A Gift, Not an Achievement
There is scarcely a word more central to the gospel call than repentance. John the Baptist preached it; the Lord Jesus opened His ministry with it; the apostles pressed it upon every hearer. “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” And because it is commanded, men naturally assume it must be a thing they themselves produce — a turning they generate, a sorrow they manufacture, a decision they reach by the unaided strength of their own will. The command seems to imply the ability. Surely, men reason, if God tells me to repent, the repenting must be mine to give.
Yet when we lay our reasonings aside and listen to the Scriptures, a different and far more humbling truth emerges. Repentance, like faith, is named among the gifts of God. It is not the one part of salvation the sinner brings to the table while God supplies the rest. It is itself granted from above, wrought in the heart by the same sovereign grace that quickens the dead. The turning of a sinner to God is, at its root, the work of God turning the sinner.
Acts 5:31 — Christ Exalted to Give Repentance
Standing before the council, Peter and the apostles declared who the risen Christ now is and what He has been exalted to do:
Note carefully the pairing. The exalted Christ gives two things: repentance and forgiveness of sins. No one imagines that a man forgives his own sins; that is plainly the gift of God in Christ. But the verse sets repentance alongside forgiveness as a thing equally given, equally flowing from the exalted Saviour’s hand. If forgiveness is a gift, so is the repentance named in the very same breath. The same Prince who pardons is the Prince who grants the turning that precedes the pardon. Repentance is not the price the sinner pays to obtain Christ’s gift; it is part of the gift itself.
2 Timothy 2:25 — “If God Peradventure Will Give Them Repentance”
Writing to Timothy about how to deal with those who oppose the truth, Paul instructs him to teach with meekness and patience, and then grounds the whole hope of their recovery not in Timothy’s persuasiveness nor in the opposers’ willingness, but in the sovereign giving of God:
The grammar settles the matter. It is God who may “give them repentance” — the gift is His to bestow or to withhold. Timothy preaches; God grants. The minister may instruct with all meekness, but he cannot reach into a man’s heart and create the turning; only God can do that. And observe what repentance leads to here: “the acknowledging of the truth.” The order is divine. God gives repentance, and out of that God-given repentance comes the recognition and embrace of the truth. The sinner does not first reform himself and thereby earn the gift; God gives the gift, and the sinner is changed.
Acts 11:18 — “Granted Repentance unto Life”
When the believing Jews at Jerusalem heard how the gospel had come to the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius, their response was not to congratulate the Gentiles on their good decision but to glorify God for what He had done:
Here the truth is stated plainly and the church’s instinct confirms it. They did not say, “The Gentiles have repented,” as though the credit lay with them. They said, “God hath … granted repentance.” The verb is one of bestowal — the same kind of word used of a king granting a petition or a master granting a favor. And the repentance granted is “repentance unto life” — not a mere change of mind that leaves a man where it found him, but the saving turning that issues in eternal life. That such repentance is granted tells us its origin: it descends from God to the sinner, never ascends from the sinner to God.
Why It Must Be So
This is not a doctrine imposed on a few isolated proof-texts; it follows of necessity from what the Scriptures everywhere teach about the natural condition of fallen man. The unconverted sinner is described as dead in trespasses and sins, as having a heart of stone, as being at enmity with God and neither subject to His law nor able to be. The carnal mind does not merely struggle toward God and fall short; it is hostile to Him. A dead man cannot quicken himself. A heart of stone cannot soften itself. An enemy will not, of his own accord, lay down his arms and love the One he hates.
Therefore, before a sinner will ever turn, something must first be done to him and in him. The heart of stone must be taken away and a heart of flesh given in its place, as God promised: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (Ezekiel 36:26). Repentance is the turning of a heart that God Himself has first turned. “Turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the LORD my God” (Jeremiah 31:18). The prophet does not say, “I turned myself, and then God accepted me.” He cries for God to do the turning, knowing that unless God turns him he will never turn at all.
Godly Sorrow Is Itself the Work of God
Paul draws a sharp line between two kinds of sorrow: “Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). The world has its sorrow — remorse, regret, the misery of being caught, the dread of consequences — and it leads only to death. But there is a sorrow that is “godly,” a grief over sin as sin, as an offense against a holy God, and that sorrow is not native to the fallen heart. It is produced by God. The very tears of true repentance are wrung from the soul by the Spirit of God working within. Even the contrition is a gift. This is why the truly repentant never boast in their repenting; they know that left to themselves they would have gone on hardened to the end.
Does This Silence the Call to Repent? Far From It
Some object that if repentance is God’s gift, then the command to repent is meaningless, and the preacher may as well fall silent. But this does not follow, and the Scriptures hold both truths together without embarrassment. God commands “all men every where to repent” (Acts 17:30), and the command is real, binding, and urgent. The sinner’s inability to obey it is not a physical incapacity but a moral one — he will not, because he loves his sin — and so his refusal is genuinely his own fault and leaves him without excuse. The command reveals to him his duty and his helplessness at once, and drives him, if God be working, to cry out for the very grace he cannot supply.
So the preacher must still preach repentance to every creature, pressing it home with all earnestness, precisely because it is through the preached word that God is pleased to grant the gift. The command is the means; the gift is the end; and God ordains both. Far from silencing the call, the sovereignty of God in repentance is the only thing that gives the call any hope of success. If repentance depended on the dead sinner’s own dead will, no one would ever repent. Because it depends on the living God, sinners are turned every day.
Comfort and Glory
This doctrine, far from being cold, is among the most comforting in all of Scripture. It means the trembling sinner who fears he cannot repent well enough, deeply enough, or sincerely enough may cast himself wholly upon the God who gives repentance and ask Him for it. It takes the burden off the weakness of man and lays it upon the strength of God. And it strips away every ground of boasting, for the saved man cannot say he was wiser, softer, or more willing than his neighbor; he can only say, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Every turned heart is a monument to sovereign mercy. To God alone, who gives both the repentance and the life it leads to, belongs all the glory.