I listened to a well known Christian teacher address the question somebody asked about, if I keep returning to a particular sin, does that mean that I haven't really repented? His response was that, if you're completely resolved not to sin again, when you repent and confess, but then you unthinkingly commit that sin again, that's OK, but if, when you repent and confess, there's any sense in your mind that you might commit this sin again, then that's a concern, and you may be headed for destruction.
It seems to me, as someone who struggles with assurance about my standing with God, that this advice is not helpful. I'm not just saying that because I don't like the advice. Good advice enables us to grow and thrive in our relationship with God, but this advice just fuels uncertainty. I already feel like I'm letting God down and failing as a Christian, and then, according to this advice, even though I want to repent, because I think that, yes, I may actually commit this sin again, I'm condemned and there's something wrong with my heart and I'm on the wrong path.
There's a habitual element to a lot of sin. That's what makes it so difficult, because we fall into these vicious cycles. The idea that your repentance and confession is only real and valid if you're 100% convinced that you won't sin in that way again doesn't seem realistic or helpful or true. I think repentance can be a process.
It's like a catch 22 thing. According to this teaching, your repentance and confession is only valid if your sin isn't that bad. If you choose to sin, forget about it. You only have a hope if you accidentally sin. You don't intend to sin but you sin by mistake.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the fact that I can't say for sure, when I repent and confess my sin to God, that I won't do the same thing again, means that it's hopeless. That's what I thought for a while after hearing that teaching. But that kind of fatalism is exactly what the teaching is warning against. He was warning about being fatalistic about sinning again, but that requirement of being absolutely certain that I won't sin again, leads me to be fatalistic about being on the wrong path.
So, I don't agree that, if you have any sense that you may commit this sin again, then your repentance isn't real. It sets an unnecessary standard.
Later edit: I listened to some more of the teachings of that teacher and I think I misunderstood him. He was answering another question about the passage in Hebrews that talks about how, if we go on sinning there is no longer any sacrifice for us - in other words we are beyond hope. He talks about the meaning of 'go on' sinning and how it's not talking about a 1 off thing - it's talking about a pattern of behavior. He points out that it's not even talking about a periodic act. It's talking about a persistent, settled, unheedful pattern of behavior that is sinful. Also, if we look at where that same word (the Greek word translated as 'go on') is used elsewhere, we see that it connotes a kind of enthusiastic embrace or whole-heartedness. So, if we are resisting and making an effort, even if we do commit the sin, we aren't continuing in sin the way that that passage talks about.
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