Devotional 75: The Nature of Repentance: Sorrow for Sin and Turning to God

The Confession Read

Repentance unto life is an evangelical grace, the doctrine whereof is to be preached by every minister of the gospel, as well as that of faith in Christ.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 15, Section 1

Introduction

Luke records the risen Lord's final commission near the end of his Gospel. Christ appears to the gathered disciples in Jerusalem, opens their minds to understand the Scriptures, and speaks these words: "Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." See the twin content of the apostolic message. Not faith alone. Not repentance as a preparation for faith. But repentance and remission, two notes sounded together, a chord rather than a single tone. The Westminster Divines heard this chord and made it the opening declaration of their chapter on repentance: the doctrine of repentance unto life is to be preached by every minister of the gospel as surely as the doctrine of faith in Christ. This pairing is often lost today. Some pulpits have so emphasized justification by faith alone that repentance has shrunk to a footnote, an awkward appendage to the real message. Turn to Christ, they say, and all will be well. But of turning from sin they have little to say, lest they be accused of legalism. Other pulpits have swung so far the other direction that repentance has become the new law: a sorrow deep enough, a reformation complete enough, a payment exacting enough to purchase what only Christ's blood can buy. Between these errors the Confession walks a narrow and ancient path. Repentance is neither optional nor meritorious. It is an evangelical grace, a gift of the gospel, not a work of the law. And every faithful minister must preach it because Christ commanded it, the apostles modeled it, and no sinner can be saved without it. This opening section of Chapter 15 is brief — a single sentence in the original — but its brevity carries deep theological weight. Before the Divines define repentance or discuss its necessity and scope, they establish its character. Repentance is evangelical. It belongs to the gospel. It is a grace. It comes from God, not from the unaided will of man. It is preached as well as faith. It stands alongside faith, not behind it, not beneath it, not as its optional companion. And it is preached by every minister of the gospel, without exception or apology, without the embarrassed cough that the modern world expects when the Bible's moral demands collide with its therapeutic sensibilities. What follows in this devotional is an exploration of what it means to call repentance an evangelical grace, why it must be preached, and what is at stake when we forget either half of the apostolic message.

