Devotional 77: The Fruits of Repentance: Evidence of a Changed Heart

The Confession Read

Although repentance be not to be rested in as any satisfaction for sin, or any cause of the pardon thereof, which is the act of God's free grace in Christ; yet is it of such necessity to all sinners that none may expect pardon without it.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 15, Section 3

Introduction

The king had been wronged by a subject whose treason was beyond dispute. The evidence was public. The penalty was death. And yet the king, moved by a compassion no one could explain, issued a royal pardon and declared the traitor free. The pardon was announced in every town. But the subject had to do one thing to receive it: rise from his hiding place and accept what was freely given. Now, did his journey from cave to throne room purchase his pardon? No one would say so. The pardon was sealed and delivered at the king's expense. Yet if the man refused to come — if he insisted the pardon was real but he would not rise to receive it — every sensible person would say he had not truly received the mercy at all. The pardon was real. The coming was necessary. This is the pastoral and theological knife's edge upon which the Westminster Divines stand in Section 3 of their chapter on repentance. On the one side lies a precipice the medieval church had tumbled into long before the Reformation: the notion that repentance is a satisfaction for sin, that the sorrows and penances of the penitent contribute something, however small, to the payment of his debt. On the other side lies a precipice into which some of the Reformation's own children stumbled: the notion that because Christ has satisfied for sin completely, repentance is at best optional and at worst an insult to the finished work of the cross. Between these two chasms the Confession walks with the precision of a mountain guide who knows every false step by name. Repentance contributes nothing to the purchase of pardon, which is "the act of God's free grace in Christ." And yet repentance is so necessary that no one who refuses it may expect to be pardoned. The text of Section 3 is a single sentence, but that sentence is structured like a fulcrum, with the negative assertion on one side and the positive on the other, and the whole weight of pastoral wisdom pressing down upon the pivot. Both halves must be understood, and why they belong together is essential. To neglect the first half, the denial that repentance satisfies or merits, is to fall back into the darkness from which the Reformation delivered the church. To neglect the second half, the affirmation that repentance is necessary, is to evacuate the gospel of its moral seriousness and to offer men a pardon they may cherish while continuing in the treason for which the pardon was required. The Confession will have neither error. And what follows is an exploration of why.

