Turning Around

“God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.” — Acts 5:31 (ESV)

Spurgeon notices that in this verse repentance and forgiveness come from the same hand — the hand once nailed to the cross, now raised in glory. And they always go together. Forgiving someone who loves his sin and has no intention of leaving it would be a licence to keep doing wrong. It would also be a lame, half-finished mercy. What good is it, he asks, to be washed and then left lying in the mud? To bring a man out of the grave and leave him dead? Anyone whose heart has really been woken up doesn’t just want to escape punishment. They want to be free of sin itself.

So the two arrive together and stay together. Forgiveness leads to repentance — knowing you’re loved and pardoned is what makes you hate the thing that hurt Jesus. And repentance is a sign of forgiveness. “Faith and repentance are but two spokes in the same wheel, two handles of the same plough.” Repentance isn’t a few miserable days of penance to get over with; it’s “the grace of a lifetime.” He describes it as “a heart broken for sin, and from sin” — sorry about the past and set on a different future. But keep things in their places: “Do not regard your repentance as the cause of your remission, but as the companion of it.” You aren’t forgiven because you’re sorry enough.

Then how do you get repentance? From the same place as forgiveness. “Our Lord Jesus Christ has gone up that grace may come down.” He sends his Spirit to soften hard hearts. Without Jesus, Spurgeon says, being sorry would be worth nothing before God; the law just says the soul that sins will die. “We might feel remorse with its horrors, but never repentance with its hopes.” Jesus’ death and rising are what make turning back to God possible at all. Now he uses everything that happens to you — a rooster crowing, as it did for Peter, or an earthquake shaking a prison, as it did for the jailer at Philippi. “The Lord’s mercy often rides to the door of our hearts on the black horse of affliction.” And notice who Peter says Jesus gives repentance to: the very people who had shouted for his death. Nobody is too hard for him. Spurgeon quotes a hymn written by William Hone, a well-known sceptic who was won over: “The proudest heart that ever beat / Hath been subdued in me.”

So, he says, stop sitting in your room trying to squeeze out tears. “Do not sit down and try to pump up repentance from the dry well of corrupt nature.” Go and look at Jesus on the cross, and let him look at you, as he looked at Peter. “Look not beneath the ice to find fire.”

Now — what is this actually about? Repentance isn’t earning forgiveness; it’s turning around because you’ve been loved. Some people think repenting means feeling terrible for long enough that God is satisfied. Others think forgiveness means they never have to change. Spurgeon rejects both. Turning from sin isn’t the price of grace — but there’s no such thing as grace that leaves you facing the same way.

Real repentance often looks less dramatic than people expect. It looks like admitting you were wrong without excuses. It looks like deleting something, ending something, apologising to someone, and doing it again tomorrow when you slip. And the more sure you are of being forgiven, the more you’ll want to turn. If you’ve been waiting to feel crushed enough before you come to God, stop waiting: come and be forgiven, and the turning will grow out of that.

One thing to do this week: spend fifteen minutes with Luke 22:54–62, the night Peter denied Jesus and “the Lord turned and looked at Peter.” Then ask God to show you one thing you need to turn from — and take one concrete step away from it before the week is out. Don’t wait to feel sorry enough first.