Scripture Foundation

The proof texts the Divines attached to this section each illuminate a different facet of the doctrine. We begin with the Old Testament prophecy that the New Testament apostles recognized as the fountainhead of this grace. Zechariah 12:10 reads: "And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn." The critical word is pour. Repentance does not rise from the human heart; it is poured upon the sinner from above. The Hebrew verb shaphak means to pour out copiously, to spill forth as water from a vessel, the same verb used in Joel 2:28, which Peter seizes upon at Pentecost. And what is poured? "The spirit of grace and of supplications." Grace comes first; mourning comes second. The look upon the pierced one produces the lament, but the ability to look, the grace to mourn, the spirit that makes supplication possible — all of it poured from above. Repentance is not the condition the sinner meets to qualify for grace; repentance is what grace produces in the sinner already overtaken by mercy. This is what the early church recognized in Acts 11:18, where the Jerusalem believers, having heard Peter's account of the conversion of Cornelius and his household, fall silent and then glorify God, saying, "Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life." The Greek construction is telling: metanoian eis zōēn edōken ("repentance unto life He gave"). The verb didōmi is the ordinary word for giving a gift. Repentance is not something the Gentiles produced; it is something God granted. And the preposition eis ("unto") marks the destination. This is repentance unto life, a turning that terminates in salvation because it is authored by the God of salvation. The same construction appears in the Confession's title: Of Repentance unto Life. The Divines chose this phrase deliberately. There is a kind of repentance that leads only to death: the sorrow of the world, as Paul calls it in 2 Corinthians, that worketh death. Judas repented and hanged himself. Esau sought repentance with tears and found none. But the repentance the gospel announces is unto life, because it is a gift of the God who is Himself the life. The risen Christ established this pairing of repentance and forgiveness in Luke 24:47, the Emmaus road commission: "And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." The Greek verb kērychthēnai ("should be preached") is the herald's word, the public proclamation of a king's decree. Repentance is not whispered as an afterthought; it is proclaimed with the authority of the risen Lord. And it is bound together with remission: aphesin hamartiōn, the release of sins, the cancellation of the debt. Luke joins them together into one message: metanoian kai aphesin, "repentance and remission." They are not two messages but two aspects of one message. To preach Christ is to preach repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, which is exactly the summary Paul gives of his entire ministry. Mark records the same pairing at the very outset of Jesus' public ministry in Mark 1:15: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel." The Greek imperative metanoeite is present tense, indicating an ongoing posture: "Be repenting." And it is joined to pisteuete en tō euangeliō ("believe in the gospel"). The two imperatives are coordinate. Neither is subordinate to the other. To believe without repenting is to embrace a half-Christ who saves from sin's penalty but not from sin's power. To repent without believing is to sink into despair, because the law offers no remedy for the sinner who turns from his sin but turns to no Savior. Together they form the complete response to the gospel: a turning from all that is contrary to God and a turning to all that God has promised in Christ. Every faithful minister, from the first preachers of the apostolic age to the humblest pastor in the remotest village, is bound to this pattern. The order may vary: sometimes faith is named first, sometimes repentance, but the content never changes. The gospel always calls for both. Finally, Acts 20:21 provides the apostolic summary: Paul reminds the Ephesian elders that he spent three years among them "testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." The word "testifying" is diamartyromenos, a solemn, earnest witness, the kind given in a courtroom with eternal consequences hanging in the balance. Paul did not suggest repentance or recommend it as a helpful spiritual practice. He testified to it with the same urgency with which he testified to faith. And notice the prepositional distinctions: repentance is toward God (eis ton Theon), and faith is toward our Lord Jesus Christ (eis ton Kyrion hēmōn Iēsoun Christon). The different objects are not accidental. Sin is ultimately against God: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned," David cried, and therefore repentance, which is the turning from sin, is directed toward God, the one whom sin has offended. Faith, which is the receiving and resting upon Christ for salvation, is directed toward the Mediator whom God has provided. The architecture of the apostolic message is a turning toward God from sin and a turning toward Christ for righteousness. One message. Two movements. Both essential. Both preached by every minister of the gospel without exception.