Scripture Foundation

The prophet Ezekiel, prophesying to a people whose sins had carried them into the humiliation of exile, speaks words that the Westminster Divines placed at the foundation of this very section. In the thirty-sixth chapter of his prophecy, the Lord promises a restoration so radical that only divine grace can account for it: a new heart, a new spirit, the removal of the heart of stone, the gift of a heart of flesh. And then, having described all that He will do, the Lord adds these words: "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. Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord GOD, be it known unto you: be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of Israel" (Ezekiel 36:31-32). The movement of these verses is essential to grasp. God promises to save His people. He promises that when He saves them, they will repent — they will remember their sins, loathe themselves, be ashamed and confounded. But He immediately adds the reason this salvation is coming: "Not for your sakes do I this." Their repentance, real and deep as it is, is not the cause of their deliverance. The cause is entirely in God — His holy name, His sovereign purpose, His free and unmerited love. The repentance is the fruit of the deliverance, not its root; it is the echo of grace, not the price of it. The Confession's negative assertion, that repentance is no satisfaction and no cause of pardon, is inscribed in capital letters across this passage. And yet the repentance is real. The loathing, the shame, the self-abhorrence — these are not optional. They accompany salvation as surely as the new heart does. The same God who declares "not for your sakes" also declares "then shall ye remember and loathe yourselves." Necessity without merit — the entire doctrine of Section 3 in a single prophetic breath. Our Lord Jesus Christ, in His earthly ministry, pressed the necessity of repentance with an urgency that brooks no softening. In the thirteenth chapter of Luke's Gospel, the people bring Him a horrifying report: Pilate had mingled the blood of Galilean worshipers with their sacrifices. It was the kind of atrocity that fills the mind with theodicy questions — Why did God allow this? Were these Galileans worse sinners than others? Christ's response is startling in its refusal to entertain speculation and its insistence on personal application: "I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish" (Luke 13:3). And lest anyone miss the point, He adds a second example, the eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and delivers the identical verdict: "I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish" (Luke 13:5). Notice what Christ does not say. He does not say, "Except ye offer satisfaction for your sins, ye shall perish." He does not say, "Except ye perform penance sufficient to atone for your debt, ye shall perish." He says, "Except ye repent." Repentance is the thing required — but Christ never confuses the requirement with the payment. The Greek word metanoia, which our English Bibles translate as "repentance," signifies a change of mind so thorough that it reorients the entire life. It is not a payment rendered but a posture assumed — the posture of a sinner who has stopped justifying himself and begun casting himself upon the mercy of God. That posture is required. Christ makes it the hinge upon which eternal destiny turns. "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." No words in Scripture press the necessity of repentance more sharply, and the Confession simply echoes what the Savior Himself declared. The apostolic preaching, recorded in the book of Acts, takes up the same theme and extends it to the Gentile world. Paul, standing on Mars Hill before the philosophers of Athens, does not soften the message for his sophisticated audience. He proclaims the unknown God they had ignorantly worshiped, announces that He now commands all men everywhere to repent, and gives the reason: "Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead" (Acts 17:30-31). Three details in Paul's address merit our attention. First, repentance is a divine command. It is not a suggestion, a piece of sage advice, or an optional spiritual discipline for the temperamentally introspective. God commands all men everywhere to repent. The universality of the command, "all men everywhere," excludes no race, no nation, no class, and no individual. Second, the command is grounded in the coming judgment. The resurrection of Christ is God's public assurance that a day of reckoning has been appointed. Every sinner will stand before the risen Judge. The only sane response to that certainty is repentance. Third, Paul preaches repentance without preaching satisfaction. He does not tell the Athenians to do penance, to undertake pilgrimages, to afflict their bodies, or to offer sacrifices. He tells them to turn. And he tells them that the God who commands the turning has provided the Savior through whom the turning leads to life. The entire apostolic message is compressed into this one address: repentance necessary, Christ sufficient. The apostle Paul elsewhere gives the positive ground that makes the whole structure stand. He declares that sinners are "justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:24), and that "in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace" (Ephesians 1:7). The Greek noun apolutrōsis, redemption, carries the sense of a release purchased by the payment of a price. The price paid is the blood of Christ. The entire transaction flows from God's free and unmerited favor. Nothing is added to it by the tears of the penitent. This is what the Confession means when it says that pardon is "the act of God's free grace in Christ." Pardon is not a transaction between the sinner and an abstract attribute of divine mercy. It is accomplished in Christ, by Christ, through the blood of Christ, and applied to the sinner when the sinner is united to Christ by faith. The empty hand does not fill the cup; it merely takes what is offered. The prophet Hosea provides one of the most beautiful Old Testament depictions of this dynamic. The Lord calls Israel to return: "Take with you words, and turn to the LORD: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously" (Hosea 14:2). The turning is necessary. But Israel brings no payment — only words, only a plea. And then God answers: "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him" (Hosea 14:4). "I will love them freely" — the adverb is everything. There is no bargain, no penance that earns the affection. There is a turning that is required, and a love that flows unpurchased from the heart of God.

