What is an example of false repentance?

Michael Beasley shares an example from John Bunyan's book, Pilgrim’s Progress. There is a moment where Christian is walking with Pliable. For a moment, Pliable was willing to walk with Christian. There was all appearance of repentance, but as soon as the slough became difficult, as soon as began to swallow them up, Pliable relented of his original repentance and he headed to the city of destruction.

This is an example of a man who had an appearance of repentance but it did not endure. It was a false repentance. Repentance is a lifelong experience of a Christian. We are continually repenting and confessing sin and looking to grow and mature. For the person who says “I’ve repented” but enters back into sin, they deceive themselves.

2 Peter 2:22 (NKJV) – “What the true proverb says has happened to them: ‘The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.’”

For the person who says, I've repented of sin and yet enters back into sin, and yet somehow they feel satisfied that at some point in time they claim that they repented of their sin. It's important to understand again as John teaches that if we say we have no sin, if we deny sin, in other words, we're deceiving ourselves. Again to borrow from Bunyan's classic, Pilgrim's Progress, he has that moment where Christian is walking with a man named Pliable. And Pliable, for a moment, was willing to walk along with Christian. He had left the city of destruction and there was all the appearance of repentance in this man's heart.

He was speaking glowingly of the celestial city to which they were both walking. And as soon as the slough became difficult, As soon as it began to swallow them up as they were sinking in the slough of Despond, Pliable decided to relent of his original repentance and he headed back to the city of destruction. There you have an example of a man who had the appearance of repentance, but it did not endure. And thereby we see that there was a demonstration of the fact that that was not actual repentance to begin with. It was false.

It was shallow. And this is why we say again that repentance is a lifelong experience of the Christian. We're confessing our sins daily before God, repenting of those sins, and looking to grow and mature in the process. You