Devotional 76: The Necessity of Repentance: No Pardon Without It

The Confession Read

By it, a sinner, out of the sight and sense not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins, as contrary to the holy nature, and righteous law of God; and upon the apprehension of his mercy in Christ to such as are penitent, so grieves for, and hates his sins, as to turn from them all unto God, purposing and endeavouring to walk with him in all the ways of his commandments.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 15, Section 2

Introduction

A man may fear the fire and yet love the fuel. He may dread the punishment of his sin while cherishing the sin itself in the hidden chambers of his heart. This is the insight that separates true, evangelical repentance from its counterfeits, and it is the insight the Westminster Divines encode in this single sentence that defines what repentance actually is. The human conscience can be pricked by the consequences of sin, the shame of exposure, the wreckage of relationships, the approach of judgment, without ever being pricked by the sin itself. The thief in the dock weeps not for his thievery but for the sentence about to be pronounced. Even a hardened sinner, when sickness brings eternity near, may cry out in terror at the hell that awaits him, yet feel no loathing for the rebellion that earned it. The medieval theologians called this attrition, sorrow born of fear, and distinguished it from contrition, sorrow born of love. But even the most intense attrition is not repentance unto life. The Confession describes something more: the sinner must see not only the danger of his sin but its filthiness and odiousness, not merely as a social stain but as something contrary to the holy nature and righteous law of God. Yet even this is not the whole. The Confession adds a second cause: the sinner acts upon the apprehension of his mercy in Christ to such as are penitent. Here is the gospel nerve of the entire definition. True repentance does not arise solely from the terrors of the law, driving the sinner to despair. It arises also, and especially, from the sight of mercy offered in Christ, which draws the sinner to hope. The law shows the sinner his filthiness; the gospel shows him the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness. And in that fountain, as he looks upon the mercy of God in the face of Jesus Christ, he is melted. He grieves. He hates his sin. He turns from it, all of it, unto God, and he purposes and endeavors to walk in new obedience. This is the anatomy of repentance unto life, and every clause of the Confession's definition is a safeguard against error, a lamp for the self-examining soul, and hope for the brokenhearted.

Scripture Foundation

The Old Testament furnishes a searching portrait of a penitent in David's fifty-first psalm, composed after Nathan the prophet confronted him concerning Bathsheba and Uriah. Here we see every element the Confession describes, and we see them in their proper order. David opens with a cry for mercy: "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions" (Psalm 51:1). The Hebrew machah ("blot out") is the verb for erasing a name from a register. David knows his sin is written down; he pleads for its expungement. But the critical turn comes in verses 3 and 4: "For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." David had sinned grievously against Bathsheba, against Uriah, against his household, against the entire nation. Yet he says, "Against thee, thee only." This is not denial of horizontal injury but recognition that the essential character of sin is its vertical dimension: sin is sin because it is contrary to the holy nature and righteous law of God. David sees his sin not primarily as a mistake that harmed others but as an offense against the covenant Lord. This is precisely the "sight and sense of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins, as contrary to the holy nature and righteous law of God." Yet David does not stop at confession. "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow" (Psalm 51:7). David sees himself as defiled, polluted, in need of washing. In verse 10, he prays: "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me." The Hebrew bara' ("create") is used only of God's creative activity; David cannot produce repentance himself. A clean heart must be created, not manufactured. And what does that clean heart produce? "Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee" (Psalm 51:13). The cleansed man becomes an instrument for the cleansing of others. The psalm moves from sight of sin, through grief and hatred, to turning and new obedience — the Confession's definition set to music. The prophet Ezekiel supplies the eschatological dimension, looking forward to the new covenant when God Himself would produce in His people the repentance they could not produce in themselves. "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them" (Ezekiel 36:26-27). Here the divine initiative is absolute. God gives the heart, puts the Spirit within, and causes the walking. But then comes verse 31: "Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations." The Hebrew verb qut means to feel a sickening disgust, a deep revulsion — not the groveling of a man afraid of punishment but the visceral recoil of a man given a new heart who now sees his old ways for what they truly are. The grace that saves does not merely remove guilt; it transforms the affections so that the sinner comes to share God's own view of sin. The "sight and sense" of sin's filthiness is not a natural capacity; it is a gift of the new heart, a fruit of regeneration. Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, provides the apostolic commentary on this same dynamic. He writes: "For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death" (2 Corinthians 7:10). The Greek word for "godly sorrow" is lypē kata Theon, literally "sorrow according to God": a sorrow that has God as its standard, its cause, and its object. It is sorrow that arises from seeing sin as God sees it. The "sorrow of the world" (lypē tou kosmou), by contrast, is sorrow that has the world as its standard — sorrow over lost reputation, ruined prospects, painful consequences. Both sorrows may produce tears, regret, and outward change. But one leads to life; the other leads to death. Paul does not leave the distinction abstract. He catalogues the fruits of godly sorrow in the Corinthians: "For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge!" (2 Corinthians 7:11). Seven fruits, each a facet of genuine repentance: earnest diligence, eagerness to be vindicated from complicity with sin, holy anger against the sin itself, reverent fear of offending God again, deep longing for restoration, jealous ardor for holiness, and a determination to see the sin purged. None of these are mere emotional turbulence. They are concrete evidences that the sorrow was "according to God," corresponding to the Confession's language of grieving over sin, hating sin, turning from sin, and purposing new obedience. The prophet Joel rounds out the picture with the divine summons that stands behind every act of genuine repentance: "Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil" (Joel 2:12-13). Two details are critical. First, the call is to turn to God, not merely from sin. The Confession says the penitent "turns from them all unto God" — the destination matters as much as the departure. A man may cease from vice and yet never take one step toward the living God; that is reformation, not repentance. Second, the ground of the turning is the character of God: "for he is gracious and merciful." The sinner turns because he has apprehended mercy, not because he has exhausted himself in self-amendment. This is the "apprehension of his mercy in Christ" of which the Confession speaks, only here expressed in Old Testament idiom. The God who calls for a rending of the heart is the God who has already revealed Himself as pardoning iniquity, transgression, and sin. The turning is a response to grace, not a condition for it. Joel's oracle captures both the human responsibility (turn, rend, fast, weep) and the divine initiative (He is gracious, therefore turn), holding them together in a tension the Confession preserves with care.

