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God Has Granted Repentance Unto Life
God Has Granted Repentance Unto Life
“When they heard this, they quieted down and glorified God, saying, "Well then, God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life." Acts 11:18
Repent! The cry of the ages from men of God. The prophets warned generations that they needed to turn from the ways. Some did. Repentance was at the heart of the preaching of John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and Jesus.
One of the most illustrative passages in the New Testament to help understand what it means to repent is found in 2 Corinthians 7:9: “ I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.”
It involves sorrow over sin, but Paul here describes the needed sorrow as godly sorrow. Judas had sorrow for what he had done, but it did not bring him to repentance but suicide. Peter denied the lord and then wept bitterly. Such weeping however was the precursor to a great change in Peter whole attitude and demeanor. He repented.
In the parable of the two sons, the one son ‘repented and went’. This has gendered a debate on whether repentance includes the ‘change’ or not. Interesting debate in some regards, but if one doesn’t then do the changing it become difficult (if not impossible) to talk about his repentance. Hence, the long taught definition: the change of heart that leads to a change of life.
Notice how this was articulated by Paul: “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death. For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you: what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong! In everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter” (2 Corinthians 7:10-11).
When you learned that you were a willful sinner and thus an enemy of God and destined to be forbidden to be in His presence throughout eternity, what happened to you? For most, it starts with fear (of judgment and condemnation) and then a change of life style. This is the ‘godly sorrow’ that the Corinthians displayed. It is the ‘repentance unto life’ that God grants – that God – that God desires (2 Peter 3:9) – that God demands (Acts 17:30). Is such present in your life?
Hugh DeLong
