What is Godly Repentance?

“Godly sorrow worketh repentance

to salvation,

not to be repented of:

but the sorrow of the world worketh death.”

(2 Cor. 7:10)

There is no clearer Scriptural definition of repentance than what the Spirit of God caused Paul to write in Acts 20:21, “Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our LORD Jesus Christ.” These two, repentance and faith, can never be separated in thought or experience in one of God’s children. True repentance is impossible without faith toward the LORD Jesus and true faith cannot exist without repentance toward God. Both are the simultaneous work of the Holy Spirit in those that God the Father chose from eternity and for whom Christ Jesus came and accomplished their salvation by His righteous obedience to the Father’s law and justice and His effectual redeeming justifying death on the cross.

Just as plainly, the apostle Paul describes this God-given repentance as being the effect of ‘godly sorrow’ or the sorrow that is according to the will of God, 2 Timothy 2:24-26. Where God has granted repentance for a sinner, it is the effect of sorrow, not only over one’s depraved sin nature but having been so long a rebel and offense to God and His holiness and justice. Here then are a few characteristics of Godly (God-produced) repentance.

1.) Godly repentance is not mere remorse over sin. Many have shown remorse over particular sins and actions to whom God has never granted repentance (a Spirit-produced change of heart toward God and His Son). Key examples in Scripture would be Cain in the Old Testament and Judas Iscariot in the New. Of Cain we read in Hebrews 12:17, “For ye know how that afterward when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.” Of Judas Iscariot we read in Matthew 27:3-4 that Judas repented himself and said, I have sinned. He was filled with remorse, he regretted what he had done in betraying the LORD Jesus but there was no godly sorrow that brought repentance unto salvation.

2.) Godly repentance is not to be repented of. Because it is God Who grants it, the repentant sinner can never again turn from God and that faith in the LORD Jesus as all of their salvation. This is repentance unto salvation (Christ), for which there is never any matter for regret because God Himself is the Author of it and Christ the Object of it. Where God grants it, it is forever and He keeps each repentant sinner by His Grace from ever falling away Hebrews 10:39.