What the Divines Meant

The Westminster Assembly crafted this definition with specific theological errors in view, and understanding those errors reveals the precision of their language. The Divines were not merely stringing together pious phrases; they were carefully choosing every word to guard against a particular error. The first and most prominent adversary was the Roman Catholic sacrament of penance, as defined by the Council of Trent. The Tridentine fathers distinguished between attrition (sorrow for sin arising from fear of punishment) and contrition (sorrow arising from love of God). So far, the Divines could agree. But Rome taught that attrition, while imperfect, was sufficient for the sacrament of penance when accompanied by the priest's absolution. A sinner could approach the confessional with nothing more than a terrified dread of hell, confess his sins, receive absolution, and be accounted justified — without ever having grieved over his sin as an offense against a holy God. The Confession's definition demolishes this scheme at its foundation. True repentance flows from the sight of sin's filthiness and odiousness, not merely its danger. This is contrition, not attrition — and it is essential. There is no sacramental shortcut, no priestly absolution that can transform the sorrow of a terrified conscience into the sorrow of a renewed heart. What was needed was not more thorough self-examination but a new apprehension of God — specifically, an apprehension of His mercy in Christ. This is why the Confession places the sight of God's mercy alongside the sight of sin's evil as the twin causes of true repentance. The second adversary was the Antinomian tendency that minimized or denied the inward, affective dimensions of repentance. Some, having grasped the freeness of justification, concluded that God required nothing of the sinner except bare faith, and that sorrow for sin, hatred of sin, and turning from sin were at best optional and at worst a return to the law. Against this error the Confession sets a definition that is thick with inward motion: grieves, hates, turns, purposing, endeavouring. Repentance is not a passive state; it is a vigorous, active response of the whole man. The affections are engaged. The will is redirected. The life is reoriented. A gospel that produces no grief for sin, no hatred of sin, and no turning from sin is not the gospel of the Apostles. The Divines were careful to ground this active repentance in grace — it is "by it," that is, by the evangelical grace of repentance — so that the activity of the penitent is never set in competition with the sovereignty of God. But they were equally careful not to evacuate repentance of its human reality. The sinner who repents really does grieve; he really does hate; he really does turn. Grace does not bypass the faculties of the soul; it renews them and sets them in motion toward their proper objects. The third adversary was a subtler error: the notion that repentance could be partial. The Confession says the penitent turns "from them all" — from all his sins. There is a kind of repentance that selects its targets: the respectable sins are retained while the scandalous ones are discarded, or the public sins are abandoned while the secret ones are cherished. The rich young ruler kept the commandments from his youth, but when Christ exposed his idolatrous love of possessions, he went away sorrowful — sorrowful, but unrepentant. He was willing to turn from some sins, but not the one that had him most firmly in its grip. The Confession's "all" is absolute and searching. It forbids the sinner to negotiate with God, to offer up a selection of his vices while reserving a favorite. The evangelical grace of repentance is radical (radix, root) in the truest sense: it goes to the root of the soul and deals with sin there, sparing nothing that it finds. A repentance that leaves even one sin untouched is a repentance that has not yet begun. Finally, the Divines were guarding against the error of despair by placing the apprehension of mercy at the center of the definition. A sinner who sees the filthiness of his sins but does not see the mercy of God in Christ will sink under the weight of his own guilt. The law, by itself, can convince of sin but cannot produce evangelical repentance. It produces, at best, the repentance of Judas: a sorrow so bitter it seeks its own annihilation. The Confession insists that the sight of sin's evil and the sight of God's mercy work together. The law shows the sinner what he is; the gospel shows him what God is for Christ's sake. And it is in the intersection of those two sights — the holiness of God and the mercy of God meeting at the cross — that true repentance is born. The penitent grieves not because he is terrified of hell but because he has seen that his sin is contrary to the nature of the God who loved him and gave Himself for him. That is the genius of the Confession's formulation, and its comfort for every trembling conscience.

