Quotes about Repentance

The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity. --Lord Byron

It is impossible for a man to be freed from the habit of sin before he hates it, just as it is impossible to receive forgiveness before confessing his trespasses... –Ignatius

Men tell us in these days that sin is what you think it is. Well, it is not. Sin is what God thinks it is. You may think according to your own conscience. God thinks according to His. –John G. Lake

Any concept of grace that makes us feel more comfortable sinning is not biblical grace. God's grace never encourages us to live in sin, on the contrary, it empowers us to say no to sin and yes to truth.--Randy Alcorn

We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. --CS Lewis

Self is the root, the tree, and the branches of all the evils of our fallen state. --William Law

In short, a man must be set free from the sin he is , which makes him do the sin he does .--George MacDonald

Evangelical repentance is repentance of sin as sin: not of this sin nor of that, but of the whole mass. We repent of the sin of our nature as well as the sin of our practice. We bemoan sin within us and without us. We repent of sin itself as being an insult to God. Anything short of this is a mere surface repentance, and not a repentance which reaches to the bottom of the mischief. Repentance of the evil act, and not of the evil heart, is like men pumping water out of a leaky vessel, but forgetting to stop the leak. Some would dam up the stream, but leave the fountain still flowing; they would remove the eruption from the skin, but leave the disease in the flesh. --Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Sin is not to be ignored, nor minimised. It is the most patent fact in life, the darkest experience in the history of the race. It is the root of all the world's tragedies. It is that which makes "conscience a thousand swords," "the torture of an inward hell," "the worm that doth begnaw the soul." --James M. Campbell

People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated. --D.A. Carson

Get alone with Jesus and either tell Him that you do not want sin to die out in you - or else tell Him that at all costs you want to be identified with His death. --Oswald Chambers

Beloved, if any unholiness exists in the nature, it is not there by the consent of the Spirit of God. If unholiness is in your life it is because your soul is giving consent to it, and you are retaining it. Let it go. Cast it out and let God have His way in your life. --John G. Lake

Nothing hath separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God. --William Law

You are the way you are because that's the way you want to be. If you really wanted to be any different, you would be in the process of changing right now. --Fred Smith

The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.—Brennan Manning

Men do not differ much about what things they call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable. -- G. K. Chesterton

Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish for spiritual things then it is sin for you, however, innocent it may be in itself. --Suzanna Wesley

It is perilously easy to have amazing sympathy with God's truth and remain in sin.-- Oswald Chambers

Jesus reserved his hardest words for the hidden sins of hypocrisy, pride, greed and legalism.--Philip Yancey

One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame, we have killed off so much real shame as well. –Louis Kronenberger

The world has lost the power to blush over its vice; the Church has lost her power to weep over it. --Leonard Ravenhill

To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of truth. -- George MacDonald

Heart-suffering because of sin is the best proof that the Holy Spirit dwells in your heart.--Johann Arndt

I couldn't live in peace if I put the shadow of a willful sin between myself and God. --George Eliot

Sin and the child of God are incompatible. They may occasionally meet; they cannot live together in harmony --John R. W. Stott

You'll never be able to speak against sin if you're entertained by it. --John Muncee

Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin. The only vengeance worth having on sin is to make the sinner himself its executioner. --George MacDonald

Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies. --Montaigne

Repentance lifts a man up. Mourning knocks at heaven's gate. Holy humility opens it. -- John Climacus

Great is the difference betwixt a man's being frightened at, and humbled for his sins. --Thomas Fuller

Personal sin reflected upon breeds compassion. --John M. Shanahan

When the Spirit is absent, our excuses always seem right, but in the presence of the Spirit our excuses fade away. --R. T. Kendall

People don’t do what they believe in—they just do what’s most convenient and then they repent. –Bob Dylan

Some often repent, yet never reform; they resemble a man traveling in a dangerous path, who frequently starts and stops, but never turns back.--Bonnell Thornton

I would far rather feel remorse than know how to define it.--Thomas A’Kempis

Look upon your chastening as God's chariots sent to carry your soul into the high places of spiritual achievement. --Hannah Whitall Smith

How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in? --Oscar Wilde

It is not that we need more power, but that we need more brokenness. When we are properly broken we will find the indwelling Christ is more than sufficient. —Chip Brogden

Honesty before God requires the most fundamental risk of faith we can take: the risk that God is good, that God does love us unconditionally. It is in taking this risk that we rediscover our dignity. To bring the truth of ourselves, just as we are, to God, just as God is, is the most dignified thing we can do in this life. --Gerald May

When we won't let ourselves be held in the midst of our messes by God who loves us and made us, we miss the unspeakable joy of knowing that we are truly His beloved. --Deborah Newman

Sweet Spirit, grant us the faith to resist our resistance to Thee! --James Melvin Washington

Repent! The Kingdom of heaven is at hand! --John the Baptist and Jesus Christ

When one doesn’t learn to resist the devil, he or she probably doesn’t know much of submitting to God. --Greg Manalli

If you will not determine to be pure, you will grow more and more impure. --George MacDonald

It's one thing not to sin---it's another not to want to! --Jacquelyn K. Heasley

People do not mind their faults being spread out before them, but they become impatient if called on to give them up. –Goethe

God never takes away anything that He doesn’t replace with Himself. --Jacquelyn K. Heasley

There is more joy in heaven over a converted sinner than over a righteous person standing firm. A leader in battle has more love for a soldier who returns after fleeing, and who valiantly pursues the enemy, than for one who never turned back, but who never acted valiantly either. A farmer has greater love for land which bears fruitfully, after he has cleared it of thorns, than for land which never had thorns but which never yielded a fruitful harvest. --Gregory the Great

When prodigals return great things are done. --A.A. Dowty

When old companions, old lusts, and sins crowd in upon you, and when you feel that you are ready to sink, what can save you, sinking sinner ? This alone — I have a high priest in heaven, and he can support in the hour of affliction. This alone can give you peace—I have a high priest in heaven. When you are dying — when friends can do you no good — when sins rise up like spectres around your bed — what can give you peace ? This — "I have a high priest in heaven" --Robert Murray M'Cheyne

True repentance will entirely change you; the bias of your souls will be changed, then you will delight in God, in Christ, in His Law, and in His people. --George Whitefield

He comes never late who comes repentant. --Juan de Horozco

To sin is a human business, to justify sins is a devilish business: Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy