REPENTANCE;
SALVATION: TRANSFORMATION

A story has been told about a governor of one of the states. He was concerned about the plight of many in the prison system, and he visited one of the prisons, going incognito. The prisoners did not know who he was.

Having opportunity to talk to a young man, he asked why he was there and for how long.

“I suppose you would like to get outside again,” the governor said in conversation.

“I would sure like to be out,” was the reply. “But I doubt it. They threw the book at me.”

Then the governor asked: “Tell me, if you were free again, what would be the first thing you would do?”

The face of the inmate changed to a grim scowl and he almost growled as he said: “The first thing I would do would be to cut the throat of that blankety-blank judge that sent me here!”

The governor, the man with the power of pardon and release, had not expected to hear that kind of snarl. He was hoping for an indication of remorse and repentance and reform. He was hoping he might hear a prisoner’s desire to be a good man again, desiring to try and straighten out the wrongs that had put him in that place.

He stayed in there, you see, because pardons are conditioned upon intention to reform. You cannot save a man who insists upon continuing in the thing that caused him to be unsaved.

Isaiah 1:16–19; Isaiah 55:6–8; Colossians 3:5–11; 1 Thessalonians 1:9

Echoes from Eden, 78, 79.