourselves.  But nothing else is so effective in teaching us to rely on the righteousness of Jesus the Messiah to commend us to God.

Lovelace, Renewal as a way of life, 71.

Secondly, we should note that true repentance should be, and will be, marked by appropriate confession:-

Confession of sin becomes the order of the day.  Those who have sinned in private will make their confession before God whom they have wronged.  Individuals who have sinned against other individuals will go to those persons and make their peace.  Those who have sinned publicly will find the grace of Christ to make public confessions.

Roberts, Revival, 26.

Public confession of sin can be hard, but where appropriate has a cleansing and liberating quality:-

In times of renewal the impulse constantly recurs, often in defiance of cultural conditioning, to signalize and seal one’s repentance by public confession of what one is renouncing…One or more of three motives prompts public confession.  It is partly for purgation: individuals feel that the only way to get evil things off their consciences and out of their lives is by renouncing them publicly.  Sins are also confessed for healing (Jas 5:16): pocketing pride and admitting to one’s faults and failings to others is part of God’s therapy.  And, finally, sins are confessed for doxology: ‘Come and hear, all who fear God, and I will tell of what he has done for my soul’ (Psa 66:16).  This kind of confession is likely to appear spontaneously wherever there is genuine renewal.

Packer, God in our midst, 32.

There are, however, certain dangers to be noted and avoided in connection with confession of sin:-

Two specific dangers threaten all confession: too little and too much.  Beware lest your concern for propriety and pride keep you from confessing those sins the public deserves to hear about.  Likewise, beware that your earnestness in making things right before God does not play into the hands of the great deceiver who would love to turn your confession of sin into an inducement for another to sin.

Roberts, Revival, 126.

On the whole, the confession of sin should be as wide as the circle sinned against:-

Those who have sinned against individuals need to approach those individuals, confess their sins, and make things right.  If the position you now hold was obtained by knocking another persons down and standing on him, you need to go to that person and make it right.  If you have stolen from or defrauded any individual, you need to confess your sin to that individual.  However, if your sin against an individual is generally known by his family and has affected their lives and their view of you, then confession to this larger group is in order.  In shorts, the circle of confession should be as broad as the circle of the sin’s influence.

Roberts, Revival, 119f.

In the third place, since conviction and confession of sin is so central to the progress of a revival, ministers should make it their business to preach on this subject searchingly and extensively:-

Possibly the greatest practical lesson from the 1735 revival for the pulpit of our day is that when ministers have to deal with indifference and unconcern they will simply beat the air unless they begin where the Holy Spirit begins, ‘When he is come he will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement’ (Jn 16:8).

Murray, Jonathan Edwards, 130f.

This was the approach of Edwards, the Tennents, and similar revival leaders:-

They …believed that it was God’s usual way and manner, in bestowing grace, to work in sinners prior to their regeneration in order to reveal their false security and to bring them to conscious emptiness and need.  While they did not deny that faith may be given to infants, or even to some in older years, without any prior period of conviction, they understood the Bible to teach that, as a general rule, conviction precedes conversion.  Such conviction, in their view, is not a qualification which entitles a sinner to believe, nor can it savingly separate a man from sin, but it brings those who are destined for salvation to the acknowledgement of their need of mercy.”

Murray, Jonathan Edwards, 128f.

So, however unpopular or unfashionable it may be, there is a great need to preach about sin and its consequences:-

A man must feel himself in misery, before he will go about to find a remedy; be sick before he will seek a physician; be in prison before he will seek for a pardon.  A sinner must be weary of his former wicked ways before he will have recourse to Jesus Christ for refreshing.  He must be sensible of his spiritual poverty, beggary, and slavery under the devil, before he thirst kindly for heavenly righteousness, and willingly take up Christ’s sweet and easy yoke.  He must be cast down, confounded, condemned, a cast away, and lost in himself, before he will look around for a Saviour.

Robert Bolton, in Murray, Jonathan Edwards, 128.

There is no genuine revival without repentance, and so preaching heart-searching preaching on this subject is of vital importance:-:-

Today the Holy Saviour is offered on God’s terms of free grace, to all and sundry, irrespective of their attitude to God’s holiness and to the regal claims of the majestic Christ.  He is offered, may I say kindly, as One who will deliver from the penalty of sin, and yet allow the sinner to remain in love with his sins.  He is presented as the Saviour of sinners, while His royal claims are ignored.  The full implications of the Christian Gospel and the Christian life are entirely forgotten.  The inevitable consequence of such teaching and preaching is that we have many ‘converts’ struggling to life the Christian life who have never been born again.

J.A. Stewart, Opened windows, 63.

What sins require especial attention in preaching today?  Perhaps the greatest idolatry in the latter part of the present century is the worship of self:-

Self-knowledge and self-fulfilment are considered to be the core of human achievement by the nonreligious world.  The classical Greek counsel was ‘know thyself’.  Humanistic psychology and the human potential movement, forces which helped create what Tom Wolfe called ‘The Me Decade’, have stressed the creative force in each individual which must be set free from society’s repressive grip.  Yet the search for these goals has produced a lot of people who are at best self-preoccupied and at worst obnoxiously self-assertive.

Lovelace, Renewal as a way of life, 18f.

Evangelicals have as much need for self-examination as any other group of Christians:-

There may be a germ of truth in the old Protestant conviction that the millenial state cannot be reached before the destruction of the Roman antichrist.  Nevertheless, the Protestant antichrist also needs to be destroyed!  Protestant superstition and enculturation have generated a set of diseases worse than Catholic hagiolatry.  The worst viruses in modern Catholicism are diseases caught from liberal Protestantism!…Mainline Protestantism itself is a tragedy when viewed with the eyes of biblical faith.  The Western educational system has systematically smashed the Reformers’ scriptural foundations, exiling them to a world beyond historical testing, leaving the church with no role in the real world except to supply Christian reasons for seeking humanistic goals.

Lovelace, Renewal as a way of life, 95.

What, specifically, are the problems which currently beset Protestant orthodoxy?-

Fundamentalist, charismatic and evangelical believers who have retained their roots in Scripture are contemptuous of the errors of Catholics and mainline Protestants.  But they themselves are victims of distortions which make them a laughingstock to these two other groups and to secular onlookers.  Civil religion which wraps the cross up in the American flag, television hucksters and celebrity superstars, factions and political divisions worse than the Sanhedrin, a political and economic posture unrelated to the needs of the poor, evangelistic methods which are just religious forms of hard-sell salesmanship, canonized eccentricities and vagaries of the spirit, heretical doctrines sweeping through congregations like varieties of influenza – these are just a few of the problems in conservative Protestantism.

Lovelace, Renewal as a way of life, 96.

Conclusion

Lest it be thought that all this attention to sin and repentance leads inevitably to a morbid self-image, let our psychology be guided by biblical, not secular humanistic, principles:-

Secular psychologists may [suggest] that Christians like Augustine and Edwards promote an unhealthy and negative self-concept – what might be called a ‘guilty worm’ neurosis.  Unfortunately, many Christians do try to live with a bad self-image, mistaking it for the virtue of humility.  But this is the devil’s estimate of their character and gifts.  Humiliation does not produce humility; instead, it creates an open psychological wound that inhibits our ability to love ourselves, God and others.  The Bible does not advise us to think ill of ourselves, only to think realistically: ‘Do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.’ (Rom 12:3 NIV)

Lovelace, Renewal as a way of life, 36.