Main Point: God is glorified when a sinner repents and turns to Him for salvation.
It is important to understand that repentance:
1. Is required of everyone.
- Luke 13:3 I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.
- Acts 17:30 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent
- Acts 20:21testifying to Jews, and also to Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
2. Is necessary to escape condemnation.
- Luke 13:5 I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”
- Romans 2:5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.
- 2 Corinthians 7:10For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.
- 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
3. Is evidenced by fruit in our lives.
- Luke 13:7 Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?’
- Acts 26:20 but declared first to those in Damascus and in Jerusalem, and throughout all the region of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent, turn to God, and do works befitting repentance.
- Luke 3:8-9 Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. 9 And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
