Without Spot or Wrinkle: Purity and Repentance in the Last Days

From the Series: Ordinary Saints: Lessons from the Ante-Nicene Church

Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Anyone who has ever tried to remove a stubborn stain knows something about the temptation to hide what cannot easily be removed. The stain may be small enough to cover. Turn the fabric a certain way, place something over it, keep people from looking too closely, and perhaps no one will notice. We can approach our spiritual lives much the same way. For example, someone may sense conviction to apologize for sharp words spoken in frustration, but instead choose to avoid the person and pretend nothing happened, hoping the issue will be forgotten. Or perhaps another feels prompted to confess a struggle during a small group, but instead stays silent, not wanting to risk embarrassment. It is easier to conceal sin than confess it. Easier to manage appearances than confront what is happening within the heart. Easier to compare ourselves with someone else than to stand honestly before the searching light of God’s Word. But Christ is doing something far more beautiful with His Church than teaching her how to hide her stains. He is cleansing her.

Paul describes Christ’s love for His Church in extraordinary terms: “Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word” (Ephesians 5:25–26). Then Paul tells us where that work is leading: “That He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27). Notice who stands at the center of the passage. Christ loved. Christ gave Himself. Christ sanctifies and cleanses. Christ will present the Church to Himself. The beauty of the Bride begins with the work of the Bridegroom. That matters because holiness can easily become distorted into an exhausting attempt to make ourselves acceptable to God. We see what is wrong, try harder, fail again, hide our failure, and eventually begin confusing spiritual appearance with spiritual health. The gospel gives us an entirely different starting point. Christ gave Himself for His Church before she was spotless. He is the One making her holy. Yet His work of sanctification does not make believers passive toward sin. The grace that saves us also teaches us to reject ungodliness and live “soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age” while we look for the appearing of Jesus Christ (Titus 2:11–13).

The apostle John makes the connection between Christ’s return and our present lives particularly clear. After speaking about the day when believers will see Christ as He is, John writes: “And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 John 3:3). The hope of seeing Christ produces something in the person who loves Him. We begin wanting what He wants. And when His Word exposes something within us that does not belong there, we do not need to hide it. We can repent.

Repentance is sometimes treated as though it belongs primarily at the beginning of the Christian life. We repent and believe the gospel, and certainly repentance is fundamental to our response to Christ. But believers still sin. John wrote to Christians, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). The Christian life therefore does not become a life in which repentance is no longer necessary. It becomes a life in which we increasingly learn where to go when sin is exposed. We return to God. We confess rather than conceal. We agree with Him about our sin rather than defending it. We turn from what is wrong and walk again in obedience to what He has revealed.

Repentance is not only a feeling of regret, but a practical turning back to God. Simple steps can help us respond wholeheartedly when we are convicted of sin. We can pray honestly, name our sin before God, and ask for His forgiveness. Sometimes repentance calls for making amends with someone we have wronged, offering an apology or seeking reconciliation. It can be wise to invite accountability by sharing our struggle with a trusted believer who can pray with us and support us. Setting aside time to read Scripture and reflect on what God is showing us helps keep our hearts open before Him. Repentance is an ongoing invitation to walk in the light.

That is why Christ’s words to the church at Laodicea are both severe and deeply loving: “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent” (Revelation 3:19). His rebuke was not evidence that He had ceased caring for them. It was precisely because He loved them that He refused to leave them comfortable in their spiritual condition.

The Christians of the Ante-Nicene era understood the continuing need for repentance, although they did not always express every aspect of it perfectly. Imagine yourself among one of those congregations. Perhaps you had confessed Christ publicly but were now discovering how difficult it was to follow Him in a culture saturated with idolatry. Pagan worship touched civic life, commerce, entertainment, family expectations, and social relationships. Following Christ could force decisions that were neither theoretical nor convenient. And Christians sometimes failed. Some compromised. Some became fearful. Some fell into serious sin. During periods of persecution, some even denied Christ under pressure and later wanted to return to the fellowship of believers. The early Church had to wrestle with very practical questions about sin, repentance, restoration, holiness, and grace. Their writings remind us of something we can easily forget when looking backward through history: these were not stained-glass saints. They were people. They struggled with fear, temptation, pride, sexual sin, division, false teaching, material concerns, and the pressure to conform to the world around them. In other words, they needed Christ’s cleansing just as we do. Their struggles make their calls to holiness more relatable, not less.