What the Divines Meant

The Westminster Divines wrote this section against specific errors. The Assembly that met in the Jerusalem Chamber from 1643 to 1649 was not writing theology in a vacuum. Every clause of the Confession was forged in the heat of controversy, and Section 1 of Chapter 15 is no exception. The Divines had three principal adversaries in view, and each error helps us see what the phrase "evangelical grace" was designed to protect. The first adversary was Rome. The Council of Trent, meeting at the very moment the Reformation was consolidating its doctrinal gains, had declared in its fourteenth session that penance was a sacrament properly so called, distinct from baptism, and that the acts of the penitent — contrition, confession, and satisfaction — were the materia of the sacrament, the material upon which the priest's absolution worked. In this scheme, repentance became a meritorious work, something the sinner offered to God as a ground of pardon rather than something the sinner received from God as a gift of pardon. The Divines answered with a single adjective: evangelical. By calling repentance an evangelical grace, they removed it from the realm of law and placed it squarely within the realm of gospel. Repentance is not a payment; it is a gift. It is not satisfaction for sin; it is the fruit of the satisfaction Christ has already made. Rome had turned the medicine into a second dose of the disease, requiring the sinner to contribute something to his own healing. The Confession insists that repentance, no less than faith, is a grace: unearned and sovereignly bestowed. The second adversary was Antinomianism in its various forms. There were those who, having tasted the sweetness of free justification, concluded that repentance belonged to the Old Testament, to the law, to the old covenant. Since Christ had fulfilled the law, they reasoned, the believer was no longer bound to mourn over sin. Indeed, some went so far as to teach that the believer should not confess sin at all, since all sin — past, present, and future — was already forgiven at the cross. The Divines answered with the testimony of the New Testament itself: Christ preached repentance, the apostles preached repentance, and every minister of the gospel must do the same. The adjective evangelical does not mean optional. It means that repentance has been taken up into the gospel, not left behind by it. The same grace that brings forgiveness also brings sorrow for sin, and a gospel that does not produce repentance is not the gospel of the New Testament. The Divines were not content simply to affirm the necessity of repentance in Section 3; they began the entire chapter by insisting that repentance is part of the message itself. Every minister must preach it. It is not a footnote or a secondary implication. It is, as the apostle testified, repentance toward God. The third adversary was more subtle: the notion that repentance is a merely human act, something the sinner does in his own strength as a preparation for grace. Grace means gift. Grace means God is the author. The sinner does not prepare himself for grace by repenting; grace produces repentance in the sinner. This is the consistent testimony of the proof texts: God grants repentance; God pours out the spirit of grace and supplication. The command to repent is divine; the ability to obey is a divine gift. The Divines were careful to avoid both Pelagianism (which makes repentance a native human capacity) and hyper-Calvinism (which so emphasizes divine sovereignty that it extinguishes human responsibility). The minister preaches repentance because God commands it. The sinner repents because God grants it. Both truths stand. Shaw draws attention to the word doctrine. Repentance is not merely an experience to be described or a feeling to be induced; it is a doctrine — a body of revealed truth about the nature of sin, the character of God's holy law, and the remedy He has provided in Christ. The minister does not manipulate emotions; he teaches truth. And as that truth is unfolded, the Spirit uses it to produce genuine, evangelical repentance in the hearts of the elect. Hodge makes the same point: "Repentance is not a blind anguish, but an intelligent exercise of the renewed mind." The gospel preached is the instrument the Spirit uses to produce the response the gospel demands. A further nuance matters here. The Confession says repentance is to be preached as well as faith in Christ. The phrase "as well as" does not mean "as frequently as" or "as prominently as" (though both may be true). It means "also" — in addition to, not instead of. The Divines were careful not to set repentance and faith in competition. The gospel is not a balance of two equal doctrines but a unified message with two inseparable aspects. To preach faith without repentance is to offer comfort without conviction. To preach repentance without faith is to produce conviction without comfort. The apostolic pattern holds them together because they belong together, and a minister who neglects either half of the message is unfaithful to his commission. The Westminster Directory for Public Worship, produced by the same Assembly, reinforced this by instructing ministers to preach "the necessity of faith and repentance" as twin duties of the gospel. The doctrine of repentance is not a theme for occasional sermons, reserved for seasons of special solemnity. It belongs to the regular diet of Christian preaching, woven into the fabric of the ministry of the Word as tightly as the doctrine of justification itself.

