# What Repentance Does God Accept?



## Leslie (Dec 22, 2008)

A5pointer said:


> I read his little book on the prodigal son, I would recommend it highly. It had an interesting view that made sense. He posits that the prodigal had not really repented showing the father as even more gracious.



Interesting that you bring this up. The Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards recommends micro-dissecting one's motivation for repentance to distinguish the true from the inadequate. I'm not the first who has, on this basis, totally despaired of the grace of God.

Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but TRA seems to be at variance with Bailey's interpretation of the parable of the prodigal. He maintains that the Father deliberately misinterprets the son's repentance as being more radical and genuine than it actually was. (My understanding which may be wrong.) 

Perhaps this should be changed to a thread in the covenant of grace since it is off-topic here. (Don't know how to do it.) Does our Father accept repentance that is less than perfect? If one acknowledges sin against God and unworthiness, does one's self-seeking motivation negate acceptance?


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## Galatians220 (Dec 22, 2008)

He regenerates us, and gives us the grace to repent. We can't repent at all without our heavenly Father's impetus and His giving us the very repentance that He requires.

We gain an attitude of a desire to continually repent of the sins we still commit every day, and the Lord gives us that, too. He sustains it in the process of sanctification. He doesn't look at our repentance as imperfect, for He gave it to us. He takes pleasure in it: how could He do anything else? We are the gift of Christ to Him. Christ bought us with His blood; His Holy Spirit keeps us, and our repentance, however meager it may seem to us, is a constant delight to our Father.

The gift of repentance, and the knowledge that we need to do it still, is one of the innumerable incidents of lovingkindness that our Father showers us with.

Margaret


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## Herald (Dec 22, 2008)

*Luke 15:32* 'It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.' " (emphasis mine)

The language of repentance and faith are used by the father in this verse. This parable is a contrast between those who repent and believe and unbelieving Israel. 

c.f. Mat. 10:5; Mat. 18:11; Eph. 2:1


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## Barnpreacher (Dec 23, 2008)

I don't think the boy truly repented before the father showed him grace. He wanted to go back home so the father could make him as a hired servant. That means he was looking to earn his way into sonship. It wasn't until the father showed grace that the boy truly repented. Notice closely verses 19-21. In verse 19 the boy was going to ask the father to make him a hired servant, but when the boy saw the father's grace in verse 20 he never got out his plan about being a hired servant in verse 21. He was overwhelmed and converted by the grace of the father. Verse 21 is a picture of true God given repentance.

Keller preached an excellent message on this passage.


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## Leslie (Dec 23, 2008)

My conclusion from the helpful posts above is that perhaps Edwards overstated his case. If repentance is a gift from God, then micro-dissecting one's inner motivations to examine them is not appropriate. It's looking a gift horse in the mouth, criticizing God's gift rather than using it to grow closer to Him. Obviously, there is something like "Shucks, I got caught" that isn't repentance at all, but assuming the "I have sinned and am unworthy" is sincere, apparently this is adequate.


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## Jimmy the Greek (Dec 23, 2008)

God accepts the repentance he grants:

2 Tim 2:24-25 And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God *perhaps will grant them repentance*, so that they may know the truth. . .

Also, I think Edward's is addressing the fact that in his day (as in ours) there are many who are self-deluded, thinking all is well with their soul. A reasonable introspection can be helpful as the Spirit works. A morbid introspection is not what Edwards is looking for. Our assurance has both an objective and subjective basis.


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## Scott1 (Dec 23, 2008)

God sovereignly elects, regenerates, justifies and adopts. Man has no part in these because the fall has left man with "moral inability"- a nature that is under the dominant control of sin.

When God regenerates a sinner, his nature is changed forever.

Remember, repentance and any "good" work, in being acceptable to God involves God looking on both the outside at the work, and the inside at the heart. This is why a non-Christian, whose nature is unregenerated, bound by sin, cannot do "good" works that are acceptable to God. That takes a "right" heart which God alone can give.

It is never our perfection in view, it is the perfection of Christ's perfect righteousness that is imputed to us, according to God's mercy that justifies us. We access that by faith alone, and that faith is also a gift of God.

(True) repentance flows from this, naturally and necessarily.


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## TsonMariytho (Dec 23, 2008)

Barnpreacher said:


> I don't think the boy truly repented before the father showed him grace. He wanted to go back home so the father could make him as a hired servant. That means he was looking to earn his way into sonship. It wasn't until the father showed grace that the boy truly repented. Notice closely verses 19-21. In verse 19 the boy was going to ask the father to make him a hired servant, but when the boy saw the father's grace in verse 20 he never got out his plan about being a hired servant in verse 21. He was overwhelmed and converted by the grace of the father. Verse 21 is a picture of true God given repentance.
> 
> Keller preached an excellent message on this passage.



The above could be true... but it could also be an excessive extrapolation of what was intended to be a simple analogy. If the place away from the father represents the life of sin, with the misery of the pigsty etc., and the boy was traveling home to his father, then the act of getting up and turning away from the old life toward the father could itself be symbolic of Christian repentance.

In conversion, a sinner doesn't pick himself up out of the muck and move toward God without God's active influence on him, whereas this boy did in the parable.

I'm not sure that we need to treat the parable as a story of literal repentance of sin, but rather as an indirect analogy and picture of repentance of sin, and of course the heart of the Father toward his child.


