Lifetime Repentance

“God...granted repentance unto life.”

When the Methodist preacher, William Taylor, was asked what he would choose for a gift in his old age, he answered, “Repentance unto life.” In his book, The Apostle Paul, Alexander Whyte writes, “If you are well read in Paul’s old-age Epistles you will find far more repentance unto life in his last years, than even in his years of immediate conversion and remorse. You meet with an ever deeper bitterness at sin, and at himself, as time goes on with Paul: and, then, a corresponding amazement at God’s mercy.”

Studying Paul’s Christian life from start to finish you’ll find the following: at the beginning he says, he is “the least of the apostles”; later on, that he is “less than the least of all saints”; then, as an old man, declares, “I am chief [of sinners].” It is well to remember, “Christ in you,” does not negate the sin that is in you. The more Christ fills our lives the more sinful we will see ourselves to be. The Biblical principle is that light manifests darkness. This, seeing one’s sinfulness, is not a bad thing, but rather a good thing. It is here we learn true mercy and grace!

When a saint believes he or she is getting worse in God’s sight, in reality, they are getting better.”