“Repentance…not to be repented of.” 2 Corinthians 7:10 Yes, you must study for confession. But you must also repent and turn to God. How can an unconverted person make a sincere confession of his Lord? It is unfortunate that Methodism has worked havoc in our Reformed churches in this respect. It was the influence […]
Hi Rev. Laning, The question that I have is in regard to forgiveness. It seems that there are different ideas with respect to the part of repentance and its place in forgiveness. We know that we are called to forgive the brother as much as seventy times seven, but when do we properly forgive? (Luke […]
We ended last time with a brief overview of repentance. We saw that repentance involved sorrow for sin, hatred of sin, a loathing of ourselves because of our evil natures, and an acknowledgment of the seriousness of sin. Now we will see from Scripture how the child of God lives continually in repentance. It is […]
Lord’s Day 33, Q & A 89 of the Heidelberg Catechism asks the question: “What is the mortification of the old man?” The answer: “It is a sincere sorrow of heart, that we have provoked God by our sins; and more and more to hate and flee from them.” It is evident from this question […]
“We must be reading different Bibles!” a sign reads from a student of Byron Center High School (Byron Center, Michigan) supporting his openly homosexual music teacher. In the same section of students at this packed Byron Center school board meeting another sign accuses, “Who are you to judge?” These signs are directed at the Byron […]
Another school and society year is upon us. We are all undoubtedly delighted for this opportunity to study God and His creation. We can hardly wait to talk to our friends about spiritual matters, to discuss God’s Word, to exchange views of the greatness of God, and to listen and learn about God’s plan for […]
Repentance is a very important part of the life of a child of God. Apart from repentance of his sins he has no salvation. The Bible makes this very clear. While Jesus was in Perea some came to Him with a report of murder. Pilate, the Roman governor, had murdered a number of Galileans in […]
Thus far in our discussion of the doctrine of repentance we have asked and given an answer to several questions. In our first article we asked: What is repentance? Is repentance obligatory for all men? In relation to that we asked the question does God confront every man who ever lived with the demand to […]
We must now consider this idea of “a command” to repent. A command is rooted in the authority of the one who speaks. A command is something different than a request or invitation. One is at liberty to turn down a request or invitation. People in positions of authority sometimes express their commands in the […]
At first when considering what to write, I thought that I would write on the subject “Repent and Believe,” which is the demand of God to all that hear the preaching of the gospel. But I have decided to limit the scope of this article and the following to the subject of repentance, even though […]