When Our Hearts Won't Break: What Unrepentance Does to God by Holly D. Sands
This verse reveals two different things: (1) it tells you what unrepentance does to God, and (2) it tells you what repentance actually looks like when it's real.
"I was crushed"
The Hebrew is shabar — to break, to shatter, to crush. God didn't have to describe Israel's idolatry that way. He could have utilized the language of a judge reading a verdict and honestly, that would've been true and sufficient. But instead, He reached for the most human word available and told them, in terms they couldn't misunderstand, exactly how their unfaithfulness hit Him.
Scripture is clear in that God isn't tossed around by us the way we're tossed around by each other. He isn't at the mercy of His creatures. However, it is also clear that He chose that word (crushed) on purpose. Unfaithfulness was never received by Him as something neutral. He made sure Israel knew it registered hard.
And notice what's doing the crushing: their "adulterous heart which has departed from Me." The departure is a greater offense than the behavior. The word picture is marital, a heart that used to belong to Him and doesn't anymore, eyes that used to be fixed on Him and now play the harlot after something else. That's a different category of offense than breaking a rule. It's unfaithfulness to a person.
"They will loathe themselves"
Here's the half of the verse that's easy to skip past. The sign that God's people finally got it was they loathed themselves— a gut-wrenching revulsion of their own sin, because they finally saw it the way He sees it.
That's the line between managing sin and repenting of it. Managing sin looks like regret over consequences - "that cost me something, I should be more careful". Loathing looks like disgust at the sin itself, apart from what it cost you. Most of us who've walked with the Lord a long time have gotten skilled at regret instead of repentance. We know how to minimize it, contextualize it, and wait out the conviction.
Why we still need this
Here's where it's worth being precise, because sloppiness here is how people end up either performing salvation by works or excusing sin as irrelevant once they're saved. Justification happens once. Your standing before God isn't up for renegotiation every time you sin. Christ's righteousness is credited to you (full stop) and that doesn't get re-earned or re-lost daily (Romans 5:1). But standing and communion aren't the same thing, and Scripture is just as clear that ongoing sin needs ongoing confession.
John pictures it as cleansing, not re-justification: "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). This was written to believers. Jesus makes the same distinction with Peter at the foot washing: "He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean" (John 13:10). Bathed once. Feet washed daily. That's the whole doctrine of ongoing repentance - the person is clean, and still needs washing.
Walking with a holy God while carrying unconfessed sin doesn't work - not for salvation's sake, but for fellowship's sake. John Owen put it about as bluntly as it's ever been put: "Be killing sin, or it will be killing you." This should be an ongoing posture, for as long as you're in this body.
Why this matters for believers
Ezekiel 6:9 was written to a covenant people who already belonged to God and had let their hearts wander anyway. That's the audience it still has, and it's the audience for daily cleansing too.
An unrepentant heart in a believer doesn't usually look like open rebellion. It looks like a slow callousing. Less grief over sin than there used to be. Faster excuses. A heart that used to break easy and doesn't anymore.
The question this verse puts to a believer is whether anything about your own sin still grieves you the way it grieves God. Whether you still loathe it, or whether you've just learned to manage it.
"You have left your first love"
This is the same diagnosis Jesus gives to a church that would have passed every doctrinal exam. Ephesus worked hard, endured hardship, refused to tolerate false teachers and He still says: "Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love" (Revelation 2:4). They had a heart that quietly moved away from the Lord, while the outward faithfulness stayed intact.
The adulterous heart that departs doesn't always announce itself with idols on a hillside. Sometimes it looks like a church still doing everything right, yet has a heart that's stopped being crushable underneath it. Jesus's prescription is the same one Ezekiel's audience needed: "Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works" (Revelation 2:5). Remember, and turn back.
O friend, let us always make sure that our hearts are still breakable and able to loathe our sin because we understand that Jesus Himself was crushed by the weight of it. Let us have hearts that are daily washed by repentance. Let us come back to our first Love.
____________________________________________________________________________
Holly D. Sands has walked with Christ since 1983. She writes at He is My Song, helping fellow believers walk faithfully through every season with biblical encouragement, sound doctrine, and honest reflection. She lives in South Carolina, where she and her husband, Shane Sands, are members of a local Baptist church. Shane's been called by God as an evangelist and leads United in Christ Jesus ministry. At home, they're joined by their idiot cat, Mister Bojangles, whose main contribution to the household is sleeping and eating treats.
© 2026 He is My Song. All rights reserved.
Comments
Post a Comment
Welcome! Please leave your thoughts and reflections below. To keep this a Christ-honoring space, all comments are reviewed prior to posting.