“Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: Repent and turn away from your idols, and turn away your faces from all your abominations. - Ezekiel 14:6 One axiom that was drilled into my brain going to church is that repentance is a turning away from sin. It is the act of forsaking, or as John Owen marks as a true sign of being a believer...HATING your sin. And we should. We should be repulsed by the sin that we once cherished. But yet, as we are repenting (turning away) of our sins, we are turning toward something. It's very easy to turn from one sin right into another. This is what I like to call "trading sins". One tendency that creeps into the church is to simply trade our sins for a more "socially" or "church" accepted set of sins. Depending on your church and context, a person may repent of drug abuse and then trade that for overeating (dependency). Gossip becomes veiled in "concern" for others. The external sin changes but the sinful nature stays the same. This mindset stems from two false understandings about sin. 1) Sin is simply action. In Mark 7, Jesus's disciples were chastised for eating without washing their hands. The old Jewish custom was that this made the food unclean, therefore, making the one who eats it unclean. Jesus refuted this error saying that it is what "comes out" of man that defiles, not what goes in. The sinful nature lies within us and is trying to find a way out. Things do not make us sin. They provoke what already lies inside. 2) Defeating daily, habitual sin is an act of will power Our churches have been heavily influenced, for better and worse, by theories of psychology and sociology over the last 50 years. A "therapy" mentality has led to idea that simple behavior modification will help us stop sinning. If we change our habits, schedules, and eliminate the things that tempt us to do X, Y, or Z then we can change our ways. This is simply not biblical or logical. That's like telling a tree to stop growing leaves. It can't. It's what they do. We are still warring with our sinful nature. So how does one truly turn away from sin. The heart has to be turned toward's God. The answer is the Gospel. We need the Gospel just as much today as we did yesterday and will need it just as much tomorrow. The Gospel is the power of God, not only to save us, but to sustain us in faith, and continually kill our sinful nature. The act of repentance involves turning away from sin and turning to God! Mark 1:15 says, "Repent AND BELIEVE THE GOSPEL." Faith has been described as two actions in one. We have faith by repenting of sin that leads to death and simultaneously believing the Gospel and trusting in what Jesus has done. As we turn away from our sin, we just turn to Jesus as our only hope. We must fully place our trust in His finished work on the Cross! As we repent and reject our sin, it should be because we see the beauty of Jesus. When place in the proper light of the Gospel, we can see that the sin we once loved is wretched in comparison to the surpassing loveliness of our Savior. We don't turn toward another idol, but as we repent and turn away from our sin, wturn our hearts toward God in adoration and worship. We can't simply try to be better people and "trade our sins" but we need the Lord every moment, every hour to lead us. As we turn from sin to we must turn to Jesus!