Greetings!
What is repentance? How are we capable of it? Is it not the case that if I were good enough to repent, I would not need to repent?
John Calvin wrote:
Therefore, in a word, I interpret repentance as regeneration, whose sole end is to restore in us the image of God that had been disfigured and all but obliterated through Adam's transgression. . . . Accordingly, we are restored by this regeneration through the benefit of Christ into the righteousness of God. . . . And indeed, this restoration does not take place in one moment or one day or one year; but through continual and sometimes even slow advances God wipes out in his elect the corruptions of the flesh, cleanses them of guilt, consecrates them to himself as temples renewing all their minds to true purity that they may practice repentance throughout their lives and know that this warfare will end only at death.
Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. by Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), III.3.9, p. 601.
So let us gladly repent, not as an impossible prerequisite for justification before the Christian life, but as the very content and substance of sanctification, as the very living of our Christian lives.
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 Grace and Peace,
Dr. James C. Goodloe IV, Executive
Director
Foundation for Reformed Theology
4103 Monument Avenue
Richmond, Virginia 23230
Better Preaching, Teaching, and Pastoral Care
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