Introduction

As seen in the previous articles in this series, true repentance cannot be of man.

No man can crucify himself. No man of himself can fully deny himself. No man can turn himself from his sinful ways, to which he is inclined with his whole heart. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh” (John 3:6). “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7). “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another” (Titus 3:3).

The Heidelberg Catechism, in Lord’s Day 1, describes this condition of the natural man as his misery. The heart of this misery is man’s way in his own nature, as he is conceived and born in sin. He is prone by nature away from God and God’s law. Instead of loving God and the neighbor, man is prone by nature to hate God and his neighbor (LD 2).

Such is the misery of man before God and before God’s law.

But look around and observe the world. Look not at the many causes of false repentance on the world’s part. Look not at the judgments of God that afflict the sons of men in myriad ways, from natural disasters to war to disease and famine to unrest and turmoil that affect safety and security. Look not at men who bewail themselves over their lamentable condition and try to figure out a way of escape. Look not for false repentance that has everything to do with the consequences of sin and nothing to do with sin itself. But look at the world in its glee and merriment. Look at the world parading itself in self-indulgence and abominable iniquity. Look at the world joyfully trampling God’s glory underfoot as it revels in revolt from him, from his law and his truth. Look at the world in its madness as it attempts to overthrow the most basic ordinances embedded in creation that testify of God’s truth and wisdom.

Here is the world’s misery at its very heart. That misery is its great joy and happiness. The world’s delight is its own undoing. The people labor in the very fire (Hab. 2:13).

True repentance, true sorrow of heart that is God-directed and God-centered, is of God, not of man. The self-loathing and self-abhorrence of true repentance can only be from God alone, the God of all mercy and grace in Jesus Christ, the giver of every good and perfect gift.

God’s Mercy Precedes

How wondrous is the mercy of God—mercy that precedes, is in, and follows true, spiritual, Godward repentance! How his gift of sovereign repentance glorifies him as the God who is so rich in mercy!

The mercy of God must be first. It is first because God is sovereign in all of salvation. He is the God who has mercy upon whom he will have mercy.

What is the mercy of God that is so powerfully shown in the true repentance of the sinner?

First, God’s mercy that precedes is that virtue of God by which he looks on the elect sinner, who is impenitent and hard-hearted and continues in his wicked ways. No rebuke will turn him from his sin. No judgment sent upon him will turn him. No terror will break him from his perverse rebellion. He must only harden himself in the pursuit of his way of sin. He is worthy only of judgment. In his stubborn impenitence there is absolutely no difference between him and the world, which is steeped in iniquity and rushes headlong to destruction. Instead of letting the sinner continue in his way of sin to his own destruction, the Lord has compassion on him. Instead of judging him, the Lord takes pity upon him.

The mercy of the Lord is to break down the sinner thoroughly and completely. That mercy is to break his hardened heart and to give him a contrite and humble spirit. That mercy of God is to make the sinner see his deplorable condition, that he is a wretched sinner. In his sovereign mercy God gives the sinner a new heart, a new heart by whose power he will loathe himself in his own sight for his iniquities and his abominations (Ezek. 36:31). That mercy of God is to give the sinner the humble supplication of the publican, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Second, God’s mercy that precedes is his sovereign declaration in the gospel to the elect sinner of God’s mercy to forgive sins. God publishes those glad tidings in the gospel, declaring himself to be a merciful God and promising to forgive all those who call upon his name.

The divine publication of God’s mercy to forgive sins is reflected beautifully in Psalm 51. In the first verse of this penitential psalm, David confessed his sole appeal. His reason for appealing to God to forgive him could not be in himself, the ungodly adulterer and murderer. His reason was not in his own confession of sin or in his own expression of sorrow over his sin. True repentance must forbid such things. He could not give to get. The preceding standard of David’s request for pardon is wonderfully laid out: “According to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies.”

So also is the preceding mercy of God reflected in the prayer of the publican in Jesus’ parable: “O God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.” The publican’s appeal was only to God’s mercy because the publican was a sinner without hope in himself. His appeal to God’s mercy was because the mercy of God is for ungodly sinners as ungodly sinners.

Without that mercy there is no approach for the sinner to a holy and righteous God for forgiveness. There could be no approach for David, the adulterer and murderer. There could be no approach for the sinner, the publican.

