Two kinds of repentance'

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"Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to
salvation and leaves no regret—but worldly
sorrow brings death." 2 Cor. 7:10

There are two kinds of repentance which need to be 
carefully distinguished from each other, though they 
are often sadly confounded—evangelical repentance, 
and legal repentance.

Cain, Esau, Saul, Ahab, Judas, all repented—but their 
repentance was the remorse of natural conscience—not 
the godly sorrow of a broken heart and a contrite spirit. 
They trembled before God as an angry judge—but were 
not melted into contrition before Him as a forgiving Father.
They neither hated their sins nor forsook them—they
neither loved holiness nor sought it.

Cain went out from the presence of the Lord; 
Esau plotted Jacob's death; 
Saul consulted the witch of Endor; 
Ahab put honest Micaiah into prison; 
and Judas hanged himself. 

How different from this forced and false repentance of 
a reprobate, is the repentance of a child of God—that true 
repentance for sin, that godly sorrow, that holy mourning 
which flows from the Spirit's gracious operations. 

This repentance does not spring from a sense of the wrath of 
God in a broken law—but from His mercy in a blessed gospel—
from a view by faith of the sufferings of Christ in the garden 
and on the cross—from a manifestation of pardoning love; 
and is always attended with self-loathing and self-abhorrence, 
with deep and unreserved confession of sin and forsaking it, 
with most hearty, sincere, and earnest petitions to be kept 
from all evil, and a holy longing to live to the praise and 
glory of God.

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