Part 3: Dress It Up
When I first started coming to church, I began moving away from some really vile music. Songs with lyrics that directly sinned against God. Songs I knew I could not keep in my life if I was going to walk with the Lord.
But I did not really like any Christian music yet. So I moved to something in the middle. It was not as bad as what I used to listen to. It was not godly either. It was just less bad. And I told myself that was enough.
I thought moving in the right direction was the same as arriving. I thought reducing the sin was the same as dealing with the sin. So I settled there. For a while, that middle place felt like progress. It felt like I was growing. It felt spiritual enough to be comfortable.
But slowly over time, God worked on my heart. He would not let me stay in the middle. He kept showing me that reducing something and repenting of something are not the same thing.
I am not against taking steps in the right direction. Every Christian has to start somewhere. But we cannot dress up our steps as if we have arrived. We cannot call halfway obedience full obedience. We cannot mistake the middle for the finish line.
Eventually the Lord walked me all the way out of that music, and today I enjoy godly Christian music. But it took years longer than it needed to, because I spent so much time congratulating myself for moving in the right direction instead of actually finishing the move.
That is the third D of dealing with our failure: Dress It Up.
2 Corinthians 7:10 “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.”
Paul says there are two kinds of sorrow. One leads to repentance and life. The other leads to death. They can look the same on the outside. Both cry, feel bad and say the right words. But only one actually changes anything.
“Dress It Up” is the worldly sorrow that looks like repentance without ever becoming repentance.
Godly Sorrow vs. Worldly Sorrow
The difference between the two is what our sorrow drives us to do.
Godly sorrow drives us TOWARD God.
It says “I have grieved my Saviour and I need to make this right.” It runs to the cross, confesses fully and changes what we do next. Peter felt godly sorrow after he denied Christ, and he wept bitterly and eventually preached Pentecost.
Worldly sorrow drives us AWAY from God.
It says “I feel terrible about myself” and stops there. It focuses on how we feel instead of what God feels. It cries hard but changes nothing. Judas felt worldly sorrow after he betrayed Christ and it ended with him taking his life.
Paul tells us exactly what real repentance produces:
2 Corinthians 7:11 “For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter.”
Real repentance produces seven fruits:
- Carefulness in how we behave.
- Clearing of ourselves from the wrongdoing. Owning the fault openly, making things right where we can, and removing ourselves from the sin.
- Indignation toward the sin we once loved. Holy anger at ourselves and at the sin itself, not at the person who exposed it.
- Fear of the Lord. Fear of losing His blessing or gaining His judgment.
- Vehement desire to be restored to God and to walk close with Him again.
- Zeal that turns lukewarm faith into full-throttle passion for God.
- Revenge against the sin itself, taking aggressive action to cut it off at the root and to help others know the Lord.
Worldly sorrow produces feelings with the fruit of death!
John the Baptist said the same thing when the Pharisees came to him:
Matthew 3:8 “Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance.”
If the fruit is missing, the repentance is missing.
Ahab Tore His Clothes and But Not His Heart
King Ahab was one of the worst kings in Israel’s history. Married Jezebel, killed Naboth to steal his vineyard and led Israel deeper into Baal worship than any king before him.
Elijah came to him with a hard word about the judgment coming on his house. And Ahab tore his clothes.
1 Kings 21:27 “And it came to pass, when Ahab heard those words, that he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly.”
That looked like real repentance:
- Sackcloth: rough clothing instead of his soft kingly rob
- Fasting: putting away food from the kings table
- Torn clothes: pain and sorrow
- Walking softly: humbling himself
The whole outside of a broken heart.
God even noticed and delayed the judgment on his house one generation. But Ahab did not actually turn. He kept his throne, Jezebel, idols and every root of the problem in his life.
Ahab bought a delay with his performance, but he never bought a heart change. Two chapters later, he died with an arrow through his armor at Ramoth-Gilead.
Torn clothes without a torn heart is worldly sorrow.
Felix Trembled and Never Called Paul Back
Paul was on trial and had the opportunity to preach to Felix, the Roman governor and his wife. He preached righteousness, temperance, and the judgment to come and Felix felt every word of it.
