Sermon Central
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Fruit Of Repentance
Contributed by James Phillips on Jun 22, 2003 (message contributor)
Summary: Shows we mst bear the fruit of repenrance.
Fruit of repentance
Repent is used 27 times in the New Testament, first by John the Baptist, then by Jesus and the apostles and lastly again by Jesus in the book of Revelations.
To think differently or afterwards, i.e. reconsider (morally, feel regret):
2 "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
17 From that time Jesus began to preach and say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
3 "I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
4 "Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem?
5 "I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."
The word repentance is used 22 times in the New Testament.
8 "Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance;
20 but kept declaring both to those of Damascus first, and also at Jerusalem and then throughout all the region of Judea, and even to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance.
Fruit of repentance
9 I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.
10 For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.
11 For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you: what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong! In everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter.
Just as with the Holy Spirit where we have the fruits in GALATIANS 5:22-23, here we have the fruits of repentance. That is the way you and I know if we have become repentant, just as we read GALATIANS 5:22 23 to see if we have the Holy Spirit so we read I CORINTHIANS 7:9 11 to see if we have the fruits of repentance. Because without these fruits we will not have what,
LUKE 13:3 5.
3 "I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
4 "Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem?
5 "I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."
There are seven fruits of repentance and they are found in verse 11.
1. Earnestness; sincerity, seriousness and intensity
Here it is evidently used to denote the thoroughness and the great concern by
which they removed the evils which existed among them. They went to work
to remove them. They did not sit down to mourn over them merely, nor did
they wait for God to remove them, nor did they plead that they could do
nothing, but they set about the work as though they believed it to be
done. When people are thoroughly convinced of sin, they will set about
removing it with the utmost diligence. They will feel that this can be done,
and must be done, or that the soul will be lost.
2. Vindication of yourselves; justification, proof and acquittal
This does not mean that the guilty, when convicted of sin, will attempt to vindicate themselves and to apologize to God for what they had done; but it means that we should show great concern to free ourselves, as far as can be done, from blame; we should be ready to show that we do not approve of what is occurring, and do something about stopping it.
3. Indignation; righteous anger
One effect of true repentance is to produce decided hatred of sin. It is not mere regret, or sorrow, it is positive hatred. There is a deep indignation against it as an evil and a bitter thing. We hate the sin, but not the sinner.
4. Fear; terror, dread and horror
Fear in case the thing should be repeated. Fear in case it should not be entirely removed. It refers to the fearful state of mind that the whole evil might be corrected, and to the dread of having any trace of the evil remaining among us.
5. Longing; desire, yearning, ache
It seems to be more probable that Paul refers to their anxious wish to remove the sin, since this is the topic under consideration. The point of his remarks in this verse is not so much their affection for him as their indignation against their sin, and their deep grief that sin had existed and had been tolerated among them.