Theological Depth

Calvin, in Book III of the Institutes, devotes the third through the tenth chapters to repentance, and he opens by making precisely the distinction the Confession codifies. "Repentance," he writes, "can never be rightly understood unless we comprehend what is meant by faith." The two are so closely connected that Calvin can say, "repentance is not only immediately consequent upon faith, but is produced by it." Faith looks to Christ for righteousness and receives it. But the same Christ who gives righteousness also gives a new heart, and that new heart cannot look upon the sin that pierced its Savior without sorrow. Faith produces repentance not as a second, separate act of the will, but as the inevitable response of a soul that has seen what sin cost the Son of God. Calvin's favorite image is the turning of the whole man: "It is a real conversion of our life unto God, proceeding from a sincere and serious fear of God, and consisting in the mortification of our flesh and the old man, and the vivification of the Spirit." Both mortification and vivification are the Spirit's work, not the penitent's achievement. The preacher calls for repentance, but the Spirit alone grants it. And He grants it through the very preaching that announces the gospel, for the Spirit works through the Word He has inspired. Turretin, whose Institutes of Elenctic Theology served as the standard textbook of Reformed orthodoxy for generations, addresses the question directly in his locus on repentance. He distinguishes three kinds of sorrow for sin: a merely natural sorrow, which even pagans may experience when their sins bring painful consequences; a legal sorrow, which arises from the terrors of conscience and the fear of punishment but does not turn the heart toward God; and an evangelical sorrow, which arises from a sense of the divine goodness and mercy in Christ and is accompanied by faith. Only this last is "repentance unto life." The first two, Turretin insists, may produce outward reformation and even tears, but they do not unite the soul to Christ. Judas is the standing example of legal sorrow: he felt the horror of what he had done, he returned the silver, but he did not flee to the mercy of God. His repentance was sorrow without faith, and it ended in the field of blood. Peter is the standing example of evangelical sorrow: he wept bitterly, but his tears were directed toward the One he had denied, and by the lakeside, Christ restored him. The difference is not the intensity of the emotion; it is the object toward which the emotion turns. Evangelical repentance turns toward God; legal repentance turns inward upon itself. The Confession's adjective evangelical is precise. It names the only kind of repentance that saves. Watson, in his Body of Divinity, devotes a lengthy treatment to repentance, and his pastoral instincts help explain why the Divines insisted the doctrine be preached. "Repentance," Watson writes, "is a grace of God's Spirit whereby a sinner is inwardly humbled and visibly reformed." He notes six ingredients of true repentance: sight of sin, sorrow for sin, confession of sin, shame for sin, hatred of sin, and turning from sin. And at every point, he insists that these are wrought by the Spirit through the preaching of the Word. "The Word is the engine God uses to break the heart," he says. "As the hammer breaks the flinty rock, so the Word preached breaks the stony heart." This is why the doctrine must be preached. The minister is not a spiritual therapist coaxing his congregation toward a vague sense of regret. He is a herald announcing the holy law of God and the gracious gospel of Christ, trusting that the Spirit will use the law to wound and the gospel to heal. Watson is careful to warn against counterfeit repentance: a repentance that is only outward, temporary, or partial. The evangelical repentance the Confession describes is universal in its scope — it hates all sin, not merely the sins that bring public shame or earthly consequences — and it is perpetual, lasting as long as the believer lives in this body of death. A minister who never preaches repentance may fill his church with people who have made a decision but have never been converted, people who have taken hold of Christ with one hand while clinging to their sins with the other, people who have never learned that the same grace that forgives also transforms. Hodge, in his commentary on the Confession, draws attention to the phrase "repentance unto life." "The end of repentance is life," he writes, "not as its meritorious cause, but as its divinely appointed goal." The repentance the gospel produces is not a dead end. It is not a morbid self-preoccupation that never reaches assurance. No, gospel repentance leads to life, because it leads to Christ, who is the Life. Hodge distinguishes between legal repentance and evangelical repentance by their different ends. Legal repentance looks at the punishment of sin, fears it, and flees from it, but never looks to the mercy of God in Christ. It ends, as it must, in despair or self-righteousness: either the despair of the sinner who knows he cannot satisfy God's justice, or the self-righteousness of the sinner who persuades himself that his sorrow is payment enough. Evangelical repentance, by contrast, looks at the mercy of God in Christ, is drawn by it, and turns to it with a sorrow that is sweetened by hope. It ends in life because it rests on the living Christ, who has died and risen for the very sins the penitent mourns. Warfield, reflecting on the structure of Reformed soteriology, notes that the placement of Chapter 15, after faith and before good works, is significant. Faith is treated in Chapter 14. Repentance follows in Chapter 15. Good works come in Chapter 16. The order is logical, not strictly chronological; faith and repentance are simultaneous in the soul of the convert, like the two sides of a coin. Faith is the instrument by which the sinner receives Christ and all His benefits. Repentance is the immediate fruit of that reception, the turning from sin that the sight of Christ's beauty and holiness inevitably produces. Good works are the outward evidence of both. "The gospel order," Warfield writes, "is faith, then repentance, then new obedience — not because faith can exist for a moment without repentance, but because repentance draws its motive power from the faith that has laid hold of Christ." This is why Section 1 insists that repentance and faith be preached together. To separate them is to separate what God has joined in the economy of salvation, and the result is always distortion.