What the Divines Meant

The Westminster Divines were not writing in an abstract theological laboratory. They were writing in the aftermath of a century of Reformation controversy, and every phrase they chose was aimed at a specific error. Section 3 is a double-edged sword, and both edges were needed. The first edge was aimed at the Roman Catholic doctrine of penance as satisfaction. The Council of Trent, meeting in the very years that led up to the Westminster Assembly, had defined penance as a sacrament in which the penitent's own works of satisfaction contributed to the remission of sin. The Tridentine canons taught that while Christ's satisfaction was the meritorious foundation of forgiveness, the sinner's own satisfactions, fasting, almsgiving, prayer, and other works imposed by the priest, were necessary to satisfy the temporal punishment due to sin. The Confession's language addresses this with decisive clarity: repentance is "not to be rested in as any satisfaction for sin, or any cause of the pardon thereof." The phrase "any satisfaction" leaves no room. Repentance is not a partial satisfaction, an adjunct satisfaction, or a satisfaction of a different order. It is no satisfaction at all. The phrase "any cause" is equally absolute. Repentance is not the efficient cause, the meritorious cause, the instrumental cause, or any other kind of cause of pardon. Pardon has one cause only: the free grace of God in Christ. The Divines were not denying that the believer's sins have consequences in this life that must be endured, or that the discipline of repentance involves real sorrow and real amendment. They were denying that any of this contributes one particle to the ground of the sinner's acceptance with God. The ground of acceptance is Christ alone, received by faith alone. Repentance is the companion of faith, the fruit of faith, the evidence of faith — but never the ground of faith. The medieval penitential system had made the sinner look to his own sorrow, his own confession, and his own works of satisfaction as contributing to his peace with God. The Confession redirects the gaze entirely: look to Christ. Your tears may be real, but they do not cleanse you. Your sorrow may be deep, but it does not satisfy. Your reformed life may be genuine, but it does not merit. Christ alone satisfies, merits, and cleanses. Repentance is the hand that receives, not the coin that pays. The second edge was aimed at the Antinomian error. The word "Antinomian", literally "against the law," describes those who, having grasped the freeness of justification, concluded that the law had no further claim upon the believer and that repentance, as a sorrow for sin and a turning from it, was an unnecessary return to legal bondage. If Christ has satisfied for all sin, they reasoned, why should the believer trouble himself with grief over sins that are already forgiven? If pardon is complete, why insist on repentance? Some went so far as to argue that preaching repentance was a betrayal of the gospel, a mixing of grace with works, a failure to trust the finished work of Christ. The Divines met this error not by softening their doctrine of free grace but by insisting on the necessity of repentance as a connected but distinct truth. The word "yet" in the Confession's text is the pivot: "yet is it of such necessity to all sinners that none may expect pardon without it." Grace does not make repentance unnecessary; grace makes repentance possible. The same free grace that provides pardon also produces repentance in the heart of the pardoned sinner. The two are inseparable, not because repentance earns pardon but because the Spirit who applies pardon also renews the heart, and a renewed heart cannot continue in the sin from which it has been delivered. The phrase "expect pardon" is carefully chosen. The Divines do not say that God cannot pardon an impenitent sinner — God's power is unlimited. They say that no sinner may expect pardon while remaining impenitent. The word appeals to what God has revealed, not to abstract possibilities. God has declared that He will forgive the penitent and condemn the impenitent. To expect pardon while refusing to repent is to expect God to contradict His own word. It is not faith; it is presumption. And presumption, as the Puritans never tired of warning, is the broad road that leads to destruction.

