Text: Acts 20:18-35.

      In speaking to the brethren of Ephesus, Paul testified that he had been preaching "repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." Wherever Paul preached he emphasized the necessity of repentance. Repentance is one of those indispensable things. There are three things which the Lord Jesus prefaces by the word "except." He said, "Except ye believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." There is no manner of chance of any man's being saved apart from faith in Jesus Christ. Again, speaking to Nicodemus, He said, "Except one be born of the water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." And then he says also in the 13th chapter of the Gospel of Luke and the 5th verse: "Except ye repent ye shall all in like manner perish." No person can be saved except upon the ground of repentance. God would have to cease being the kind of God He is before He could save an impenitent sinner. It is not possible that any soul should be saved except upon the terms of a complete renunciation and turning from sin. There is no possibility of anything else. If any man in the church who is living wrongly should try to console himself with the fact that he belongs to the church, that his name is on the book, and that he contributes, that he is honored and looked up to by others, while nevertheless he is living impenitently, I want to testify to that man that he is on the high-road to perdition. There is no possibility of any person--no matter what his position or what his claim may be--being saved unless he repents. The alternative to repentance is perdition; it is [1] the one or the Other. It is not an arbitrary thing, but something that it deeply rooted in the very nature of God.

      I do not care who you are or where You are, if you are living in sin, nothing will take the place of repentance. You may do the greatest service to God otherwise, but if you do not repent you are going to perish. You may donate thousands of dollars to the Lord, but if you do not repent it will not avail for your acceptance by God: You cannot buy your way with God.

      Sometimes a church is living in worldliness and they get a big preacher and say "We will have a big meeting." I want to inform them that the big meeting will not take the place of repentance, and unless the big meeting and the big preacher that they have will enable them to repent and turn from the path of unrighteousness to the path of righteousness, all is in vain. I wonder sometimes how many disappointed people will stand before God in that day who might have been saved if somebody had told them in time that they had to repent. They thought they could get along somehow without it. I tell you, you cannot. If the faithful preaching of repentance would cut down the audience to one man, we had better cut it down. It is far better to preach truth to one individual than to preach a falsehood to thousands.

      I want to bring out a few of the marks of true repentance. The first mark which I want to call to your attention, is the one which Paul mentions to these Ephesian elders: testifying both to Jews and to Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a mark of true and genuine repentance, that it is toward God. Unless a man who repents, repents toward God, it has no spiritual significance whatever. David says in the 51st Psalm, "Against thee and thee only have I sinned and done that which is evil in thy sight." God is the offended party and if you are going to repent, you not only have to turn from something, but you have to turn to the God from whom you have revolted. You have to come back to Him. If the prodigal son had turned away from his wretched condition and had sought rest in this place or that, he would not have been received back to his father, but when he said "I will arise and go to my father"--that was repentance. When he rose up and turned his back on the far country and set his face to the light of his father's home, that was repentance. When a sinner says I will break partnership with sin and with the devil and I will come back to God humbly and penitently, like a child to a father, and he comes back to God according to the terms of the gospel, that is repentance in God's sight. Remember this: It is God that you are dealing with. It is not just a case of "quitting your meanness," but it is a case of coming to the Lord and humbling yourself before him and breaking partnership with evil. It is in this way that you enter a new relationship and a new fellowship with God: that is the first mark of true repentance. [2]

      Now the second mark is that repentance to be worth anything must be honest. Sometimes people try to come to God with guile in their hearts. They hold to the world with one hand and reach out one hand to God. As if He did not see the other hand and did not know their hearts!

      Don't you know that all things are laid open and naked before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do? Don't you know that unless you are honest with God, He cannot accept your repentance? What God wants is that when you turn to Him, you turn sincerely. His grace will enable you. Just come without any "ifs" and without any "buts."