Puritan Application

First, receive repentance as a gift, not a work. The deepest tendency of the fallen heart is to turn everything into a transaction. We want to pay for what we receive, to contribute something to our salvation, to point to our tears as evidence that we deserve the mercy we have been shown. But the Confession will not allow this. Repentance is an evangelical grace. It is something God gives, not something you achieve. The tears you shed over sin are not the price of your pardon; they are the fruit of a pardon already granted at the cross. The grief you feel for having offended a holy God is not a payment you make to secure His favor; it is the evidence that His favor has already overtaken you. If you are waiting to repent deeply or tearfully enough before you dare to believe the gospel, you have inverted the order. Faith comes first, not chronologically but logically. You must look to Christ for everything, including the repentance you lack. Cry out with the church in the Song of Solomon: "Draw me, and we will run after thee." The same grace that draws you to Christ will produce in you the sorrow, the hatred of sin, and the reformation of life that accompany true faith. Stop trying to manufacture a repentance deep enough to present to God, and instead receive repentance as the gift that flows from the God who has already received you in His Son. Second, demand that your ministers preach repentance, and be wary of those who do not. The Confession establishes a standard. "Every minister of the gospel" — not some subset, not only the gifted, not only those with mature congregations — every minister is bound to preach repentance. If you sit under a ministry that speaks of grace but never sin, exalts God's love but is silent on His holiness, invites you to Jesus but never calls you to leave sin behind, then you are being fed a partial gospel. The apostolic pattern is repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. A ministry that omits the first half of the message is as unfaithful as one that omits the second. Examine what you are hearing. Does your pastor make you uncomfortable about your sins? Does he press the law upon your conscience until you feel the weight of your offenses against a holy God, and then does he lift your eyes to the cross where that weight was borne by Another? That is the biblical pattern. If you are in a church where sin is never named, where repentance is never urged, where the sermon always makes you feel better about yourself but never shatters your self-righteousness, you are in a dangerous place. Pray for your minister. Encourage him to preach the whole counsel of God. And if he will not, find a shepherd who will. Third, distinguish between the sorrow of the world and the sorrow of God. The apostle Paul drew this distinction in 2 Corinthians 7:10: "Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death." Both produce tears and regret. Both may produce outward changes. But they move in opposite directions. The sorrow of the world is self-centered. It grieves over the consequences of sin — the shame, lost reputation, broken relationships, ruined health — but not over the offense sin gives to God. It is the sorrow of a thief who is sorry he was caught, not sorry he stole. The sorrow of God, by contrast, is God-centered. It grieves that a holy God has been offended, that a kind Father has been disobeyed, that a loving Savior has been pierced anew by the sins for which He died. Examine your own sorrow. When you feel regret for your sins, what is the object of your grief? Are you mourning because you have been exposed, inconvenienced, or made to suffer the natural consequences of your folly? Or are you mourning because you have sinned against the God who made you, redeemed you, and sanctifies you? The first kind of sorrow leaves you in despair or drives you to self-improvement. The second kind drives you to Christ. Learn to distinguish them, and when you find the sorrow of the world in your heart, do not mistake it for the genuine repentance that the Spirit produces. Fourth, cultivate repentance as a daily discipline, not an occasional crisis. The Confession does not present repentance as a one-time event that fades as the Christian life goes on. Repentance is an evangelical grace that the believer exercises throughout the whole course of the Christian life. Luther's first of the ninety-five theses declared that the whole life of the believer is to be one of repentance. The sins of yesterday may be forgiven, but there are sins today to mourn, and there will be sins tomorrow to confess. The mature Christian does not outgrow repentance; he deepens in it. As he grows in holiness, he sees sin more clearly and mourns it more intensely. The very progress of sanctification produces in the believer a more acute sense of the sin that remains, a more profound hatred of its defilement, and a more earnest longing for the day when he will be delivered from its presence altogether. Do not be surprised, then, if your sense of your own sinfulness grows rather than diminishes as you walk with Christ. The nearer you draw to the light, the more clearly you see the spots on your own garments. This is not regression; it is growth. The holiest saints have been the deepest penitents, not because they sinned more than others, but because they saw their sin more clearly in the light of God's holiness. Make daily confession a habit. Let no sin go unacknowledged, unconfessed, unmourned. The evangelical grace of repentance is not a winter garment to be worn only in seasons of crisis; it is the daily dress of every traveler on the narrow way. Fifth, let your repentance point you to Christ, not to yourself. There is a subtle danger in the doctrine of repentance, and the Puritans were keenly aware of it. The penitent can become so absorbed in his own sinfulness, so preoccupied with the quality and depth of his sorrow, that he loses sight of the Savior to whom his repentance is meant to lead him. This is the error of the monk in his cell, examining his conscience with a microscope until he can see nothing but the darkness within and has forgotten the light without. Evangelical repentance never terminates on the self. It always moves toward Christ. The tears of repentance are tears that fall at the foot of the cross, and the eye that weeps for sin is the same eye that looks to the Redeemer who bore that sin away. If your repentance is making you introspective, self-absorbed, perpetually gloomy, you have mistaken legal sorrow for evangelical grace. True repentance produces joy. Not the shallow joy of one who has minimized his sin, but the deep joy of one who has brought his sin to the only place where it can be dealt with, the cross of Christ, and has heard the Savior say, "Thy sins are forgiven; go in peace." The Puritan Thomas Goodwin observed: "Christ is the meritorious cause of our repentance, as well as of our pardon." The same blood that cleanses from guilt also melts the heart that was hardened by guilt. Look to that blood. Let your repentance be the response of a heart that has been loved, not the effort of a heart that is trying to earn love. The one who has been forgiven much loves much, and the one who loves much weeps much — but the weeping follows the forgiving, and the loving follows the weeping, and the whole movement is carried along by grace from beginning to end.