Theological Depth

Calvin, in his treatment of repentance in the Institutes, draws a distinction that illuminates the entire logic of Section 3. He observes that repentance is so closely connected to the forgiveness of sins that Scripture sometimes speaks of them interchangeably, yet they must never be confused. Forgiveness is God's act of free grace, removing the guilt of sin and receiving the sinner as righteous for Christ's sake. Repentance is the sinner's act, produced by the Spirit, in which he turns from sin to God. But Calvin goes further: "We must take care," he writes, "not to divide what the Lord has joined together." Pardon and repentance are distinct, but they are never separated in the experience of the believer. The man who has received pardon has also received a heart that grieves for the sin that required the pardon. The man who truly mourns for sin has been drawn to that mourning by a sight of the mercy that pardons it. The two graces — faith, which receives pardon, and repentance, which turns from sin — are "simultaneous and inseparable, although logically distinct." This logical distinctness is the key to the Confession's balance. A man may say, "I believe I am pardoned," while living in impenitence. But the logic of grace exposes his claim as hollow, because the same Spirit who gives pardon also gives repentance. A man may say, "I have repented so deeply that I now deserve pardon." But the logic of grace exposes this claim as arrogant, because repentance deserves nothing. Calvin's pastoral wisdom applies both corrections at once: "He who has not repented has not believed, and he who trusts in his repentance has not believed either." Faith alone receives Christ, and Christ brings both pardon and penitence in His train. The believer rests in Christ; he does not rest in his repentance. Turretin addresses the same issue with scholastic rigor. He asks whether repentance is necessary for the remission of sins, and he answers by distinguishing two kinds of necessity. There is a necessitas meriti, a necessity of merit, in which one thing must be present because it earns or deserves another. And there is a necessitas medii, a necessity of means, in which one thing must be present because God has ordained it as the ordinary way in which He bestows another. Repentance is not necessary in the first sense: it does not merit pardon, and it would be blasphemy to suggest that it did. But it is necessary in the second sense: God has ordained that He will pardon no adult sinner apart from repentance. The distinction is not merely academic; it is the difference between the gospel and every form of works-righteousness. The sick man must take the medicine, but the medicine heals him because of its own properties, not because his act of taking it adds any curative power. The drowning man must grasp the rope, but the rope rescues him because it is held by the One on the shore, not because his grip contributes to its strength. So it is with repentance. The sinner must repent, but his repentance saves him only because Christ has satisfied, only because grace is free, only because God has promised pardon to those who turn. Hodge, in his commentary on the Confession, names the two errors that the Divines were opposing, the Roman error that makes repentance a satisfaction and the Antinomian error that makes repentance an insult to grace, and then draws a distinction that has proven helpful to generations of Reformed Christians. He distinguishes between a condition of merit and a condition of connection. A condition of merit is something that earns a benefit. A condition of connection is something that must be present if the benefit is to be received, not because it earns the benefit but because the benefit cannot be enjoyed apart from it. The eye that looks at the brazen serpent does not heal the snake-bitten Israelite; God heals him. But unless he looks, he is not healed. The look is a condition of connection, not a condition of merit. Repentance, Hodge argues, is precisely the same. It is the condition under which God has promised to grant pardon — not because repentance earns pardon but because the soul that refuses to turn from sin is a soul that has not truly received the grace that flows from the cross. The man who will not leave his sin has not grasped the rope. He may claim to believe that the rope is real, that the One holding it is strong, that others have been saved by it. But his unwillingness to take hold of it exposes his claim as empty. Shaw, whose Exposition of the Confession was for many years the standard commentary in Scottish Presbyterian churches, draws out the pastoral importance of the word "rested." The Confession says repentance is "not to be rested in." The penitent may be tempted to make his repentance the ground of his confidence before God, to look at the depth of his sorrow or the thoroughness of his amendment and find there a reason to believe he is accepted. Shaw warns against this with earnest pastoral concern. "Our tears," he writes, "must not be the pillow on which we lay our heads, as if they gave us a right to pardon. That pillow is Christ alone." And yet Shaw also warns against the opposite error — the notion that because repentance adds nothing to the ground of pardon, it may be safely neglected. "Let no man imagine that he may be saved without repentance because he cannot be saved by it. The gospel knows no pardon for the impenitent, however loudly they may profess their faith in Christ." The two warnings belong together, and Shaw holds them in tension precisely as the Confession does. Thomas Boston, in his Human Nature in Its Fourfold State, offers an image that captures the heart of this balance. "The soul," he writes, "is brought to the shore of the Red Sea, with the Egyptians of guilt and wrath pursuing behind, and the waters of despair before. There, at the command of grace, the sea divides, and a way is opened through the blood of the Redeemer. The soul passes through, and looks back to see its enemies dead upon the shore. And then it sings — not of its own flight, but of Him who triumphed gloriously." The flight through the sea is necessary, but the song is sung to the One who opened the way. Repentance is the flight; Christ is the deliverance.

