Host distinguishes biblical repentance from spiritual abuse by contrasting general counsel with rigid mandates, citing Creflo Dollar and Zacchaeus to illustrate that pastors must avoid prescribing specific good works like reading timelines. While acknowledging authority to command repentance, the speaker asserts that dictating exact restitution amounts denies Christian liberty and mimics Catholic penance heresy. Ultimately, true reconciliation requires voluntary action guided by the Holy Spirit rather than arbitrary pastoral requirements, ensuring good works evidence genuine change without becoming abusive commands. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Repentance Through Good Works00:08:32
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If you actually are saved, then you've repented of sin.
And if you actually repented of sin, then you are going to, the evidence of that, the fruit of that, is that you're going to do good works.
In keeping with repentance.
Now, a couple things to say here.
There is a fine line, and we've got to be careful with this because I've seen it crossed.
There's a fine line in doing good works in keeping with repentance versus doing penance.
Now, again, we are Protestant Christians, we are not Roman Catholics.
We do not prescribe penance to people, but we do command people to do good works in keeping with repentance.
Or, as Jesus would say to people, go and sin no more.
Your sins are forgiven.
Go and sin no more.
Go not just with forgiveness, but go with a new life.
A new life that manifests the reality that you are a forgiven person.
Live differently.
You've been forgiven freely, but let's now see some fruit.
There's a fine line between prescribing penance and encouraging people to go and sin no more, to do good works in keeping.
To bear good fruit in keeping with repentance, right?
So let me give you an example.
Okay, so if you're a pastor and somebody commits a sin, whether it be a fellow elder or it be a deacon or a member in the church, and you've determined that they've committed a sin, and even you think that they've made a habit out of it, that it's become kind of not just a one off, but it's become a pattern, that this person is sinning in the area of whatever it may be, right?
What you can say with every ounce of authority in Scripture is, You must repent.
And to repent is both word and deed.
Word and deed.
So you must acknowledge your sin, repent of your sin to God and anyone else that you may have sinned against.
If your sin was public, then you need to publicly repent in word, saying, I was wrong.
Right?
Creflo Dollar so far looks good.
Right?
He publicly sinned in his public teaching.
So he's now publicly making a statement that he was wrong.
So, you need to do that.
And then you need to do good works, not just repentance in word, but also repentance in deed.
And so, what you can say if you have a fellow elder or a deacon or a member in your church is you can say verbally, you need to own your sin.
You need to own your sin.
Confession of sin is not informing God, right?
God is omniscient.
He doesn't need to be informed, He already knows our sin.
We're not informing Him, oh, God, I messed up.
You may not have seen it.
I wanted to bring it to your attention.
That's not what we do.
When we confess our sin to the Lord, we are not informing Him, we are agreeing with Him.
That's what confession is.
Confessing your sin to the Lord is not merely informing the Lord of your sin, but agreeing with the Lord in what He says about the severity of your sin.
So that's first repent in word, which is to confess your sin to the Lord and to anyone else that you may have sinned against.
The Bible also says, Confess your sins one to another that you might pray for one another that you might be healed.
All right, that so far, what we have is repentance in word.
You own your sin.
You don't just inform God, but you're owning it and agreeing with God about how serious sin really is.
You're not minimizing it.
You're not making light of it.
You're not blame shifting.
You're owning your sin before the Lord and anyone else you sinned against, agreeing with what God says in his word about the seriousness of your sin.
That's repentance in word.
Repentance indeed now is doing good works that evidence that, that prove that, that are the result of that, that line up with that in keeping in line with your repentance.
Let your life mirror what you just said.
You just said you repent.
That this is heinous sin before God, that you wronged God and that you wronged people.
Okay, now live like it.
So, what would you do?
Now, here's where the fine line between penance and doing good works in keeping with repentance often gets breached.
What guys will do, what pastors sometimes will do, and this is spiritual abuse, this is a misuse of a pastor's authority, is they will then prescribe with great specification what those good works in keeping with repentance must look like.
So, you sinned, we're confronting you about your sin.
Okay, you're verbally acknowledging.
So, you are not just informing God, and you're not blame shifting or being defensive.
You're being humble, and you are agreeing with the correction that you've just received, that you have sinned in this area.
You're confessing your sin to the Lord, agreeing with Him, and confessing your sin to anyone else that you've sinned against that you might need to confess that sin to.
And now we want you to do good works in keeping with repentance.
And this specifically is exactly what those good works must look like.
You must read this book.
You have to.
And if you don't, you are impenitent.
That's Catholic.
That is Catholic.
That's spiritual abuse.
God hates that.
God hates that.
And pastors do it all the time.
Because what a pastor, so let's just, to get more specific, let's say lust.
And that's too general also.
Let's be even more specific.
Let's say looking at pornography.
So, in the realm of lust, but specifically the action of looking at pornography.
Okay, you confront that individual in your church.
You say, This is sin, and I have evidence of this sin, right?
Two or three independent lines of witness, of testimony.
So it's not conjecture, it's not speculation.
This is evidence that you committed a sin.
I am now charging you, confronting you with your sin.
You need to repent in word.
We've already covered that.
And now you need to do good works in keeping with repentance.
All that's perfectly biblical.
And then what you can do is you can then counsel, right?
There's the authority of counsel and the authority of command.
Pastors need to know the difference.
With counsel, you can then say to them, I think that you would be wise and do well in your quest to do good works in keeping with repentance.