Prayer

Almighty and most merciful Father, we bless Thee for the gift of repentance, and we confess that apart from Thy grace we would never turn from our sins nor mourn for having offended Thee. We thank Thee that Thou hast not left us in our rebellion, hard of heart and stiff of neck, but hast poured out upon us the spirit of grace and supplications, granting us to look upon Him whom we have pierced and to mourn. Grant that every minister of the gospel may preach repentance with the same clarity and urgency with which he preaches faith in Christ. Raise up heralds who will not shrink from declaring the whole counsel of God, who will wound with the law and heal with the gospel, who will call sinners to turn from their sins even as they call them to turn to the Savior. Forgive us for the many times we have confused the sorrow of the world with godly sorrow, mourning over the consequences of our sins while our hearts remained unmoved by the offense they have given Thee. Teach us to hate sin because Thou hatest it, to grieve over transgression because it pierced the hands and feet of our blessed Redeemer. Let our repentance be not a transaction but a turning — a turning from all that is evil and a turning to all that is holy, and good, and acceptable in Thy sight. We pray for those among us who have never truly repented, who have made a profession of faith without ever fleeing from the wrath to come, who have taken Christ as Savior but refused Him as Lord. Break their hearts, O God. Let the hammer of Thy Word shatter their complacency. Show them the danger in which they stand, and grant them that repentance unto life which only Thy Spirit can bestow. And for those whose repentance has become a burden, who are bent low under the weight of sorrow that never lifts its eyes to Christ — grant them the comfort of the gospel. Let them hear afresh that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, that the blood of Jesus Christ Thy Son cleanseth us from all sin, and that the same grace that produced their sorrow has already provided their pardon. Lift their eyes from their guilt to their Redeemer, and give them the joy of Thy salvation. Keep us, we pray, in the way of daily repentance until that day when we shall need repentance no more, when sin shall be eradicated from our hearts and we shall see Thee face to face in perfect holiness and unending joy. Until that day, uphold us by Thy Spirit, quicken us by Thy grace, and let the word of Christ dwell in us richly, producing in us all that is pleasing in Thy sight. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Amen.