Acts 24:25 “And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.”
Felix trembled with real conviction. The Holy Ghost was moving on him. He felt the weight of the message and knew it was true.
But instead of dealing with it, he sent Paul away and said he would get back to him when it was convenient.
That convenient season never came. Felix left Paul in prison and disappeared from Scripture with his sins unresolved as far as we know.
Feeling conviction and then delaying repentance is worldly sorrow. Every day we say “later” is another day we chose “Dress It Up” our sin. We don’t realize how serious it is. It’s a life and death situation.
How Christians Rename Their Sins Today
If you have been in church long enough, you have seen this. Christians rarely confess our sin using the same word God uses for it. We rename it first. We soften it, give it a spiritual title and turn sins into personality traits or character strengths.
And if we are honest, we have all done this before.
Here are some of the most common trades:
* Pride becomes “confidence” or “having strong opinions”
* Arrogance becomes “being a leader” or “knowing my worth”
* Stubbornness becomes “conviction” or “standing firm”
* Anger becomes “passion” or “just being direct”
* Rudeness becomes “not being fake” or “telling it like it is”
* Impatience becomes “having high standards”
* Harshness becomes “being real”
* Controlling behavior becomes “being a strong personality”
What the Right Response Looks Like
The right response is not to rename our sin, but to name it exactly how God names it and then deal with it. Every one of the sins above has a biblical answer that requires ownership.
* Pride is not managed. It is confessed and put down. Proverbs 16:18 warns that pride goeth before destruction. Real confidence is humble trust in God’s ability, not our own.
* Arrogance is not leadership. Real leaders in the Bible were servants first. Jesus washed feet.
* Stubbornness is not conviction. Conviction bends to Scripture. Stubbornness does not.
* Anger is not passion. Ephesians 4:26 tells us to be angry and sin not. Passion for the Lord looks different from a short temper.
* Rudeness is not honesty. 1 Corinthians 13 says love does not behave itself unseemly.
* Impatience is not high standards. It is a fruit of the Spirit we are missing. Longsuffering is on the list for a reason.
* Harshness is not being real. It is being unloving. Colossians 4:6 says our speech should be seasoned with salt.
* Controlling behavior is not personality. It is a lack of trust in God’s sovereignty and a refusal to let others walk their own walk.
The right response for every one of them is the same. Call the sin what God calls it, confess it as He describes it, and turn from it.
The Root Sins Nobody Ever Confesses
What is interesting about dressing up our sin is that few Christians will ever admit they have done it. Even fewer will admit to the root sins that drive all of our failures.
You have probably never heard someone confess to envy or greed. Few will admit they acted in lust or bitterness. And pride can only be confessed by the humble.
Because those are the ones that expose the deepest parts of the heart, we go to almost any length to avoid naming them. We rename them, redirect them, and rationalize them. But we rarely confess them.
The Root Sins We Have Never Confessed
Take a minute and look at this list. Ask yourself honestly which of these root sins you have ever confessed to the Lord by name.
- Pride
- Envy
- Greed
- Lust
- Bitterness
- Anger
- Gluttony
- Slothfulness
- Unbelief
- Self-pity
- Deceit
- Hypocrisy
- Covetousness
- Idolatry
- Rebellion
Most Christians can go a whole lifetime and never confess most of these by their real names.
Our lack of confession does not mean we have never done these things. It means we have never gotten to the root of our issues.
We have dealt with the surface. We have apologized for the fruit, and have said sorry for the outburst, the argument, the slip, the moment. But the root sin underneath, the one God actually named, has stayed buried and unnamed. And that is why the same failure keeps coming back.
You cannot repent of a sin you refuse to name.
The Way Out
The way out of Dress It Up is we name the sin the way God names it.
We bear fruit that matches the confession.
We turn TOWARD Christ, not AWAY from Him.
Dress It Up is the most dangerous of the four D’s because it looks so much like the right response. But looking like repentance and being repentant are not the same thing.
In Part 4, we look at the last D: Die To It. The one that actually works and produces real restoration, real fruit, and real freedom from the failure we have been carrying.