So you've owned your sin of looking at pornography and you've said, I want to live a new life.
I want to repent, not just in my word, but in my deed.
I want to change my actions.
I want to stop looking at pornography.
Great.
Praise the Lord.
Now let's see it.
Live it out.
Let's see good fruit in keeping with repentance.
Let's see your deeds align with your verbal statement that you've just made.
Okay.
And I think that if you want your deeds to align with that statement, here is some counsel, not a command, but some counsel of what might help you.
I think that you might want to reach out to so and so and see if they would check in on you once a week to hold you accountable.
I think you might want to get covenant eyes or some kind of software on your phone.
Or I think you might want to just, for a season, get a flip phone.
Get rid of your smartphone.
Or, I think that you need to do this.
I think you need to do that.
I think you need to avoid certain shows on television, just watch less TV.
I think in all these ways, it would serve you well in your quest to do good works in keeping with repentance.
What you can't do, though, all that may be fine.
What you can't do is prescribe penance.
What's the difference between encouraging good works in keeping with repentance versus commanding and prescribing penance?
Well, the difference is twofold it's very simple counsel versus command, and general counsel versus specific prescriptions.
Holy Spirit Guides Deeds00:05:38
Right?
The only way that you will prove to me and the other elders in this church, the only way you will prove to us that your repentance is wrought by God and genuine is if you read these 17 books in this timeline on these days for this length of a season and write these papers.
And yeah, you're Catholic, bro.
You're Catholic.
So you need to step down and stop being a Protestant pastor.
You're a Catholic.
That's penance, that's heresy.
You're just, it's not just you're not being an elder with that level of spiritual abuse.
You're not being a Christian.
You're not being a Christian.
Ironically, you need to repent.
You need to repent.
Okay, so we can't do that.
So, my point is, I can't say to Creflo Dollar, you must do these exact things.
However, there are some things he has to do.
Okay, so it's doing good works, right?
This is where it gets blurry.
On one hand, general.
It can't be specifically prescribed penance.
But on the other hand, it may be general, but it's not arbitrary.
And there's a difference.
It's not random, right?
So it can't be I stole from my neighbor, right?
In the middle of the night, I snuck in through the window of his house and I stole $1,000 out of his safe.
And I know I'm owning that.
I've confessed my sin to God and I've confessed my sin to the To my neighbor, and I know that repentance in word is not enough.
It also needs to be repentance in deed.
And so, to make it right, because I stole $1,000 from him, I'm going to give $100 to my other neighbor in generosity.
Well, but that doesn't work.
You didn't wrong your other neighbor, you wronged this neighbor.
And you stole $1,000 from him, you need to give him $1,000 back.
And if you did it 10 years ago, you probably need to give him more than $1,000.
But however, look, Jesus doesn't say, Zacchaeus, for your repentance to be real, you must give back four times.
No, Zacchaeus says that.
And Jesus gives Zacchaeus, underneath the work of the Holy Spirit, who gifts people with repentance, Jesus gives Zacchaeus the freedom, the Christian liberty to say, I'm going, there's certain things that are not up for debate.
I'm going to do good works in keeping with repentance.
That's non negotiable.
I'm going to do that.
But I'm going to do it in this way.
And not just any way, not random, not arbitrary.
I wrong certain people, and I'm going to make it right with those same people.
And I wronged him in this way, in the area of theft, monetary theft, I'm going to make it right with the same people I wronged in the same area.
But Jesus doesn't tell him exactly how much.
So here's the question if Zacchaeus had said, and I'm going to give back two times what I stole, would Jesus then respond in the same way that he does by saying, surely salvation has come to this house today?
I think he would.
I think you would.
See, Jesus is not prescribing, and Jesus could, he's God.
Jesus could give this command, but even Jesus is not prescribing.
It must be four times.
He's allowing Zacchaeus that freedom.
He's, well, in a sense, it's not even so much allowing Zacchaeus the freedom.
It's allowing Jesus, the third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, to bring about those good works.
See, it's the Holy Spirit who determines what the good works in keeping with repentance will be.
And again, within measure, meaning that it has to be general.
We cannot specifically, we can't be so specific and so rigid in prescribing penance.
To someone, it must be this or nothing.
Anything other than exactly this is impenitence.
That's spiritual abuse.
That's penance.
That's Catholic.
That's heresy.
Can't do that.
Okay.
But what you can do is you can say the Holy Spirit is going to bring about these good works in keeping with repentance.
It's He who works in and through us that which is good and pleasing in His sight.
So the Holy Spirit's going to do this.
And there's some wiggle room here because the Holy Spirit is God.
He gets to decide.
But we know the Holy Spirit because we have His word.
And we know that because you wronged these people in these ways, You're going to do something in that realm, in that same manner with those same people to make it right.
Because that's what the Holy Spirit does.
That's his nature.
The Holy Spirit reconciles and the Holy Spirit makes things right with the same party that was wronged.
We know that of the Holy Spirit.
Now, we don't know exactly down to the dollar and cents and this and that and blah, blah.
No, we're not Catholic.
We're not going to do that.
But we're going to let the Holy Spirit decide.
But we know that the Holy Spirit is just.
We know that the Holy Spirit is proportional.
We know that the Holy Spirit is fair.
We know that the Holy Spirit is righteous.
We know certain things about God.
And therefore, we know with generality, not arbitrary, not random, but in general, we know what the Holy Spirit wrought good works in keeping with repentance will look like, generally.
Thanks so much for listening.
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