Dear Friends,
Some people bristle when they see the word “repentance” and reject the idea saying that it introduces the idea of works into salvation. But that word “repent” is in the Bible again and again! What’s wrong? Repentance is no more a work than is faith: both are the gift of God. Let today’s devotional set your mind at ease. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Acts 17:30 (ESV)

  The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,

• II Timothy 2:24-26 (ESV)

  24 And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, 25 correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

“True repentance is always the gift of God, and the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul. Man, left to himself, continues in sin. If he turns from his iniquity, it is because. God turns him. By nature, his mind is set on mischief; and if that mind be changed, as it is in genuine repentance, it must be because the Lord himself has changed it. That repentance which a man works in himself, without the Spirit of God, will turn out to be a repentance that needs to be repented of; but that godly sorrow for sin, which the Spirit of God produces in the heart, is a sure indication of spiritual life, and the constant attendant of saving faith. Whosoever unfeignedly repents of sin, and believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, is a saved man; he shall be among the blessed ones in that day when Christ comes to judge the quick and the dead; and he shall be among the glorified forever.” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLVII, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1901), p. 625]