Quotes about Repentance

Confession designed to restore lost blessings is a management technique, it is not repentance.

If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth" (1 John 1:8). It seems God leads us through failure toward maturity, rather than doing whatever is needed for us to move past ongoing failure.

Working diligently to straighten up our actions without understanding either what it means to deeply repent or what it is that needs to be scrubbed away by repentance will make us more smug than penetrating. We'll pressure others to do right rather than draw them to want to do right. P195

August] 26th. [1862] I am a patient man, always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance; and also to give ample time for repentance.

Vices are their own punishment.

How does a blind man say he was wrong? I thought you were lost, but you were never lost to God.

The moment we begin to feel satisfied that we are making some progress along the road of sanctification, it is all the more necessary to repent and confess that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Yet the Christian life is not one of gloom, but of ever increasing joy in the Lord. God alone knows our good works; all we know is His good work.

That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin.

When we received forgiveness instead of judgment, we too were made ready to forgive each other. What God did to us, we then owed to others. The more we received, the more we were able to give; and the more meager our love for one another, the less we were living by God's mercy and love.

Repentance means turning away from one's own work to the mercy of God. The whole Bible calls to us and cheers us: Turn back, turn back! Return—where to? To the everlasting grace of God, who does not leave us…. God will be merciful—so come, judgment day! Lord Jesus, make us ready. We rejoice. Amen.

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him.