Gospel remorse

“Legalistic remorse says, ‘I broke God’s rules,’ while real repentance says, ‘I broke God’s heart.’ Legalistic repentance takes sin to Mt. Sinai, gospel repentance to Mt. Calvary. Legalistic repentance is convicted by punishment, gospel repentance becomes convicted by mercy.”

- Timothy Keller, Church Planter Manual

Published in:  on November 29, 2008 at 1:46 am Comments (6)

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6 Comments Leave a comment.

  1. I’m convinced that anything but real repentance will point a ministry in every direction but the right one.

  2. [...] Gospel remorse [...]

  3. [...] HT: Of First Importance [...]

  4. [...] Keller explains the difference between legalistic and gospel repentance. “Legalistic remorse says, ‘I broke God’s rules,’ while real repentance [...]

  5. [...] Legalistic versus real repentance: Great quote from Tim Keller. [...]

  6. This is convicting and edifying. Thank you, thank you, thank you!


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