The Christian is repented, but not by me

You should feel guilty about that is a nasty thing to say to someone. What if he has no remorse about sinning against God? That might be because he’s trying to force himself to rationalize a way into remorse, only to remember that he can’t hurt God—so then he can’t come up with any good reason to register guilt. Instead of telling this person all the reasons he ought to feel guilt (as he’s probably already trying to do for himself but failing), I think that the remedy might be to set aside any notions of hurting God and to advise him in terms of abandoning his only source of love; after all, that’s clearly a tragic thing to do, and it happens to be true.

You should be more grateful is another rotten thing to say someone. Maybe this person should indeed be more grateful; but what comes out of our mouths should elicit gratitude from him therefore turning him outward to the Bronze Serpent.

To tell someone they ought to have the experience of gratitude is worse than useless. Gratitude is an experience that impinges on our sense of moral duty. There would be less to be grateful about (if not nothing at all) if all we knew from our Christian religion were its moral claims. Without experiencing gratitude from within Christianity, it’s impossible to know Christ in the sense of knowing that is enfolded into any true definition of faith (something like ‘knowing as a child knows his Father’, essentially). We have to know the fact of creation being for God’s glory as something more than a dogmatic principle if our gratitude to God is to be inexhaustible because gratitude and love as ways of knowing are inexhaustible—they filter all things and reshape them to add to their lot.

Scolding someone into love and finger-wagging about gratitude weaponize the work of the Holy Spirit. A man knows neither remorse for sinning against God nor gratitude towards him chiefly because he has driven-out his Holy Spirit. Instead of making ourselves accusers, waggling our fingers at such people, I propose that we in plain terms expose to the unrepentant the laws which they’ve broken, share the gospel with them as a source of pure joy, and encourage them to pray for forgiveness and a changed heart.