No condemnation awaits our honesty of heart — no punishment. We have only to repent and confess our sins to have them forgiven and cleansed; if we will love the truth, we will be delivered from sin and self-deception. Indeed, the nectar of truth is in two things and two things only: to know the heart of God in Christ and our own hearts in Christ’s light.
Repentance
Billy Graham
The world does need changing, society needs changing, the nation needs changing, but we never will change it until we ourselves are changed. And we never will change until we look into the mirror of our own soul and face with candor what we are inside.
Charles Finney
If an elder or private member of the church finds his brethren cold towards him, there is but one way to remedy it. It is by being revived himself, and pouring out from his eyes and from his life the splendor of the image of Christ. This spirit will catch and spread in the church, and confidence will be renewed, and brotherly love prevail again.
Matt Stinton
People will call for corporate repentance but rarely include themselves in that call. If we are to see revival, personal repentance is key. Realigning our hearts with the Holy Spirit is what the church desperately needs. We have taken our cues for how to handle disagreement from the world rather than from God or His word.
Graham Kendrick
A sinful act involves worship of the wrong kind, submitting ourselves at that moment to serve the appetites of our pride or lust, and so repentance is literally a transfer of our worship back to the One who rightfully owns it….. Worship has been misunderstood as something that arises from a feeling which “comes upon you,” but it is vital that we understand that it is rooted in a conscious act of the will, to serve and obey the Lord Jesus Christ. The feelings, the joy of having been forgiven, follow on as a consequence of our reunion with him.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a struggle until the sin is openly admitted, but God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps. 107:16). Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders; he gives up all his evil. He gives his heart to God, and he finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his brother. The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power. It has been revealed and judged as sin. It can no longer tear the fellowship asunder. Now the fellowship bears the sin of the brother. He is no longer alone with his evil for he has cast off his sin in confession and handed it over to God. It has been taken away from him. Now he stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God and the cross of Jesus Christ. The sin concealed separated him from the fellowship, made all his apparent fellowship a sham; the sin confessed has helped him define true fellowship with the brethren in Jesus Christ.
William Hinn
Repentance, far above all else, is a turning away from wrong ideas about God and about yourself and coming into an exchange of receiving by the Spirit of Truth, the mind of God about Himself, in you. It’s not being ashamed of yourself but exchanging yourself. It’s not a one time event but an on-going change from glory to glory. Repentance is not just changing your mind but losing your mind and gaining His.
Samuel Logan Brengle
The Bible tells us that it is ‘perfect love’ which must, in the very nature of the case, expel from the heart all hatred and every evil contrary contrary to love, just as you must first empty a cup of all oil that may be in it before you can fill it with water.
D. L. Moody
God cast our confessed sins into the depths of the sea, and He’s even put a ‘No Fishing’ sign over the spot.
Kevin DeYoung
There is an eternal difference between regret and repentance. Regret feels bad about past sins. Repentance turns away from past sins. Regret looks to our own circumstances. Repentance looks to God. Most of us are content with regret. We just want to feel bad for awhile, have a good cry, enjoy the cathartic experience, bewail our sin, and talk about how sorry we are. But we don’t want to change. We don’t want to deal with God.