Of Repentance Unto Life

In his commentary on Chapter XV of the Westminster Confession of Faith, Robert Shaw wrote:

"The repentance described in this chapter is called repentance unto life, because it is inseparably connected with the enjoyment of eternal life, and to distinguish it from the sorrow of the world, which worketh death. It is styled a grace because it is the free gift of God, and is wrought in the heart by the operation of the Spirit. 'Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.' Acts xi.18. 'Turn thou me, and I shall be turned; surely after that I was turned, I repented.' Jer. xxxi. 18, 19. This repentance is also denominated an evangelical grace, to distinguish it from legal repentance. The latter flows from a dread of God's wrath; the former, from faith in God's mercy. In the latter, the sinner is chiefly affected with the punishment to which his sin exposes him; in the former, he mourns for his sin as offensive and dishonouring to God. Cain and Judas repented, but it was on account of the consequences of sin to themselves; whereas the true penitent mourns after a godly sourt, with a godly sorrow, or a sorrow which directly regards God. 2 Cor. vii. 9, 10." - Rev. Robert Shaw, An Exposition of the Confession of Faith of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (1846), pages 178-179.

Back in Shaw's day, when the holiness of God, the necessity of His judgment of sin, and His wrath toward the unrepentant was still being preached from the pulpits, there was a danger that many professing Christians merely had this "legal repentance," rather than the required "evangelical repentance." Today, when preaching has become so watered down that God is believed to just love and forgive everyone indiscriminantly, there may not even be "legal repentance" in the majority of those sitting in the pews.