No Intent To Repent

As I was driving recently, four words came through my mind that I had never thought in that order before.  The words were:  no intent to repent. 

Those words got me started thinking.  If you look about our society, you see no intent to repent.  In fact, it is just the opposite; you see every intent to publicly justify all sorts of behaviors that have been called sin for thousands of years. 

Even in the church, you see no intent to repent, but rather every intent to accommodate the culture, entertainment, media, and lifestyles of the world around us.  The idea of repenting — turning away from sinful behaviors — has almost been completely lost in our time.  Why?

It is hard to repent if you don’t feel any sorrow or remorse for your behavior.  Remorse comes from God’s conviction.  However, if we push God away from our lives and our society, His conviction of sin leaves us as well.  So we feel justified in any kind of behavior we choose to engage in. 

If we won’t look at God’s character — His holiness — we will never even be aware of the wickedness within us or the evil in our environment.  Rather, we will falsely assume that we humans, who the Bible calls sinners, are instead good, noble, fine, and dandy. 

No intent to repent — could this be a fulfillment of Revelation 3:17?  “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”