Puritan Application

First, never rest your hope of pardon upon your repentance. The human heart has an incurably legal bent. Even after we have embraced the doctrine of justification by faith alone, we find ourselves peering into our own hearts, measuring the depth of our sorrow, examining the sincerity of our turning, searching for evidence that we have repented well enough to be forgiven. This is a subtle form of unbelief. It makes the ground of our confidence something in us rather than something in Christ. The Confession would redirect your gaze. Christ has satisfied for sin. His blood has paid the debt in full. The pardon is complete, and it is offered to sinners freely — not to the deeply penitent as opposed to the shallowly penitent, not to those who have wept more rather than less, but to sinners, simply as sinners, who come empty-handed to the cross. What then of all the Scripture's insistence on deep, thorough, heart-breaking repentance? It is the description of what the Spirit produces in those whom He saves, not the price they must pay to be saved. The difference is enormous. A bride does not weep on her wedding day to earn the groom's love; she weeps because the love is already hers, and the sheer mercy of it breaks her heart. So the penitent does not grieve to earn Christ's pardon; he grieves because the pardon has met him in his sin, and the kindness of it undoes him. Examine your heart honestly. When you think of your standing before God, do you find your confidence in the blood of Christ alone, or are you secretly adding something of your own — the depth of your sorrow, the thoroughness of your confession, the visible reformation of your life? The cross leaves no room for such additions. Let your repentance rest there, where alone it can rest safely. Do not rest IN it; rest IN Christ THROUGH it. Second, do not dare to expect pardon without repentance. The negative half of the Confession's doctrine is not an excuse for the neglect of the positive half. Because repentance adds nothing to the merit of Christ, some have reasoned that it adds nothing at all: that the gospel offers pardon to the impenitent on the sole condition that they believe themselves to be forgiven. This distorts the biblical message. Christ Himself, as we have seen, declared that except we repent we shall perish. The apostles preached repentance as a divine command binding upon all men everywhere. The gospel promises pardon to those who turn from their sins, not to those who cherish their sins while claiming the name of Christ. What does it mean to expect pardon without repentance? It means to say, in effect, "I want Christ's blood to cover my guilt, but I do not want Christ's Spirit to change my heart. I want deliverance from the penalty of sin, but not from the power of sin. I want to be forgiven, but I do not want to be made holy." This is not the language of faith; it is the language of presumption. The same Christ who justifies also sanctifies. The same Spirit who applies the atonement also renews the will. The same grace that pardons also transforms. If your profession of faith in Christ is not accompanied by a genuine turning from sin, by a grief for having offended a holy God, by a hatred of the evil you once loved, by a deliberate and ongoing reorientation of your life toward obedience, then the Confession's warning is for you: you may not expect pardon without it. Not because your repentance pays for anything, but because the absence of repentance reveals the absence of that grace which alone saves. Third, let the free grace of pardon produce your repentance rather than your repentance seeking to produce pardon. This is the gospel logic that the Confession embodies in its very structure. Pardon is first in the order of nature, even if repentance and faith are simultaneous in the order of time. God's grace in Christ is the cause; the sinner's turning is the effect. The most powerful engine of repentance the church possesses is not the terror of the law, though the law has its necessary work, but the beauty of the gospel. When a sinner sees that God, against whom he has sinned, has loved him with an everlasting love and given His Son to die for him while he was still in rebellion, that sight breaks the heart in a way that mere terror never could. Consider the prodigal son in our Lord's parable. What brought him to his senses in the far country? It was not primarily the filth of the pig trough, though that played its part. It was the memory of his father's house — the recollection that even the hired servants there had bread enough and to spare. The goodness of the father, remembered in the midst of the famine, drew him home. And when he arrived, rehearsing his confession, what did he find? The father running to meet him, falling on his neck, kissing him, clothing him, feasting him. The repentance was real, "I have sinned against heaven and before thee," but it was drawn out by the father's prior love, not purchased by the son's tears. This is the pattern for every penitent. Do not try to work up a repentance deep enough to present to God. Look instead at the God who has already presented His Son for you. Let the sight of that love break your heart. The most genuine repentance in the world is the repentance that flows from a heart that has been loved beyond all deserving. Fourth, understand that repentance is the way of pardon, not the price of it. We use this language carefully, but it is the language of Scripture. Peter told the crowd at Pentecost, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins" (Acts 2:38). The repentance is "for" the remission — the Greek preposition eis can indicate purpose or result. Repentance is directed toward remission; it is the appointed path that leads there. But it is a path, not a toll booth. The traveler does not pay for the destination by walking the road; he simply arrives by means of it. The distinction is deeply freeing for the troubled conscience. The man who thinks his repentance must be pure enough, deep enough, and complete enough to merit forgiveness will never find peace, because his repentance will always be mixed with imperfection, his sorrow alloyed with selfishness, his turning partial and halting. But the man who understands that repentance is simply the turning of the soul from sin to Christ, the turning itself not the quality of the turning's performance, can have peace even while he mourns. His confidence is not in how well he has turned but in the One toward whom he has turned. Every true penitent can say with the publican, "God be merciful to me a sinner" (Luke 18:13), and go down to his house justified — not because his prayer was eloquent or his sorrow profound, but because the mercy he asked for was already provided at the cross. Fifth, let your repentance continue as long as your sin continues. The Confession does not treat repentance as a crisis that passes. In the larger structure of Chapter 15, the Divines go on to describe repentance as a lifelong exercise. But even here, in Section 3, the logic of "necessity" points toward ongoing repentance. If pardon cannot be expected without repentance, and if the believer continues to sin throughout this earthly pilgrimage, then the believer must continue to repent throughout this earthly pilgrimage. There is never a point in the Christian life at which sorrow for sin becomes unnecessary. The nearer we draw to God, the more keenly we feel the sin that remains, and the more earnestly we turn from it. This is not a counsel of perpetual guilt. It is a counsel of perpetual honesty before the God who already knows our frame and remembers that we are dust. The repentance of the mature believer is not the terrified groveling of a soul afraid of hell; it is the filial sorrow of a child who has disappointed a beloved Father, mingled with the confidence that the Father's love is unchanged. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). The confessing is continual because the sin is continual, and the cleansing is continual because the advocacy of Christ is continual. Do not let the accumulation of days, or the growth in grace, or the respect of the church convince you that you have outgrown the need for repentance. The holiest saints in Scripture were 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. Isaiah cried, "Woe is me! for I am undone" in the very moment he saw the Lord high and lifted up. Job said, "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" after God had spoken to him out of the whirlwind. The mark of a soul that is drawing near to God is not the absence of repentance but its deepening. Keep short accounts with God. Let no sin go unconfessed, unmourned, unrenounced. And as you do, rest not in the repentance but in the Redeemer who makes repentance possible.

