They did not repent

But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts. – Revelation 9v20-21

This passage has intrigued me since I first came across it many years ago. I read about all of these judgements and death and destruction and then I read how the people who were left alive ‘did not repent’ because they wanted to continue on with their sin. The treasured their own sin more than their lives.

I thought, ‘How can they do that? Why don’t they learn their lesson and repent? Is their sin so important to them that they will risk their lives to continue in it?’ That kind of mindset just did not make any sense to me. What a bunch of idiots they are!

But then I started thinking about it - which is a very dangerous thing for me to do. I starting thinking about myself primarily, but I suspect that I am not the only one in this situation. How much do I/we treasure our own sin? Rather than truly repenting, which is a total change of act and heart, how often do we tuck that little sin away in a corner some place so that we can run back to it every so often? True repentance means that we ‘lay aside every sin that so easily besets us.’ We know our sin displeases God. We know that it endangers that walk of fellowship with our Saviour. We know that when we do so we mock his death on the cross and yet we still go back to it. It indicates that we love our sin more than we love Him.

If we are not willing to truly repent, are we really much better than the folks in this passage?