Dear Editor-in-chief,

The doctrine of repentance has been an important thread that has run throughout the controversy in the PRC since 2015. In the October 15 issue of Sword and Shield, much was written describing what repentance is NOT. For example:

“I deny that repentance is a means unto the end justification and that faith is the means unto the end justification. I deny this in two senses. First, I deny that repentance and faith are both means unto the end justification. Faith’s relationship to justification and repentance’s relationship to justification are fundamentally different.” (NJL page 13)

“it is an error to make repentance to be the same as faith. Repentance is not faith, and faith is not repentance.” (AL page 35)

I would like to encourage you, as editor-in-chief, to lay out positively your understanding of the doctrine of repentance. I believe that we would all benefit from further writing on this important doctrine. My questions include: What is a Biblical definition of repentance? What role and function does repentance have in the life of the child of God? How does repentance relate to fellowship with God and assurance? How does repentance relate to forgiveness of sins both objectively before God and subjectively in our own consciences? How is the call to repentance to be preached both in the world and in the Church from week to week? Is repentance to be considered primarily law or gospel? How does repentance logically relate to faith, justification, and sanctification? Is repentance to be considered a good work that man performs by God’s grace or is man passive in repentance? Is repentance to be considered a means unto the remission of sins or should repentance be considered a fruit of faith (flowing out of faith’s assured knowledge of forgiveness)?

I pray that God will sharpen us as we seek to grow in our understanding of the glorious doctrines of salvation in Christ our Savior!

“For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever.  Amen.” Romans 11:36

Respectfully,

Kent Deemter

REPLY

Introduction

Now, here is a letter with some meat on its bones. “I would like to encourage you, as editor-in-chief, to lay out positively your understanding of the doctrine of repentance.” Oh, is that all? And in my reply I am to connect the doctrine of repentance with forgiveness of sins, assurance of salvation, covenant fellowship with God, God’s bar of justice, the human conscience, the gospel, the call of the gospel, the law, faith, justification, sanctification, good works, grace, passive versus active, the doctrine of the means of salvation, and the doctrine of the fruit of salvation.

Our correspondent, who writes utterly sincerely and in good faith, is looking for a book or at least a lengthy series of articles. And what a book or series that would be. I agree wholeheartedly with him that “we would all benefit from further writing on this important doctrine.” And without any guile, I do sincerely thank him for raising such a glorious topic as repentance for the benefit of the readership.

But our poor correspondent has asked for my understanding of the doctrine of repentance. Whereas the doctrine of repentance could fill an ocean, my understanding of that doctrine could fill a sippy cup. That is the way I feel more and more about the unsearchable riches of Christ as God continues to work reformation in his church. As the Lord recovers the gospel to us in all of its liberating freedom, the riches of Christ become ever more unsearchable in their value. They are infinite and marvelous and staggering. The unsearchable riches of Christ are Christ, and he makes the silver of our salvation to be as abundant as the stones upon the ground and the gold of our salvation to be the pavement of the streets. So it is with the doctrine of repentance. As soon as I try to gather it up, I see that my hands are laughably inadequate to hold the great riches of it.

So in this reply I will not be writing a book. But I am eager to set forth what little I know, for even that little is to me a great and inestimable treasure of my Lord.

Definition

Here is my definition and doctrine of repentance: Repentance is the believer’s spontaneous love for God as that love comes into contact with and hates the believer’s own sin and corruption.

My explanation of that definition is that, in its essence, repentance is love for God. Repentance is not a complicated and perplexing thing to know or to explain in the life of a child of God, but it is simply love for God. Such love is the fruit of faith, and it springs forth spontaneously from faith. When the gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed to an elect sinner, the Holy Ghost brings Jesus Christ himself to the sinner. The Spirit works faith in the heart of the elect sinner, producing in the sinner both the will to believe and the very act of believing. Faith is that believer’s connection with Christ, through which he receives Jesus Christ and all his benefits.

The Spirit-wrought fruit of faith is love for God. This love beholds God as absolutely lovely. This love desires God’s fellowship as the one thing that it seeks after. This love desires to obey God and to please God and to do every good work. This love is the inevitable fruit of the elect sinner’s faith. Christ comes to the elect sinner through faith, making him a new man and causing him to live a new life and freeing him from the bondage of sin. The Spirit causes love to spring forth from that faith instantly and spontaneously. In the moment of the elect sinner’s believing, he loves God as the sure fruit of that faith.

The believer who loves God is still a sinner. He has only a small beginning of the new obedience of love. He yet carries with him his totally depraved old man of sin. As love for God blossoms from faith in the heart of a man who is still a sinner, that love instantaneously comes into contact with the believer’s sin and corruption. Love recoils from that sin and hates that sin as abomination. God alone is absolutely lovely to the eyes of love, and all this sin that a man finds in himself is filthy in the eyes of love. Love mourns that sin and is appalled by that sin and is full of zeal and revenge against that sin. The believer is filled with godly sorrow over his sin, indignation over his sin, and vehement desire against it. All of this sorrow and vehemence is the believer’s repenting (see 2 Cor. 7:11). And the believer’s repenting is simply his love for God as that love comes into contact with and hates his own sin and corruption.

My basis for this definition of repentance is the biblical word for repentance itself, used in such passages as Mark 1:14–15. “Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” The word “repent” means to change one’s mind. The change in repentance is that the elect sinner now loves God with his mind instead of hating God. The change in repentance is also that the elect sinner now hates sin instead of loving sin.

