
Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 33
[What does genuine repentance, or conversion, look like? What I love about Heidelberg's answer is the passion and emotion it contains. Repentance is not just about living differently, or even thinking differently—although it is about those things—it is to be "genuinely sorry" for sin, to "hate" it, to find "wholehearted joy" in God through Christ, and to "love and delight" in the will of God. Conversion involves sorrow, hatred, joy and delight, and if it doesn't, it isn't true conversion.]
Q88. What is involved
in genuine repentance or conversion?
A88. Two things:
the dying-away of the old self,
and the rising-to-life of the new.
Q89. What is the dying-away of the old self?
A89. To be genuinely sorry for sin
and more and more to hate
and run away from it.
Q90. What is the rising-to-life of the new self?
A90. Wholehearted joy in God through Christ
and a love and delight to live
according to the will of God
by doing every kind of good work.
Q91. What are good works?
A91. Only those which
are done out of true faith,
conform to God’s law,
and are done for God’s glory;
and not those based
on our own opinion
or human tradition.