Howdy Friends! What is the Doctrine of Repentance? Truly, God loves sinners enough to allow the consequences of personal sin to accomplish their intended purpose.
The reality of the ugliness of personal sin can be challenging to face. Sin is easy to spot in others but painful to recognize in ourselves.
God is being kind when He makes us face our sin so that we will seek our Savior. (Romans 2:4).
In Kindness, God leads His people to repent through the mysterious working of the Holy Spirit. (John 16-8, Acts 2:38-41; 11:18)
Sometimes we think we can gather the strength to clean up the mess before we bring it to God. But – To regularly experience God’s cleansing and power to forsake sin creates a stream of joy and gratitude to Heavenly Father.
Repentance and Faith go hand in hand.
In faith we can openly confess our sin to God, who already knows everything about us. Belief without true repentance is not true saving faith. Even demons believe God exists. (Matt. 8-29 – James 2:19)
By the same, repentance without belief in God’s right to be obeyed yields only sorrow over sin’s painful consequences. (Matt. 27-5, Romans 2:4 – 5, 2 Corinthians 7:10-11) Repentance is to mortify sin, turn our back to it, and worship and obey God.
We sometimes delay repentance until the pain of our sin becomes unbearable. Repentance is essential to spiritual growth.
Rejecting God’s mercy.
If we repent only to escape sin’s consequence, our repentance is pretense, for show, for personal satisfaction. Refusing to repent while continuing to sin is to reject God’s offer of mercy.
To fail to repent our sins, forces us to carry the guilt ourselves. To be humble, to be contrite, to face our sins in the hands of our LORD sets us free of them. This is the Doctrine of Repentance. ~ Gitty Up, Dutch.