Although the circumstances surrounding us have changed dramatically, the battle within the human heart has not. Today, we navigate cultural pressures that may look different outwardly, but are strikingly familiar. Social media invites us to curate an image and compare ourselves continually to others. Workplace ethics can pull us toward compromise and silence us when integrity becomes costly. Advertisements and entertainment normalize values that are often out of step with Christ’s teaching. Family expectations, the desire for approval, and the pull of material success can place subtle but significant demands on our loyalty. Like the early Christians, we find ourselves surrounded by beliefs and habits that challenge our calling to live holy lives.

We may not walk past temples dedicated to Roman gods on our way to work, but idolatry still competes for our allegiance. We may not face the same social pressures surrounding pagan festivals, but compromise still knows how to make itself reasonable. Bitterness can still take root. Pride can still disguise itself as righteousness. Lust can still demand secrecy. Money can still become a master. Fear can still silence obedience. And the temptation to protect our reputation can still become stronger than our willingness to confess that something is wrong. This is where God’s Word becomes more than something we read. It searches us.

Jesus prayed to the Father, “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth” (John 17:17). Scripture exposes what our hearts are remarkably skilled at concealing. It confronts pride with humility, bitterness with forgiveness, sexual immorality with purity, greed with contentment, falsehood with truth, and idolatry with wholehearted devotion to God. But God’s Word does not merely show us the stain and leave us staring helplessly at it. It continually brings us back to Christ. This changes the way we understand purity. Purity is not pretending we never struggle. It is not constructing a spotless Christian image for other people to admire. It is not reaching some spiritual level at which temptation disappears. And it certainly is not earning Christ’s love through increasingly good behavior.

The Bride pursues holiness because the Bridegroom already loved her and gave Himself for her. When we sin, therefore, repentance is not an attempt to persuade an unwilling Savior to receive us again. We come honestly before the One who has already demonstrated His love at the Cross. That honesty can enter the smallest places of everyday life. Perhaps you recognize resentment beginning to settle into your heart after someone hurts you. Instead of feeding it quietly for weeks, you bring it before God and choose the difficult road of forgiveness. Perhaps no one else knows what you have been watching, reading, or entertaining in your thoughts. God’s Word confronts you, and instead of explaining it away, you remove what has been feeding the temptation. Perhaps pride makes an apology difficult. Repentance may mean walking across a room, making a telephone call, or sending a message containing words our flesh hates to say: I was wrong. Please forgive me. Sometimes sanctification happens in moments that look remarkably ordinary. But those moments matter. The Bride is being prepared. And we do not undertake this preparation alone. Christ is sanctifying His Church, the Holy Spirit is at work within believers, and God has given us one another. James tells believers to confess their trespasses to one another and pray for one another (James 5:16). Paul instructs spiritual believers to restore someone overtaken in a trespass “in a spirit of gentleness” (Galatians 6:1).

A healthy church should therefore be a place where holiness is taken seriously without requiring people to pretend they have no struggles. We encourage one another. We pray for one another. We restore gently. We speak truth. We refuse to make peace with sin. And when a brother or sister falls, we do not stand at a distance congratulating ourselves for remaining upright. We remember Paul’s warning: “considering yourself lest you also be tempted” (Galatians 6:1); the goal is restoration. All of this points toward a day when Christ’s sanctifying work in His people will reach its glorious completion. The Bride whom Christ presents to Himself will indeed be “holy and without blemish.” That is not ultimately a testimony to how successfully we cleaned ourselves. It is a testimony to Him. The One who loved His Church gave Himself for her. The One who saved His people continues His work within them. And the One who began that work will not abandon it unfinished.

So while we wait for Christ, we do not hide our stains. We bring them into the light. We confess. We repent. We receive His forgiveness. We submit ourselves to His Word. And by His grace, we get up and continue walking with Him. The Bride is not preparing herself so that the Bridegroom might finally decide she is worthy of His love. She is being prepared because the Bridegroom has already loved her and given Himself for her. And one day, the work that now takes place through countless acts of conviction, repentance, obedience, correction, forgiveness, and growth will reach its appointed end. Christ will present His Church to Himself. Glorious. Holy. Without blemish. And all the glory will belong to Him.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank You for loving Your Church and giving Yourself for us. Search my heart through Your Word and show me where I have tolerated what You call me to forsake. Give me humility to confess my sin, grace to repent when You correct me, and strength through Your Spirit to walk in obedience. Continue Your sanctifying work in me and among Your people as we wait for You. May the beauty of Your Church ultimately testify not to our goodness, but to the greatness of the Savior who loved her and gave Himself for her. Amen.