Prayer

O Lord God, whose mercy is from everlasting to everlasting and whose justice will by no means clear the guilty, we come before Thee as those who have sinned against Thee in thought, word, and deed. We confess that we are unworthy of the least of all Thy mercies, and that if Thou shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared. We bless Thee that pardon is not a reward for our repentance but a gift of Thy free grace in Christ. We thank Thee that the blood of Jesus Christ Thy Son cleanseth us from all sin, and that Thou art faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness when we confess them. Grant us never to rest our hope of pardon upon the depth of our sorrow or the sincerity of our turning, but upon the finished work of our Redeemer, who has borne our sins in His own body on the tree. Yet we pray, O Lord, that Thou wouldst not permit us to presume upon Thy grace by continuing in sin. Grant us true evangelical repentance — a grief for having offended Thee, a hatred of the evil that cost our Savior His life's blood, and a turning from every sin, both secret and open, both cherished and despised. Let no sinner among us expect pardon while refusing to part with the sin that requires it. Break the hard heart. Awaken the sleeping conscience. Grant repentance unto life to any who have never truly turned from their sins unto the living God. For those who do repent, grant that their repentance may deepen with their growth in grace. Let them see their sin more clearly as they draw nearer to Thy light, and let that sight produce in them not despair but a more fervent love for the Savior who has covered all their sin. Teach us to repent daily, to keep short accounts with Thee, and to rest our weary souls not in our own tears but in the wounds of Christ, which are the only refuge of penitent sinners. Hear us for His sake, in whose name we pray. Amen.