My basis for this definition of repentance is also Lord’s Day 33 of the Heidelberg Catechism. Lord’s Day 33 deals with the doctrine of repentance, which it calls “true conversion.” The Reformed doctrine of repentance is that repentance is “sincere joy of heart in God” and “sincere sorrow of heart that we have provoked God by our sins” (Confessions and Church Order, 121).

On that basis I define repentance as the believer’s spontaneous love for God as that love comes into contact with and hates the believer’s own sin and corruption.

Implications

With this definition of repentance, we can sketch some of its implications. First, repentance is not faith but the fruit of faith. Repentance is love for God, which love is obedience to the law. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God…with all thy mind” (Matt. 22:37). Therefore, repentance is a good work. We could say that repentance is the first good work produced by faith. When love for God first blossoms out of faith as its instant and spontaneous fruit, in that same instant it comes into contact with and recoils from and mourns over the believer’s sin. This is why the call to repent is made right along with the call to believe. Not because repentance is faith or the means of salvation with faith, but because repentance is the first and inevitable fruit of faith.

Second, repentance is not a means of salvation. Faith alone—worked by the Holy Ghost in the elect sinner’s heart by the preaching of the gospel and confirmed by the use of the sacraments—is the means of salvation. Repentance is not a means unto the remission of sins. Only faith is. God does not grant justification through repentance but only through faith. God does not forgive our sins through repentance but only through faith. So also for all of the blessings of salvation: justification and sanctification are all through faith, not repentance. Though repentance springs from faith as its fruit from the very instant that a man believes, that repentance has no bearing whatsoever on that man’s remission of sins or his justification. The reason that God saves his people only through faith is because of faith’s object: Jesus Christ. The reason that God does not save his people through their work, including their work of love and their work of repenting, is so that no man may boast (Eph. 2:8–9). Faith in Jesus Christ is the means of salvation, and repentance is its inevitable, spontaneous, and instantaneous fruit.

Third, the believer’s assurance is not due to or by means of his repentance. The believer’s assurance is faith alone in Christ alone. The believer’s repenting does not restore to him the comfort of his salvation. The believer’s repenting does not restore to him the blessed experience of fellowship with God. The believer’s repenting does not bring him the knowledge of his forgiveness. The believer’s repenting does not give any answer whatsoever to the believer’s troubled conscience. The believer certainly has assurance. But the entirety of the believer’s assurance is faith alone in Christ alone, and the believer’s assurance is not at all his repenting or due to his repenting. How could it be? The believer has peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, and the only way the believer has Jesus Christ is by faith (Rom. 5:1). Nothing else may take the place of faith or share a place with faith in the believer’s peace with God. If anything else takes the place of faith or shares a place with faith, then the believer’s peace with God is not Christ alone but Christ and something of the believer. Especially repentance and other good works of love may not share a place with faith in the believer’s peace with God. Then the believer’s peace with God—which includes all of his assurance and experience—depends on how well the believer did his works. Instead of having peace, the believer would be plagued by the doubt whether he repented hard enough or was sorry enough for his sin. Only being justified by faith does the believer have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is why the teaching that in some sense a man’s activity of repenting precedes God’s activity of remitting his sins is so deadly and wretched. In such a teaching the believer does not have Christ alone for his salvation, but the believer is cast for his salvation on the rocks of his own imperfect love and his own imperfect repenting and his own imperfect sorrowing for his sins. I wonder if those today who are teaching that man’s activity precedes God’s activity in salvation can actually make it their personal confession. Let them stop talking in the abstract about salvation. Let them stop saying this: “Repentance precedes remission of sins.”¹ Let them instead climb into heaven, and let them stand before the awesome majesty of the thrice-holy God, and let them say to God’s face, if they can: “God, my repenting of my sins precedes thy remitting of my sins.” And if they cannot look the holy God in the eye and tell him that, then let them also stop telling everyone else back here on earth, “Repenting precedes remission of sins.”

The reality of repenting and all of love’s other works of gratitude is that they have nothing to do whatsoever with the believer’s justification and assurance of his justification. His justification is by faith in Christ irrespective of any of his good works, including his repenting. In the words of the Belgic Confession, article 24: “It is by faith in Christ that we are justified, even before we do good works” (Confessions and Church Order, 53).

Fourth, repentance inevitably accompanies faith as its spontaneous fruit. Where you see repentance in a man, there you see his faith. This is why the scriptures sometimes speak of repenting unto salvation or repenting in order to be forgiven. For example, Peter’s call to the people amazed at the healing of the lame man: “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you” (Acts 3:19–20). The meaning is not that the people’s remission of sins would be because of or by means of their repenting. Rather, Peter speaks of repentance as the inevitable and indelible evidence of faith in Christ, by which faith they would be saved. The last evidence that they gave was unbelief, for they had “killed the Prince of life” (v. 15). Salvation from their sin, which salvation was pictured by the healing of the lame man, was “through faith in his name” (v. 16), that is, faith in Jesus, “the Prince of life.” The evidence of their faith, because it is the unmistakable and inevitable fruit of faith, would be their repenting and turning from their sin.

Conclusion

That probably does not answer every question that was posed in the letter. Hopefully this at least gives us the lines along which all these and other related questions can be answered. May God establish his gospel and open a door of utterance for his church to preach “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21).