Confession & Repentance

Psalm 32:3, 5 (NASB)

When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away...I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I did not hide; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD"; And You forgave the guilt of my sin.

Proverbs 28:13 (HCSB)

The one who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.

Isaiah 55:7 (ESV)

Let the wicked forsake his way,

    and the unrighteous man his thoughts;

let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,

    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 

Ezekiel 33:11, 2 Peter 3:9b

"As surely as I live", declares the Sovereign LORD, "I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die?"

Joel 2:13 (HCSB)

Tear your hearts, not just your clothes, and return to the Lord your God. For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, rich in faithful love, and He relents from sending disaster. (NLT - He is eager to relent and not punish.)

Mark 1:15

(The Christ is here.) Repent and believe the good news!

Luke 24:46-47

Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations.

Acts 3:19-20

Repent (think about where you are headed), and turn (in faith) to God, so that your sins may be wiped out (and) times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send Christ Jesus, who has been appointed for you.

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, (3.3.20)  

He has profited greatly who has learned to be very much displeased with himself, not so as to stick fast in this mire and progress no farther, but rather to hasten to God and yearn for him in order that, having been engrafted into the life and death of Christ, he may give attention to continual repentance.

Fra Thomé de Jesu The Sufferings of Jesus, on Psalm 31:5

https://www.providencecrosslake.com/fra-thome-de-jesus-prayer-from-psalm-315/

O my God, what I am, which thou knowest far better than I can know, weak, wretched, wounded, fickle, blind, deaf, dumb, poor, bare of every good, nothing, yea, less than nothing, on account of my many sins, and more miserable than I can either know or express.

Thomas Brooks  Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices 

http://books.google.com/books?id=WypMAAAAYAAJ

Repentance is a mighty work, a difficult work, a work beyond our power. You may as well seek to melt adamant stone (Zechariah 7:12) as to melt your own heart. Repentance is a flower that does not grow in nature's garden. It is not in the power of man to repent at leisure. Repentance is a turning from darkness to light. It effects the sinner's whole heart and life. It changes the heart from the power of sin unto God. Every sin strikes at the honour of God, the being of God, the glory of God, the heart of Christ, the joy of the Spirit and the peace of a man's conscience. A truly penitent soul strikes at all sin, hates all, and will labour to crucify all.

Repentance is also a turning to all good. It sees sin's sinfulness, and how contrary it is to the blessed God. God is light, sin is darkness; God is life, sin is death; God is heaven, and sin is hell; God is beauty, and sin is deformity. True repentance understands the mischievousness of sin. It cast angels out of heaven, and Adam out of paradise. It brought in all the curses, crosses, and miseries that are in the world. It makes men godless, Christless, hopeless, and heavenless.

Repentance breaks the heart with sighs, sobs, and groans, in that a loving God and Father is offended by sin, a blessed Saviour is crucified afresh (Hebrews 6:6), and the sweet Comforter, the Spirit, is grieved and vexed. O that you were wise to break off your sins by timely repentance!

William Beveridge  Thoughts On Religion                                                                                                                                                    

I cannot pray, but I sin: I cannot hear or preach a sermon, but I sin: I cannot give an alms, or receive the sacrament, but I sin: nay, I cannot so much as confess my sins, but my confessions are still aggravations of them. My repentance needs to be repented of, my tears want washing, and the very washing of my tears needs still to be washed over again with the blood of my Redeemer.

William Gurnall  The Christian in Complete Armour

Est dolus in generalibus — there is guile in generals.  It betrays a slighty spirit, if not a false, when in confession of sin we content ourselves with a general indictment, ‘I am a sinner—a great sinner,’ and there to stop, without a particular sense of the several breaches made in the law of God.

Thomas Watson  on Psalm 51:4

A child of God will confess sin in particular. An unsound Christian will confess sin wholesale, he will acknowledge he is a sinner in general, whereas David does point with his finger to the sore.

Matthew Henry's Commentary Upon the Holy Bible on Jeremiah 2:14-19 (ESV) "Your evil will chastise you, and your apostasy will reprove you. Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God; the fear of me is not in you, declares the Lord God of hosts."

Observe here,

(1.) The nature of sin; it is forsaking the Lord as our God; it is the soul's alienation from him and aversion to him. Cleaving to sin is leaving God.

(2.) The cause of sin; it is because his fear is not in us. It is for want of a good principle in us, particularly for want of the fear of God; this is at the bottom of our apostasy from him; men forsake their duty to God because they stand in no awe of him nor have any dread of his displeasure.

(3.) The malignity of sin; it is an evil thing and a bitter. Sin is an evil thing, only evil, an evil that has no good in it, an evil that is the root and cause of all other evil; it is evil indeed, for it is not only the greatest contrariety to the divine nature, but the greatest corruption of the human nature. It is bitter; a state of sin is the gall of bitterness, and every sinful way will be bitterness in the latter end; the wages of it is death, and death is bitter.

(4.) The fatal consequences of sin; as it is in itself evil and bitter, so it has a direct tendency to make us miserable: "Thy own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee" (Jeremiah 2:19), not only destroy and ruin thee hereafter, but correct and reprove thee now; they will certainly bring trouble upon thee; and punishment will so inevitably follow the sin that the sin shall itself be said to punish thee. Nay, the punishment, in its kind and circumstances, shall so directly answer to the sin, that thou mayest read the sin in the punishment; and the justice of the punishment shall be so plain that thou shalt not have a word to say for thyself; thy own wickedness shall convince thee and stop thy mouth for ever and thou shalt be forced to own that the Lord is righteous."

(5.) The use and application of all this: "Know therefore, and see it, and repent of thy sin, that so the iniquity which is thy correction may not be thy ruin." 