Theological Depth

Calvin treated repentance as the whole of the Christian life considered under the aspect of its turning to God, and his treatment in the Institutes provides the theological substructure for much of what the Confession says. For Calvin, repentance has two parts: mortification and vivification. Mortification is the putting to death of the old man, the progressive destruction of sin's power in the believer. Vivification is the bringing to life of the new man, the positive renewal of the soul in righteousness and true holiness. Both are the Spirit's work, and both are lifelong. The Confession's language of grieving over sin and hating sin corresponds to mortification; its language of turning to God and purposing new obedience corresponds to vivification. What is crucial in Calvin is his insistence that both are produced by union with Christ. The believer does not mortify his sin by sheer willpower nor vivify his obedience by self-discipline. He is joined to Christ in His death and resurrection, and from that union flow both the death of the old nature and the life of the new. When the Confession says the sinner repents "by it" — that is, by the evangelical grace of repentance — it is gesturing toward this same reality. Repentance is not an isolated act of the sinner; it is a participation in Christ's own death to sin and life to God, applied by the Spirit. Turretin provides the scholastic precision the Divines relied upon. He notes that the formal difference between legal and evangelical sorrow is not the presence or absence of fear but the terminus ad quem, the goal toward which the sorrow tends. Legal sorrow terminates upon the self and its punishment; the legal penitent is absorbed in his own misery. Evangelical sorrow terminates upon God; the evangelical penitent is absorbed in the offense he has given to the divine majesty. The Confession captures this by making the penitent's grief arise from seeing sin as "contrary to the holy nature and righteous law of God." The sorrow is about God — about what sin is in relation to Him — not merely about the consequences sin brings. Turretin presses this further: the evangelical penitent grieves because he loves God. A wife who has been unfaithful to a husband she does not love may fear discovery, but only the wife who loves her husband will be heartbroken at having wounded him. The measure of true repentance is not the volume of tears but the depth of love for the God against whom one has sinned. Watson, with his characteristic gift for making theology search the conscience, unpacks the hatred of sin described in the Confession. "A true penitent," he writes, "is a sin-hater." But he goes further: the hatred must be universal. "He who hates sin truly hates all sin. A man may be angry with one sin and in love with another. A sick man may vomit up some meat but keep in his stomach that which is more noxious. But he who hates one sin because it is a breach of God's law hates all sin because every sin is a breach of God's law." This is the logic of the Confession's "from them all." True hatred of sin includes a holy dissatisfaction with the remains of indwelling corruption, a longing to be delivered not only from sin's guilt but from its very presence. The sinner who truly hates his sin does not make peace with any of it. He wages war without truce. Watson's application is bracing: "If you do not hate sin, you do not truly repent. And if you do not truly repent, you are not truly saved." The Confession's definition is not an academic exercise; it is a matter of life and death. Owen, writing on the mortification of sin, brings practical theology to its point. He observes that many professing Christians mistake a temporary suppression of sin for true mortification. A man may be startled by a sermon or shamed by a scandal, and for a season he restrains his sin. But the root remains untouched, and when the season passes the sin returns with sevenfold strength. Owen asks: Do you hate the sin itself, or only its consequences? The man who stops his thievery because he fears the gallows has not mortified his covetousness; he has merely suppressed its outward expression. True mortification involves a spiritual hatred of sin as sin — a grieving over it because it offends God. And this hatred is produced by the Spirit, through faith in the cross. "The daily exercise of faith on Christ as crucified," Owen writes, "is the great gospel expedient for the mortification of sin." We hate sin because we see what it cost the Son of God. The cross is not only the ground of our pardon; it is the furnace in which our love for sin is consumed. When the penitent apprehends mercy in Christ, he is looking upon the wounds of the Savior, and in that look his sin becomes unspeakably hateful. Shaw draws attention to the phrase "purposing and endeavouring to walk with him in all the ways of his commandments." The Confession does not say the penitent succeeds perfectly — the struggle against indwelling sin continues throughout this life. It says he purposes and endeavours. The distinction is pastorally vital. A sensitive conscience may look at remaining sin and conclude its repentance is false. But the Confession asks not for sinless perfection but for sincere purpose and earnest endeavor. The penitent has set his face toward God and resolved, in the strength of divine grace, to order his life by God's commandments. Though he stumbles and rises again, the settled direction of his will has changed. This is the difference between a man who sins and a man who lives in sin. The penitent sins but does not live in sin, because his purpose — the compass bearing of his life — is set toward God. Where there is sincere purpose and earnest endeavor, however imperfect the execution, there is evangelical repentance.