The wonder of God’s mercy is in his sovereign declaration of his mercy, mercy published in the gospel to sinners. The wonder of God’s mercy goes beyond the mere external call of the gospel. Without the internal call, directed by the Holy Spirit to the heart of the ungodly sinner, that sinner could never come to God for his mercy. But the Spirit powerfully applies the truth of God’s mercy proclaimed in the gospel, causing the elect sinner to know God’s mercy for him. The gospel of God’s mercy must be accompanied with the drawing power of God, according to divine election. In this same manner faith must apprehend the mercy of God in Jesus Christ in order for the sinner to come to God as a sinner, to plead the mercy of God for forgiveness.

So it must also be the mercy of God that follows to justify the ungodly sinner. Here too, mercy is the glorious wonder that glorifies God as the one true God. Here especially rings loudly and clearly the proclamation in Micah 7:18 of God’s uniqueness: “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy.”

What is the wonder of mercy in forgiveness?

There is an ungodly sinner standing before the presence of the infinitely righteous and holy God, the God who punishes sinners in his just judgment. Into God’s presence this sinner has come. He has come to speak nothing good of himself. The sinner gives no reasons in himself that the living, holy God of heaven and earth should justify him. Exactly the opposite. Everything the sinner says about himself is cause for his condemnation and destruction. To all his wicked deeds, he lays exclusive claim. He says regarding them all, “They are mine, all of them and everything about them.” All his wickedness, all his pollution, depravity, corruption, and guilt he imputes to himself. In the words of the publican, he is the sinner.

Nor does he justify himself. He does not claim any good of himself. No good works, no obedience, no keeping of God’s law, however imperfectly. No faith, no repentance, no humility does he own before God. He does not thank God that he is not a sinner like other men.

God’s mercy is that he justifies this ungodly sinner. As the Holy Spirit, God’s mercy is that he enters into the entire nature of this ungodly sinner. God’s mercy is that he tenderly and thoroughly washes the sinner’s heart and soul, his lips and his hands with the holy and righteous blood of his Son, so that the sinner is now justified. God so mercifully separates that which the sinner has joined together in his confession: his person and his sins, that is, his confession of sin, his self-imputation. Before God’s glorious, holy, all-seeing, and all-knowing presence, the sinner is cleansed of his sin and is acceptable and beloved. In his conscience the ungodly sinner is assured by faith of his thorough justification. According to God’s word, God has shown himself merciful indeed, the God who is all-glorious in his forgiveness of sins.

God’s Grace Precedes

Just as with the mercy of God, so also the grace of God precedes, is in, and follows his glorious gift of true, spiritual repentance.

Grace and mercy for the elect sinner’s repentance belong together. They complement each other. While mercy has its distinct focus on the sinner as the sinner according to his dire need of repentance and forgiveness, grace has its focus on God, whose gift of mercy is wholly of himself. Grace is the good pleasure of God whereby he in himself in eternity determined unconditionally to bring his elect to himself in the deep way of sin and grace. Why did God determine to show his mercy to one sinner, dead in sins and trespasses, and not another? Because he determined wholly of himself. Why does God mercifully work repentance in one and not in another? Because he decreed of his sovereign good pleasure alone.

Grace is also complementary to God’s mercy because his merciful gift of repentance has its righteous basis in the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone and his meritorious cross. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). In his death on the cross, dying for elect sinners, Christ gave himself to that death for their repentance. As seen before,¹ their repentance is the necessary fruit of his death in their behalf. His death has become their death to sin in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is also true that Jesus’ death on the cross is the gracious ground for the gift of their repentance. His blood is the ransom price of their redemption from sin. The result of his ransom is their redemption. Grace alone breaks the grip and power of sin’s dominion over the hearts of God’s elect. Grace irresistibly turns their impenitence into true repentance.

The grace of God is also the foundation for the gospel as the glad tidings of salvation. These are the glad tidings that proclaim God’s gift of salvation in all its fullness, the proclamation of Christ as the complete savior, given by the grace of God alone. The gospel is the proclamation of Christ alone and his cross alone, that they give abundantly every blessing of salvation, including repentance (Acts 3:26).

According to the promise of the gospel, purchased and sealed in the blood of the gracious Son of God, God graciously works the fulfillment of his promise. He graciously turns so that the sinner turns (Jer. 31:18–19; Lam. 5:21).

