Mere terror produces no “repentance unto life.” The great love of God in providing a Saviour for us, and the great love of the Saviour in bearing our sins and bearing them away, is what really moves us to penitence. To believe in this Loving God is Christian faith, and therefore we may say that genuine Repentance is a fruit of Faith. Yet it must be said that, in the experience of salvation, there are usually two distinct stages in our feeling about our own sin. There is, at one stage, a sense of sin driving us to Christ, and then a further and fuller sorrow for sin and hatred of it, when we more fully realise the mercy of God in Christ forgiving and accepting us.

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