Puritan Application

First, learn to see the filthiness of your sin, not only its danger. The natural conscience is deeply concerned with the consequences of sin. Hell is frightening; judgment is terrifying; shame before men is painful. But a conscience that is only terrified of punishment is a conscience that still loves sin, just as a thief still loves stolen goods even as he dreads the prison. The Spirit-taught conscience goes deeper. It begins to see sin as God sees it — as filthy, odious, defiling, contrary to His holy nature. This is not a morbid introspection but a spiritual illumination. Ask yourself honestly: when you think of a particular sin you have committed, what grieves you most? That you might be found out? That you might suffer for it? That you have shamed yourself before others? Or that you have offended the holy God who made you, who has been kind to you, who sent His Son to die for you? The first kind of grief may coexist with a heart that still loves sin; the second kind is the fruit of a heart that has begun to hate it. Examine your sorrows, and do not be content with a repentance that only fears the fire. Second, look to the mercy of God in Christ as the source of your repentance, not only your pardon. Many Christians think of the cross as the place where guilt is removed, and that is gloriously true. But the cross is also the place where sin becomes unspeakably hateful. When you see what your sin cost — not in the abstract, but in the body of the beloved Son of God, in the anguish of His soul, in the darkness that fell upon the land as the Father hid His face — can you continue to love what put Him there? The sight of Christ crucified is a powerful engine of repentance God has given the church. Do not look to the law alone to produce sorrow for sin; the law can terrify but it cannot melt. Look to the cross. See the mercy of God toward penitent sinners displayed in the wounds of Jesus, and let that mercy break your heart. The same blood that cleanses your guilt can soften your hardness. The same grace that pardons can produce in you a hatred of the very sin it pardons. This is why the Lord's Supper is so essential to the Christian life: it sets Christ crucified before our eyes, and in seeing Him we learn to grieve over what we have done and to hate what we have been. Use the ordinances of the gospel not only to receive comfort but to cultivate contrition. Third, make no peace with any sin. The Confession says the penitent turns from all his sins. There is no room in the definition for the sin you have decided to keep. Perhaps it is a secret sin, known only to you and to God, a sin you have rationalized as small, private, harmless. Perhaps it is a respectable sin — the pride that masquerades as principle, the covetousness that calls itself prudence, the gossip that dresses itself in concern. Perhaps it is an old companion, a sin you have known so long that life without it seems unimaginable. The gospel calls you to turn from it, not merely to moderate it, not merely to conceal it, not merely to feel bad about it while continuing in it. You cannot negotiate with God. You cannot offer Him ninety-nine sins while clinging to the hundredth. Christ did not die to leave you partially reformed; He died to redeem you completely. Search your heart. Is there a sin you are protecting, a sin you are making excuses for, a sin you are hoping no one — not even the Holy Spirit — will ask you to surrender? Repentance that turns from all but one is repentance that turns from none. Bring that sin to the cross, confess it without evasion, and ask the Spirit who gave you a new heart to give you also a new hatred for what you have loved too long. Fourth, let your repentance bear the fruit of new obedience. The Confession does not end with grief and hatred. It ends with "purposing and endeavouring to walk with him in all the ways of his commandments." The direction of the life matters. A man may weep over his sins for an hour and return to them in the next. His tears prove nothing if his feet are still walking the old path. True repentance produces concrete change: the tongue that slandered learns to bless; the hand that took what was not its own learns to give; the eye that wandered learns to be fixed on Christ; the heart that cherished bitterness learns to forgive. This change is not instant — it is an endeavor, a striving, a lifelong battle — but it is real and it is visible. The man who has truly repented is not the man who claims to be sorry; he is the man whose life is being progressively conformed to the commandments of God. Look at the direction of your life. Are you moving toward God or away from Him? Are the sins that once dominated you losing their grip, even if they are not yet wholly destroyed? Is there a purpose in your soul — however feeble, however often frustrated — to walk in holiness? The Puritans used to speak of the "bent" of the soul: the fundamental orientation of the will. The bent of the penitent is toward God. He may stumble, but he is facing the right direction. He may fall, but God is the One toward whom his face is set. If you find in yourself this purpose, however imperfect, do not despair. God accepts the sincerity of the endeavor even where the execution falls short. But if you find no such purpose — if the bent of your soul is still toward sin, if your desire is really to be left alone to enjoy your iniquities without consequence — then let no confession of your lips deceive you into thinking you have repented when you have not. Fifth, do not rest in a repentance that never apprehends mercy. The Confession is careful to place the apprehension of God's mercy in Christ at the heart of the penitent's experience. A sorrow that sees only sin and never mercy is the sorrow of Judas, not Peter. Judas saw what he had done, felt the horror of it, returned the silver, and hanged himself. Peter saw what he had done, wept bitterly, and — by the grace of God — found himself at the lakeside with the risen Christ, being restored. The difference is not that Peter's sin was smaller or his sorrow less intense. The difference is that Peter, even in his bitterest tears, was looking toward the One he had denied, and Christ was looking back. There is a kind of penitent who becomes so absorbed in his sin that he can speak of nothing else, think of nothing else, feel nothing but his own corruption. He examines his repentance to see if it is deep enough, his sorrow to see if it is intense enough, his reformation to see if it is thorough enough. But all this looking inward only produces despair, because the more he looks at himself the more sin he sees. The gospel calls the penitent to look outward — to look to Christ, who has borne the sin that grieves him and satisfied the justice that terrifies him. Do not make an idol of your repentance. Do not imagine that the quality of your sorrow adds anything to the sufficiency of Christ's blood. Your repentance is not your savior; Christ is. Look to Him. Apprehend His mercy. Let His kindness lead you to repentance, and then let that repentance lead you back to His kindness. The movement is always from grace to grace, from the mercy that first drew you to the mercy that will never let you go. The penitent who ends in despair has stopped too soon; he has seen the law but not the gospel, the sin but not the Savior. Go all the way to the cross. There, at the place where justice and mercy meet, you will find not only forgiveness for your sins but the grace to hate them, to turn from them, and to walk in newness of life.