Unknown author in A Few Devotional Helps, 1858

The essence of repentance consists in the love of God, and the hatred of sin. The union of these two things forms in us that godly sorrow for the past, and that resolution, by divine grace, of not offending God anymore, which makes the reality of repentance. Moreover the sorrow should be life-long, and the resolution should be renewed at least every day...

The least willful fault, the slightest permitted irregularity of affection, every inordinate passion not subdued; all these disorder and check our spiritual life. 

To repent at all then, I must endeavor by God’s grace to correct these evils, and to remove whatever obstructs the incoming of his Spirit. I must ask God to change my heart, to heal my wounds, to save me from my sins, and to make me whole.

I must ask him to increase my hunger and thirst for his righteousness, and to deepen in me the sense of my vileness and corruption that I may more thoroughly throw myself upon the merits and advocacy of our blessed Savior…

I must strive to put off the old man and to put on the new; to get the victory over sensual thoughts and feelings, and to have the mind of Christ in meekness, humility, and all graces and virtues…

Octavius Winslow, Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul, 1841

https://www.gracegems.org/W/pd0.htm

There cannot possibly be any true, spiritual, and abiding revival of grace in a believer, while secret sin remains undiscovered and unmortified in the heart. (Psalm 19:12)

C.H. Spurgeon

Evangelical repentance is repentance of sin as sin; not of this sin nor of that, but of the whole mass. We repent of the sin of our nature as well as the sin of our practice. We bemoan sin within us and without us. We repent of sin itself as being an insult to God. Anything short of this is a mere surface repentance, and not a repentance which reaches to the bottom of the mischief. Repentance of the evil act, and not of the evil heart, is like men pumping water out of a leaky vessel, but forgetting to stop the leak. Some would dam up the stream, but leave the fountain still flowing. 

The true penitent repents of sin against God, and he would do so even if there were no punishment. When he is forgiven, he repents of sin more than ever; for he sees more clearly than ever the wickedness of offending so gracious a God. 

        On False Repentance

In some there is a repentance of sin which is produced by a sense of shame. The evil-doers are found out, and indignant words are spoken about them; they are ashamed, and so far they are repentant, because they have dishonoured themselves. If they had not been found out, in all probability they would have continued comfortably in the sin, and even have gone further one in it. They are grieved at having been discovered; and they are sorry, very sorry, because they are judged and condemned by their fellows. It is not the evil which troubles them, but the dragging of it to light.

“Hope, Yet No Hope, No Hope, Yet Hope”, April 8, 1866

https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/hope-yet-no-hope-no-hope-yet-hope/#flipbook/  

Salvation lies not in my repentings, but in Christ’s sufferings; not in my renunciation of sin, but in Christ’s having borne my sin in his own body on the cross. Repentance is a part of salvation, and when Christ saves us he saves us by making us repent, but repentance does not save; it is the work of God, and the work of God alone. 

 “Alive or Dead – Which” on 1 John 5:12 "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life."

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0755.cfm

There could have been no laying hold of Christ without true repentance of sin, which repentance becomes in its turn a clear proof of the possession of the inner life which springs from incorruptible seed, and therefore liveth and abideth for ever.

Brief commentary on Psalm 103:12 "As far from the east is from the west..." 

https://www.gotquestions.org/as-far-as-the-east-is-from-the-west.html

"God's Non-remembrance of Sin"

https://spurgeongems.org/sermon/chs1685.pdf

God imputes not iniquity to the man who has cast Himself on the Savior. Go you hence and never forget your sin, or the mercy which has forgiven it. 

"The First Note of My Song" 

https://ccel.org/ccel/spurgeon/sermons25/sermons25.li.html

(There WAS however my repentance unto salvation, and there IS my repentance unto sanctification.) 

A.W. Tozer  

Renewed Day by Day, “Come As You Are”

We come to Him just as we are but in humble repentance. When the human spirit comes to God knowing that anything it receives will be out of God's mercy, then repentance has done its proper work! God promises to forgive and forget and to take that man into His heart. What more can a sinner ask?

        That Incredible Christian

A sweet but sobering memory of our past guilt and a knowledge of our present imperfections are not incompatible with the joy of the Lord; and they are of inestimable aid in resisting the enemy.

        Whatever Happened To Worship

Much of our problem in continuing fellowship with a holy God is that many Christians repent only for what they do, rather than for what they are.

        The Knowledge of the Holy

Repentance, though necessary, is not meritorious but a condition for receiving the gracious gift of pardon that God gives of His goodness.

        The Divine Conquest

The truest and most acceptable repentance is to reverse the acts and attitudes of which we repent. A thousand years of remorse over a wrong act would not please God as much as a change of conduct and a reformed life.

J.I. Packer

The New Testament word for repentance means changing one's mind so that one's views, values, goals, and ways are changed and one's whole life is lived differently. The change is radical, both inwardly and outwardly; mind and judgment, will and affections, behavior and lifestyle, motives and purposes, are all involved. Repenting means starting a new life.

         Rediscovering Holiness

         http://books.google.com/books?id=7XamKZd_98MC&pg=PA109&source  

Repentance and saving faith

https://www.gotquestions.org/repentance.html

Psalm 51 commentaries

http://www.preceptaustin.org/psalm_511-9_commentary.htm 

http://www.preceptaustin.org/psalm_5110-19_commentary.htm  

John Shower God's Thoughts and Ways Are Above Ours: Especially in the Forgiveness of Sins on Jeremiah 3:12-13

The doctrine of repentance would never have been preached if there was no hope of forgiveness.

Hannah Whitall Smith, The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, 1888

The same moment which brings the consciousness of sin ought to bring also the confession of it and the consciousness of forgiveness.

Robert Dingley on Job 42:5-6 "My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."

God can raise Himself glory out of your ashes.