To Correspondents

From: Bible Treasury: Volume 12

• 1 min. read • grade level: 9

Acts 5:31; 17:30³¹Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. (Acts 5:31)
³⁰And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: (Acts 17:30), Rom. 2:4⁴Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? (Romans 2:4).— “Ens” is quite right. To say that the command to believe and repent belongs to and flows from the law is not scriptural, but the fruit of theology. Others in their desire to set forth the freeness of grace, have fallen into the Sandemanian trap of denying the distinctively moral character of repentance, and thus reduce it to a changed mind about God. Whereas grace works so that in faith the eye of the soul looks to Christ as the Savior, and in repentance that eye looks at self and judges what it is and has done as before God. Faith and repentance are inseparable: if one is divinely given, so is the other; if the repentance is human, the faith is no better.