What a wonder of grace is God’s gift of repentance! Repentance is therefore a gracious death, a gracious sorrow, and a gracious grief. The ungodly sinner’s self-exposure, to become in his own eyes a wretched, miserable sinner, is a most beautiful and glorious gift of God. In the sinner’s brokenness and ruin is the almighty power of God’s grace. In the sinner’s repentance is the most wonderful power of God’s grace. It divides the sinner against himself, causing him to abhor and loathe himself. Where before there was peace, there is now enmity—the new against the old, the spirit against the flesh.

It is also the grace of God that works so wondrously in the heart of the elect sinner to draw him into God’s presence to confess his sins and to seek forgiveness from God’s mercy. With the sinner’s knowledge of his sins and the curse due to him for those sins, the reason he does not flee from God’s holy presence can only be due to the working of God’s grace in the sinner. That the ungodly sinner confesses his sins before the infinitely holy God, imputing them all to himself alone, can be only by God’s grace working in the sinner.

For God’s Glory

Because the mercy and grace of God alone are the causes of true repentance, true repentance must magnify and glorify God’s mercy and grace. Repentance must be the humble acknowledgment of only sin and evil belonging to the sinner in the very crying out for God’s mercy. In and from man there is nothing in which to glory, for the sake of God’s glory alone. Repentance as the true power of complete self-denial must look to God’s grace alone for all the sinner’s justification. True repentance denies all good to self in order to look to God for all.

In this way of repentance, placed and walking in this way by grace alone, the ungodly sinner must know only one reason for his justification. That reason is not his repentance, though graciously wrought in his heart. Neither is that reason his faith, though graciously wrought in his heart. That reason is the mercy of God. According to the publican’s prayer, God shows his mercy, declaring and sealing his pardon of sin. Faithful to his promise of mercy, he makes the penitent return to his house justified. So the forgiven, justified sinner glories in the God of mercy (Ps. 59:17).

That the mercy and grace of God precede, are in, and follow his work of repentance is also the preciousness of true repentance. So the Holy Spirit exalts true repentance in the wondrous words of Psalm 51:17: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” Also Psalm 34:18: “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.” The sacrifices of a broken spirit are the sacrifices of God. He will never despise a broken and contrite heart because it is of him, of his mercy and grace. The Lord is nigh unto those who are of a broken heart because the broken heart is of his mercy and grace. He saves such as are of a contrite spirit because the contrite spirit is of his mercy and grace alone. He has respect not to men but to his own works. Such is the rule of John 1:16: “And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.”

How foolish then is the man who would interrupt this wondrous stream of God’s mercy and grace to interpose himself, insisting that his repentance as well as his faith must have some affect on the mercy and grace of God! It is the most absurd folly to turn the glorious gospel of repentance and faith by the mercy and grace of God alone into a new law. God will be merciful to forgive, but man must first repent. God will give the grace of justification, but man must first believe. God is willing to bestow grace—grace to forgive and grace to assure of forgiveness—but man must first repent and believe before God will bestow that grace. No mercy except for those who repent. No grace except for those who believe. Such folly cannot be undone by a mere concession that somehow, some way, it is still all by grace nonetheless. The damage is already done, not only to God’s free, sovereign, irresistible grace but also to the assurance of God’s mercy and grace. No longer is salvation grace for grace but grace for works, grace for man’s activities, grace for man’s doings.

Rather, salvation “is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom. 9:16). As it is with salvation, so it is with every part of salvation. So it is with that part of salvation that is repentance. True repentance is not at all of man’s willing or of man’s running. Neither is it of man’s willing or of man’s running by grace or even by grace alone. It is only of God’s mercy, the mercy that goes before, that gives, and that blesses the gift with grace for grace.

So it is ever by the mercy and grace of God that the Christian is at the same time the sinner and the justified, righteous in his Lord Jesus Christ. So it is that he knows himself to be the most miserable sinner in and of himself and the most blessed saint in and of his blessed savior, Jesus Christ. So it is that he knows what is necessary for him to know to live and die in the comfort of belonging to his faithful savior, Jesus Christ. So is his life in the words of the first thesis of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, a life of repentance according to the will of his Lord and Master. So it is true of him as Paul wrote in Romans 7:25: “So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”

So it is with the life of the Christian as long as he lives in this world. As long as he is in the world, the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that he cannot do the things that he would. So he looks for his entrance into glory, when he will no longer be both a sinner and justified but will be forever justified without sin. So he looks for the perfection of glory, when he will be no longer miserable but will be always and only blessed forever. So he hopes for the day when the battle between flesh and spirit will turn to complete triumph. So he anticipates the full glory of heaven, forever to praise the glory of the mercy and grace of his God.