Repentance: by CS Lewis

2 Corinthians 7:10 "Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death."

Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off of if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen. Very well, then, we must go through with it. But the same badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it. Now if we had not fallen, that would all be plain sailing. But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all - to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.

Luke 13:1-3 Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.  Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?  I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.

Repentance: by Henry Blackaby

Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”   Mark 1:14-15

Repentance is one of the most positive of all words. John the Baptist centered his preaching on repentance (Matt. 3:2, Mark 1:4, Luke 3:3). Jesus also preached repentance, commanding His disciples to do likewise (Mark 1:14-15; Luke 24:47). The angel predicted that the Messiah would save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). The requirement for this salvation would be repentance.

To repent means to stop going one direction, to turn around completely, and to go the opposite way. Repentance involves a dramatic and decisive change of course. God urges us to repent when the path we are taking leads to destruction. Repentance will save us from disastrous consequences! What a wonderful word! How comforting that the Creator loves us enough to warn us of impending danger!

Our problem is that we think of repentance as something negative. When we recognize our sin, we prefer to “rededicate” our lives to God. We may even tell others we have resolved to be more faithful to God than we were before we failed Him. Yet the Bible does not speak of rededicating oneself. It speaks of repentance! Repentance indicates a decisive change, not merely a wishful resolution. We have not repented if we continue in our sin!

Repentance involves a radical change of heart and mind in which we agree with God’s evaluation of our sin and then take specific action to align ourselves with His will. A desire to change is not repentance. Repentance is always an active response to God’s word. The evidence of repentance is not words of resolve, but a changed life.

The Word of God and the Spirit: by ML Jones

Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides for ever. 1 Peter 1:23

In order to do His work, the Spirit uses the Word of God. First, He reveals, through the Word, the great love of God to sinners in general: “God . . . for his great love wherewith he loved us . . .” (Ephesians 2:4) and so on.

Second, He presents and offers salvation in Christ; through His people, He states the facts about Christ. That is the business of preachers of the Gospel. It is to give the record of the life, the death, the resurrection, and the resurrection appearances of our Lord. What is preaching? It is proclaiming these facts about Christ. Not only that—it is an explanation of the fact, the meaning of the facts, how these facts constitute salvation and are the cause, the means, of salvation. So in the preaching of the Word in the power of the Holy Spirit, these facts and their interpretation are presented. Then the Holy Spirit calls us to repentance. He calls everyone to repentance, all men and women everywhere, because of these facts, because of “that man whom he hath ordained,” by whom the whole world is going to be judged in righteousness (Acts 17:31).

And finally the Holy Spirit calls us to faith in Christ. Take again those words of Paul in his farewell message to the church at Ephesus. What did Paul testify? What did he preach? It was “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). He called men and women to faith in Christ in order that they might obtain forgiveness of sins and inherit eternal life. That was the way in which our Lord commissioned Paul on the road to Damascus. He said that He was going to send him to the people and to the Gentiles “to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me” (Acts 26:18).

God’s Final Word: by TA Sparks

God in all His fullness was pleased to live in Christ. Colossians 1:19

Do not take these as just words. Do understand that in every fragment there is this truth: In the dispensation in which you and I are now living God has come to us in all His fullness. There is no more to be added. In His Son we have the absolute fullness of God, and it is out of that fullness that He speaks to us in His Son. God has only one Son in that sense – His only-begotten Son, which means that there is no one to come after Him. Therefore, God's last word is in His Son. The Son brings both the fullness and the finality of God. It is that which gives the solemnity to this whole Letter. It says: "If you fail to hear the voice of the Son there will never be another voice for you. God is never going to speak by another voice. God hath spoken in His Son, and He is never going to speak by any other means." Hence this Letter contains this word of warning and of exhortation: "Because this is the fullness and this is the end, be sure that you give heed...." To come into touch with the Lord Jesus is more than coming into touch with a teaching: it is coming into touch with a living, active Person. "It is God with whom we have to do." It is a glorious thing to come into touch with God in Christ – but it says here that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31). No, it is not a book, a teaching, a philosophy: it is a living, positive, powerful Person....

Perhaps this is just like a window opened into heaven. If you get the right window you can see quite a lot. You can see great things and you can see far things. But the best that I can hope is that this has just opened a window, and that as you look through it you are seeing one thing – how superior is Jesus Christ to all else, and how superior is the dispensation into which we have come, and how superior are all the resources at our disposal to all that ever was before!

As We Forgive Others: by CS Lewis

Ephesians 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

When it comes to a question of our forgiving other people, it is partly the same and partly different. It is the same because, here also, forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or no bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. They keep on replying, "But I tell you the man broke a most solemn promise." Exactly: that is precisely what you have to forgive. (This doesn't mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart—every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.) The difference between this situation and the one in which you are asking God's forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people's we do not accept them easily enough.

God the Giver: by Watchman Nee

Matthew 13:10-11 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.

God the Giver Of all the parables in the Gospels, that of the prodigal son affords, I think, the supreme illustration of the way to please God. The father says, “It was meet to make merry and be glad” (Luke 15:32), and in these words Jesus reveals what it is that, in the sphere of redemption, supremely rejoices his Father’s heart. It is not an elder brother who toils incessantly for the father, but a younger brother who lets the father do everything for him. It is not an elder brother who always wants to be the giver, but a younger brother who is always willing to be the receiver. When the prodigal returned home, having wasted his substance in riotous living, the father had not a word of rebuke for the waste nor a word of inquiry regarding the substance. He did not sorrow over all that was spent; he only rejoiced over the opportunity the son’s return afforded him for spending more.

God is so wealthy that his chief delight is to give. His treasure-stores are so full that it is pain to him when we refuse him an opportunity of lavishing those treasures upon us. It was the father’s joy that he could find in the prodigal an applicant for the robe, the ring, the shoes, and the feast; it was his sorrow that in the elder son he found no such applicant.

Good News That Isn’t Good Enough? By Jerry Bridges

“Proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” Mark 16:15

We’ve loaded down the Gospel of the grace of God in Christ with a lot of "OUGHTS": I ought to be more committed, more disciplined, more obedient. When we think or teach this way, we’re substituting duty and obligation for a loving response to God’s grace.

As one pastor expressed it, we often don’t make the Gospel "good enough." We preach grace to the non-Christian and duty to the Christian. As Richard Gilbert has written, "It sometimes seems that there is plenty of grace for you if you are not a Christian, but when you become a Christian then there are all sorts of laws you must obey and you feel like you were better off before you were converted." Even our terminology betrays the way we dichotomize the Christian life into "grace" and "works" compartments. We speak of the gift of salvation and the cost of discipleship. The "cost of discipleship" isn’t necessarily an unbiblical expression, but the connotation we build into it is. We often convey the idea that God’s grace barely gets us inside the kingdom’s door; after that, it’s all our own blood, sweat, and tears.

I firmly believe in and seek to practice commitment, discipline, and obedience. I’m thoroughly committed to submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ in every area of life. And I believe in and seek to practice other commitments that flow out of that basic commitment. I’m committed to my wife "until death do us part." I’m committed to integrity and fairness in business relationships. I’m committed to seek to act in love toward everyone. But I’m committed in these areas out of a grateful response to God’s grace, not to try to earn God’s blessings.