      The third mark of true repentance is that it never makes an excuse. It has been pointed out that the sinner's excuses "condemn God." In the last analysis you find out that every excuse that you offer for sin, falls back upon God. Perhaps you give the excuse that you were too weak to resist the temptation. My friend, if you were too weak to resist the temptation, then the temptation was too strong for you and God allowed you to be put to an unreasonable test and God was to blame! If I were to ask my little girl to take up the piano and carry it out into the street, you would say that I was an unreasonable father. And if God asks you to do something you cannot do, then He is unreasonable! "But God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with every temptation make a way of escape." Don't excuse yourself by saying you were too weak. You were not too weak. I tell you there is no real repentance until you quit blaming God and accuse yourself like David, who said:

      Now another mark of the true repentance is that it will confess sin. There are certain things that you just have to confess or else you can never straighten them out. If you want to make confession, you must make confession in such a way as to help remove the evil that has been done. Some years ago I received a letter from a man, which was peculiarly impressive. He told me the story of a thing that had occurred in his life. Some ten years before he had made a wicked proposition to another person, who, however, turned him down and went about telling people about the wicked offer that he had made. He denied it, when it came back to him, and because he was a reputable man and because the other party was not in good repute they believed him and did not believe the other party. During ten years following he was a member of the church and took some part--but you may know what kind of Christian life that was!--Just the kind that a good many others are living. There was no joy in his eyes, there was no song in his heart, there was no power. Can you imagine such a life having any power to bring others to Christ? And there could not have been a day that he would have had hope and [3] if death had overtaken him he would not have been acceptable in the sight of God. He asked me what to do. I told him, "You go ahead and do the thing that you know to be right." His answer came back: "Immediately upon receiving your letter I did the very thing that you suggested, although you did not say it. I went out (I am a rural mail carrier), I people all along the route about it and why I was telling it: for the glory of God and to set things in the right light."

      Unless you deal righteously you cannot keep fellowship with God, and in dealing righteously sometimes a confession is necessary. Sin always demands confession when confession will mitigate the effect of the sin.

      People look to repentance as a great burden. It is the most wonderful privilege from God. Repentance is a privilege of the highest order, and when God offers you repentance He deals with you in grace. When God offers to deal with you upon repentance, it is like doing away with law. Suppose a prisoner before the Court said, "I repent of my wrong and I will not sin any more," and suppose he were set free upon that; it would be the same as nullifying and cancelling law. When God offers you repentance He is exceedingly good to you.

      Another thing: Genuine repentance brings forth its fruit. Paul said "I preached to them that they should repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance." True repentance brings its own works and its own fruit along with it. The most natural fruit is that of restitution, that if you have wronged a man in any way, and have taken what does not belong to you, you want to restore it. A young lady came to the preacher and told him that she had had a craving for things that belonged to other people, that she had taken many little things that did not belong to her. The preacher told her to give back everything that did not belong to her. She began to do this and kept on till she had given back all of the things where she could find the owner. Never after that had she the slightest desire to take anything that did not belong to her. Such things make people realize that there is a reality in the religion of Jesus Christ.

      Now we come to the last thing I want to say. It was the first thing I said and it will be the last thing, too: When a man repents he comes to God, he comes to Jesus Christ. There never was any such thing as true repentance without love and without hope and without confidence in the word of Him you are coming to, that He is able, not only willing to forgive, but able to make all the past wrongs good, able to heal all the wounds, to heal the old sores and make the wrong right, and give you a new life and a new hope. The Lord Jesus is able to do it. In your repenting you must have something better than confidence in your own ability to hold out. You must cast yourself upon God with purpose of heart, for He alone can give us power to stand.

[TR 1-4.]

      The electronic version of R. H. Boll's True Repentance (Louisville, KY: Word and Work Publishers, [1928]) has been produced from a copy of the tract recently acquired from Word and Work. No publication information appears on the tract. No information is available about its printings and reprintings as a separate publication. It was first published as "The True Repentance: Sermon by R. H. Boll" in Word and Work 21 (March 1928): 76-79.

      Pagination in the electronic version has been represented by placing the page number in brackets following the last complete word on the printed page. Inconsistencies in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and typography have been retained.

      Addenda and corrigenda are earnestly solicited.

Ernie Stefanik
Derry, PA

Created 2 December 2000.
Updated 20 June 2003.