Unrepentant Sin: “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” Psalms 66:18. A few weeks ago, while accessing some material on my laptop, I opened up the sermon audio page, as I often do, and just clicked on whatever was featured. On this day it was a message titled: “No Repentance No Reply.” According to the sermon outline we are told that “the sermon centers on the indispensable role of repentance in genuine prayer and spiritual revival, rooted in Psalm 66:18, which declares that God will not hear those who harbor unconfessed sin in their hearts.”
The message makes several strong claims. We are told that when a man prays with sin that is unconfessed or unrepented of, God will not hear him – that even a single sin, retained in the heart, is enough to shut the door. At one point he states: “We are as foolish as to think that somehow we can go into his presence with some known sin that we’re affectionate towards, clinging to, and we’re not repenting of it, and think that somehow we can get in and out without any issue… if there’s a sin in your heart, unrepented of, unconfessed, not one of those prayers has been heard. Not one of those prayers has been received.” In speaking of past “revivals,” he also describes God working a spirit of repentance, so that sins might be confessed and a person be brought, as he puts it, to get “right with God.”
But taken as it stands, this leaves a man in an impossible place. Who does not have sin present with him? And who has ever fully repented of all that lies within his heart? If even one unrepented sin shuts heaven entirely, so that not one prayer is heard, then no man living has ever truly prayed. The standard is not merely high, it is unattainable. For who knows the full extent of his sin, or has ever brought it all forward in true repentance? If God’s hearing depends upon the thoroughness of our repentance, then prayer rests not on mercy, but on our measure of dealing with sin. In the end, it makes the ground of acceptance something in man, rather than the mediatorial work of Christ.
God’s hearing of His people is not suspended upon their present condition, as though their acceptance rose and fell with the state of their hearts. Our iniquities are not first removed by our confession so that we might be heard, but were borne and put away in Christ, who alone is our access unto God. Ephesians 2:18. To make the hearing of God depend upon repentance is to alter that ground entirely, turning what follows grace into something that must go before it, and subtly bringing the soul back under a legal frame.
Repentance, then, is not the door by which we enter, but something that flows from having been brought in. It does not establish our access, but follows from it. Acts 5:31. And there is a real difference between a heart that cleaves to sin and one that is burdened by it, yet looks outside itself. Psalms 51:3. The former is what the Psalm speaks against; the latter describes those who draw near, not because they are free from sin, but because Christ is their righteousness. Jeremiah 23:6.
With these considerations in mind, it is worth asking what the Psalm itself is actually saying. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” Psalms 66:18. Is this teaching that any unconfessed sin silences prayer? What does it mean to “regard” iniquity, and in what sense is the Lord said not to “hear”? A closer look shows that the issue is not merely the verse, but the framework brought to it. When legal conditions are imposed, prayer is made contingent upon a man’s state, and he is taught that he must first “get right” before he can be heard. But the gospel directs us elsewhere. It reveals a way of access already opened in Christ, where sinners draw near, not on the ground of their condition, but on the ground of His finished work. Hebrews 4:14-16.
The key to the Psalm lies in the words themselves: “If I regard iniquity in my heart…” The issue is not the mere presence of sin, for that is common to every man, but the regarding of it. The word carries the sense of looking upon it with favor, holding to it, or making room for it within. It speaks not of corruption felt and mourned over, but of iniquity that is cherished, protected, and consciously retained. And this distinction is critical. The Psalm does not describe a man burdened by sin and looking outside himself, but one who clings to it. In that sense, the Lord is said not to “hear” – not in ignorance, for God is ignorant of nothing, but in the sense of not answering or receiving with favor. The verse, then, is not setting forth a condition by which a sinner must make himself acceptable, but exposing the contradiction of drawing near to God while cleaving to that which is opposed to Him. Matthew 15:8.
This way of speaking is not new. It reflects a common religious assumption, one even voiced in Scripture itself: “Now we know that God heareth not sinners.” John 9:31. Yet we must be careful not to take this as a universal principle, but to consider the context in which it is spoken. These words are not set forth as a rule of approach to God but are spoken by the man born blind in response to the Pharisees, expressing a commonly held line of reasoning. Taken absolutely, they would shut the door to all, for no sinner could ever be heard, and they would stand in contradiction to other passages where sinners are received, such as the publican who cried, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Luke 18:13-14. The testimony of Scripture is not that we must first become acceptable in order to be heard, but that we are heard in Christ, who alone is our Mediator. I Timothy 2:5.
In the end, the ground of being heard is not found in man at all. Romans 9:16. It is not in repentance, confession, or any measure of dealing with sin, but in Christ alone. To place it elsewhere is to shift the foundation and bring the soul back under a burden it can never bear. But God has established another ground. Sin has been judged, put away, and answered in His Son, and it is in Him that we have access, acceptance, and an answer. Hebrews 10:19-22. The ground of being heard is not in us, but in Christ. He is our access, our acceptance, and our answer. MPJ