Prayer

O most holy and gracious God, we confess that by nature we see only the danger of our sins and never their filthiness. We are sorry when sin brings us shame or suffering, but our hearts are slow to grieve that we have offended Thee, who art infinitely holy and infinitely good. Have mercy upon us, and by Thy Spirit grant us that sight of sin which alone produces true repentance. Show us our transgressions as Thou seest them — as contrary to Thy holy nature, as violations of Thy righteous law, as the cause of the suffering and death of Thy beloved Son. And let that sight not drive us to despair but to the cross, where mercy is displayed for every penitent sinner. We bless Thee for the apprehension of Thy mercy in Christ. We thank Thee that Thou dost not leave us to the terrors of the law, but dost draw us by the cords of love, displaying Thy kindness in the face of Jesus Christ until our hard hearts are melted and our stubborn wills are turned. Grant us daily to look upon Him whom we have pierced, and in that look to find both the grief that hates sin and the hope that lays hold of pardon. Grant us, O Lord, a repentance that turns from all sin. Let no iniquity find shelter in our hearts. Expose our secret faults. Tear down our excuses. Give us the grace to hate every sin, however small it seems, however long we have cherished it, however deeply it has entwined itself with our affections. And having turned us from our sins, turn us unto Thyself, that we might walk with Thee in all the ways of Thy commandments. Though our obedience is imperfect, let our purpose be sincere. Though we stumble, let our faces be set toward Thee. We pray for any who hear these words and know that they have never truly repented — who have made peace with their sins, who have called their sorrow for consequences by the name of godly grief, who have turned from some sins but never from all. Break their hearts, we beseech Thee, and grant them repentance unto life before it is too late. And for those whose repentance has become a prison of introspection, who see only their sin and never their Savior, lift their eyes to Christ, and give them the joy of Thy salvation. Keep us in the way of daily repentance all the days of our pilgrimage, until that day when repentance shall be swallowed up in the sight of Thy face, when sin shall be no more, and we shall walk with Thee in perfect holiness forever. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be glory forever. Amen.