What Is Biblical Repentance?

Dr. Harry Ironside On Repentance

"Repentance is the sinner’s recognition of and acknowledgment of his lost estate" (Except Ye Repent, p. 11).

"No one was ever saved in any dispensation excepting by grace. Neither sacrificial observances, nor ritual service, nor works of law ever had any part in justifying the ungodly. Nor were any sinners ever saved by grace until they repented. Repentance is not opposed to grace; it is the recognition of the need of grace. ‘They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick’" (Except Ye Repent, p. 10).

"There is no saving merit in owning my true condition. There is no healing in acknowledging the nature of my illness. And repentance, as we have seen, is just this very thing" (Except Ye Repent, p. 12).

"Need I add that repentance then is not to be considered synonymous with joining a church or taking up one's religious duties, as people say. It is not doing anything." (Except Ye Repent, p. 14).

I think the following quote From Dr. Ironside is one of the best I've found on repentance:

“Which comes first, repentance or faith? In Scripture we read, 'Repent ye, and believe the gospel.' Yet we find true believers exhorted to 'repent, and do the first works.' So intimately are the two related that you cannot have one without the other. The man who believes God repents; the repentant soul puts his trust in the Lord when the Gospel is revealed to him. Theologians may wrangle over this, but the fact is, no man repents until the Holy Spirit produces repentance in his soul through the truth. No man believes the Gospel and rests in it for his own salvation until he has judged himself as a needy sinner before God. And this is repentance.” (Except Ye Repent, p. 16).

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QUESTION 67: I understand that you teach that repentance is a prerequisite to salvation, that is, that a man has to show a certain amount of sorrow for sin before God will cooperate with him and save him. Is this your position?

ANSWER: It certainly is not. In the first place, repentance is not mere penitence or sorrow for sin. Repentance is simply a man's recognition of his own true condition before God. No man would desire to come to the Saviour unless he realized his need of a Saviour. The realization of this need and the acknowledgment of it is, in the truest sense, the work of repentance. Thus men repent and through believing the Gospel are eternally saved. We who are saved, however, have done more repenting since we were converted than we did before.

QUESTION 166: Is repentance the first or the second step in salvation?

ANSWER: Repentance is not a "step" at all, yet there is no salvation without repentance. But repentance is a changed attitude on the part of man. This is what takes place when he believes the Word of Truth as to his lost condition and need of a Saviour. Thus faith and repentance are indissolubly linked together. [H.A. Ironside, What's the Answer? 362 Bible Questions Answered, pp. 36, 76.]

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You confess you are a sinner, unable to save yourself, and you are willing to be saved in God’s way. This is repentance. And remember, it is not the amount of repentance that counts: it is the fact that you turn from unbelief to God that puts you in the place where His grace avails through believing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

"Strictly speaking, not one of us has ever repented enough. None of us has realized the enormity of our guilt as God sees it. But when we judge ourselves and trust the Saviour whom He has provided, we are saved through His merits. As recipients of His lovingkindness, repentance will be deepened and will continue day by day, as we learn more and more of His infinite worth and our own unworthiness." SOURCE: From "Full Assurance" by Harry A. Ironside, pages 89-90.

The following statement is from Dr. Ironside's commentary on Luke: "Repentance is just the sick man’s acknowledgment of his illness. It is simply the sinner recognizing his guilt and confessing his need of deliverance” (Luke, p. 253).

Evangelist Charles H. Mackintosh On Repentance

[The repentant man] feels his need of God. Here lies the grand moral secret of the whole matter. To apprehend this is to grasp the full truth on the great question of repentance. A God of love desires to make His way to the sinner’s heart, but there is no room for Him so long as that heart is hard and impenitent. But when the sinner is brought to the end of himself, when he sees himself a helpless, hopeless wreck, when he sees the utter emptiness, hollowness and vanity of all earthly things; when like the prodigal he comes to himself and feels [recognizes] the depth and reality of his need, then there is room in his heart for God. . .

Have your eyes been opened to see your true condition before God? Have you taken your true place before God as utterly lost? . . .

A penitent heart is an object of profoundest interest to the mind of God, because that heart is morally [and mentally] prepared to receive what God delights to bestow, namely, "remission [forgiveness] of sins"—yea, all the fullness of divine love. . . The fullness of God ever waits on an empty vessel. If I am full of myself, full of my own fancied goodness, my own morality, my own righteousness, I have no room [no need] for God, no room [no need] for Christ.

SOURCE: Evangelist C.H. Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Writings, "The Great Commission."

“The Bible is no mere book, but a Living Creature,
with a power that conquers all that oppose it.” —Napoleon

Here's a doctrinally sound excellent book on baptism, “A Biblical Examination Of Baptism” (.pdf book by Dr. Max Younce).

The ONLY thing that you need to repent of to be saved is whatever it is that's been keeping you from coming to Christ to be saved.

The “Repent Of Your Sins” Heresy (Awesome! The Bible says that God “repented”—was it from His sins?)

**Baptism Of Repentance (or Repentance Unto Life)**