Seven Motives For True Repentance

By Richard Owen Roberts

    Here are seven God-given motives for repentance:

    1.  The Sovereign Rights of God.  The sovereign God who made us, created us not for ourselves but for Himself.  By failing to live in repentance, we are violating the sovereign rights of the God who made us.  If you are having a personal problem of repentance, remind yourself right now:  God has His rights.  When I sin, I am sinning against the rights of my Creator, and I better quit right now.

    2.  God’s Person.  Sin is always an affront against our God.  God has His rights and God in His person is holy; His Name is holy; He has an absolute intolerance of sin.

    3.  God’s Word.  All sin is a violation of God’s law.  If one claims to love the Bible and can say with the psalmist, “Oh how love I Thy law.  It is my meditation all the day” (Psa. 119:97), he has a profound motivation for repentance in the law of God and indeed in the whole of the Word of God.

    4.  The Love of God.  What an incredible thing that our Father in heaven sent His Son to die in our place!  The love of God is an incredible motive for repentance.  How can anyone say that they realize God loves them, and yet persist in their sin?

    5.  The Body and the Blood of Jesus Christ.  How can someone come to the Communion table and harbor sin in his heart?  How can anyone persist in his wrong thinking and in his wrongdoing when he is at the table of the Lord and is reminded of His broken body and shed blood?  Every remembrance of the crucifixion, every remembrance of the tender atoning work of Jesus Christ ought to be a powerful prompt to thorough repentance.

    6.  God’s Wrath.  Every sinner needs to be motivated by the dire threat that the Word of God makes perfectly plain:  “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” (Heb. 2:3).

    7.  God’s Aspirations for Us.  As long as we remain in an unrepentant state, we are missing God’s heart aspirations for us and will always fall desperately short of the kingdom of God.

    By Your mercy, O God, do not let one of us fall short of Your aspirations.  May we be motivated to full and complete and perpetual repentance to the everlasting glory of King Jesus!

    – Condensed and edited.