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## Barnpreacher (Dec 23, 2008)

TsonMariytho said:


> Barnpreacher said:
> 
> 
> > I don't think the boy truly repented before the father showed him grace. He wanted to go back home so the father could make him as a hired servant. That means he was looking to earn his way into sonship. It wasn't until the father showed grace that the boy truly repented. Notice closely verses 19-21. In verse 19 the boy was going to ask the father to make him a hired servant, but when the boy saw the father's grace in verse 20 he never got out his plan about being a hired servant in verse 21. He was overwhelmed and converted by the grace of the father. Verse 21 is a picture of true God given repentance.
> ...




Keep in mind that the boy's life was in a mess. He wanted to go back to the father because he knew even the hired servants had it better than he did. I think he was trying to come back to the father as a servant and not as a son. It wasn't until verse 20 that he understood grace.

I can understand not everyone seeing it this way, but I know this understanding of this passage has helped me a lot.


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## Leslie (Dec 23, 2008)

Isn't the bottom line of the parable that the boy's empty-stomach repentance was acceptable to the Father? Edwards seems to demand lofty glory-of-God motives before he will label a conversion as genuine. Somewhere there's a disconnect. Maybe some empty-stomach conversions are genuine and others are not--if they progress to the glory-of-God stage they are. The others are indeterminate.


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## PresbyDane (Dec 23, 2008)

In the Case of Baileys interpretation of the prodigal son, Bailey says that the emphasis should be on the Father, that is why the parable is called the parable of the running father in some middeleastern bible commetaries.
That is also important for what we should learn from the story i my humble opinion.
At first Jesus lets the boy use words that are very close to those of Farao, Farao who only used the "look" or apperance of repenting to make Moses and Aron pray to God for him.
But the sons words change when he is meet by the father to only contain the self-image og a convicted sinner and no longer the "human" solution of wanting to repay are debt.
That is why I agree with one of the earlier posts where one said that God accepts the repentence he himself grants, for there is no other repentence.
It requiers a new creation and that only God can give.
my


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## CharlieJ (Dec 23, 2008)

I have to agree with Tson that we are a little off if we are looking at this parable primarily in terms of soteriology. The main character is the Father, just like the woman and the shepherd are the main characters of the preceding parables.

The point is that God is a gracious Father who desired and delighted in the repentance of wayward Israelites. The secondary point (as the text says the Pharisees understood Jesus to be speaking about them) is that those who do not delight in the Father's kindness to the wayward are themselves estranged from the Father.

Leslie, I do think Edwards can be unnecessarily introspective. The WCF presents an "extraspective" (looking outside) view of faith. We are justified by a faith that looks wholly outside of ourselves, not by proving to ourselves that our repentance (or anything else) is good enough for God.


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## Barnpreacher (Dec 23, 2008)

CharlieJ said:


> I have to agree with Tson that we are a little off if we are looking at this parable primarily in terms of soteriology. The main character is the Father, just like the woman and the shepherd are the main characters of the preceding parables.
> 
> The point is that God is a gracious Father who desired and delighted in the repentance of wayward Israelites. The secondary point (as the text says the Pharisees understood Jesus to be speaking about them) is that those who do not delight in the Father's kindness to the wayward are themselves estranged from the Father.
> 
> Leslie, I do think Edwards can be unnecessarily introspective. The WCF presents an "extraspective" (looking outside) view of faith. We are justified by a faith that looks wholly outside of ourselves, not by proving to ourselves that our repentance (or anything else) is good enough for God.



The parables in this chapter are all about something lost and then being found. We aren't found of our own. God finds us by his grace.

I don't think looking at this parable primarily with a soteriological view is off. At the end of the story there is a feast (a picture of salvation). The younger son (publican) goes in and the elder son (Pharisee) does not. We see the same picture with the publican and the Pharisee who prayed to God. One worshipped himself (elder brother) and the other smote on his breast and said, "God be merciful to me a sinner" (younger brother). One went down to his house justified (Publican, younger brother) and the other did not (Pharisee, elder brother).


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## Leslie (Dec 24, 2008)

How would Edwards deal with Hebrews 11:6 which indicates that the essence of faith is expecting reward from God? Also pertinent is Psalm 116:1.


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## Semper Fidelis (Dec 24, 2008)

I think it is dangerous to try to measure strength of faith and repentance with our own powers of estimation and call it true or false.

I believe the boy coming to his senses was a sense of regeneration. He might not have come back with a fully developed sense of what repentance was but the picture of the father running to the boy and adopting a man that had lost his birthright to be called anything other than a slave is beautiful Gospel imagery.

There's a good article in CPJ 3 where John Brown of Haddington criticizes Baxter's view of faith. Baxter had a view of faith that it had to be full orbed and have persevered before it could be saving. In other words, there was a sense of quality in Baxter's view of faith that changed it from the Evangelical faith that is a clinging to Christ in simple trust.

There are plenty examples in the Scripture of imperfect faith and repentance. Does anyone think Peter's restoration is as perfect as it could be? Does anyone consider the confession of the epileptic's father to be particularly convincing (Lord, I believe, help my unbelief)?

Of course I recognize that repentance is an Evangelical grace that only those that are united to Christ by faith can manifest and only the same receive their High Priest's intercession which produces it and provides forgiveness for their sins.

Nevertheless, we need to remember that it is not the quality of our repentance or faith that is the basis for our forgiveness but the quality of our Savior.


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