49 Bible Verses about Repentance, Nature Of
Most Relevant Verses
Still, the Lord warned Israel and Judah through every prophet and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep My commands and statutes according to all the law I commanded your ancestors and sent to you through My servants the prophets.”
for they themselves report what kind of reception we had from you: how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God
Let the wicked one abandon his way
and the sinful one his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord,
so He may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for He will freely forgive.
“Men! Why are you doing these things? We are men also, with the same nature as you, and we are proclaiming good news to you, that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them.
Therefore, submit to God. But resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, double-minded people! Be miserable and mourn and weep. Your laughter must change to mourning and your joy to sorrow. read more.
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.
The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit.
God, You will not despise a broken and humbled heart.
For even if I grieved you with my letter, I do not regret it—even though I did regret it since I saw that the letter grieved you, yet only for a little while. Now I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance. For you were grieved as God willed, so that you didn’t experience any loss from us. For godly grief produces a repentance not to be regretted and leading to salvation, but worldly grief produces death.
The Lord is near the brokenhearted;
He saves those crushed in spirit.
For the High and Exalted One
who lives forever, whose name is Holy says this:
“I live in a high and holy place,
and with the oppressed and lowly of spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and revive the heart of the oppressed.
My hand made all these things,
and so they all came into being.
This is the Lord’s declaration.
I will look favorably on this kind of person:
one who is humble, submissive in spirit,
and trembles at My word.
Even now—
this is the Lord’s declaration—
turn to Me with all your heart,
with fasting, weeping, and mourning.
Tear your hearts,
not just your clothes,
and return to the Lord your God.
For He is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger, rich in faithful love,
and He relents from sending disaster.
“But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even raise his eyes to heaven but kept striking his chest and saying, ‘God, turn Your wrath from me—a sinner!’
When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have more than enough food, and here I am dying of hunger! I’ll get up, go to my father, and say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired hands.’
If someone incurs guilt in one of these cases, he is to confess he has committed that sin.
For the choir director. A Davidic psalm, when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone to Bathsheba.Be gracious to me, God,
according to Your faithful love;
according to Your abundant compassion,
blot out my rebellion.
Wash away my guilt
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I am conscious of my rebellion,
and my sin is always before me.
The one who conceals his sins
will not prosper,
but whoever confesses and renounces them
will find mercy.
Israel, return to Yahweh your God,
for you have stumbled in your sin.
Take words of repentance with you
and return to the Lord.
Say to Him: “Forgive all our sin
and accept what is good,
so that we may repay You
with praise from our lips.
Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have been unfaithful by marrying foreign women, adding to Israel’s guilt. Therefore, make a confession to Yahweh the God of your fathers and do His will. Separate yourselves from the surrounding peoples and your foreign wives.”
“Therefore, say to the house of Israel: This is what the Lord God says: Repent and turn away from your idols; turn your faces away from all your detestable things.
Therefore, in my judgment, we should not cause difficulties for those among the Gentiles who turn to God, but instead we should write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from eating anything that has been strangled, and from blood.
“Tell the Israelites: When a man or woman commits any sin against another, that person acts unfaithfully toward the Lord and is guilty. The person is to confess the sin he has committed. He is to pay full compensation, add a fifth of its value to it, and give it to the individual he has wronged.
But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, I’ll give half of my possessions to the poor, Lord! And if I have extorted anything from anyone, I’ll pay back four times as much!”
For the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, has said:
“You will be delivered by returning and resting;
your strength will lie in quiet confidence.
But you are not willing.”
But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And you, when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”
I testified to both Jews and Greeks about repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus.
to open their eyes so they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that by faith in Me they may receive forgiveness of sins and a share among those who are sanctified.’
“Now if the wicked person turns from all the sins he has committed, keeps all My statutes, and does what is just and right, he will certainly live; he will not die. None of the transgressions he has committed will be held against him. He will live because of the righteousness he has practiced. Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” This is the declaration of the Lord God. “Instead, don’t I take pleasure when he turns from his ways and lives?
“Since the days of your fathers, you have turned from My statutes; you have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of Hosts.
But you ask: “How can we return?” “Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me!”
You ask: “How do we rob You?”
“By not making the payments of the tenth and the contributions. You are suffering under a curse, yet you—the whole nation—are still robbing Me. read more.
Bring the full tenth into the storehouse so that there may be food in My house. Test Me in this way,” says the Lord of Hosts. “See if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing for you without measure.
Instead, I preached to those in Damascus first, and to those in Jerusalem and in all the region of Judea, and to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works worthy of repentance.
“Wash yourselves. Cleanse yourselves.
Remove your evil deeds from My sight.
Stop doing evil.
Learn to do what is good.
Seek justice.
Correct the oppressor.
Defend the rights of the fatherless.
Plead the widow’s cause.
Therefore, may my advice seem good to you my king. Separate yourself from your sins by doing what is right, and from your injustices by showing mercy to the needy. Perhaps there will be an extension of your prosperity.”
Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance.
Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance. And don’t start saying to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones!
“What then should we do?” the crowds were asking him. He replied to them, “The one who has two shirts must share with someone who has none, and the one who has food must do the same.” Tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” read more.
He told them, “Don’t collect any more than what you have been authorized.” Some soldiers also questioned him: “What should we do?”
He said to them, “Don’t take money from anyone by force or false accusation; be satisfied with your wages.”
Yet in spite of all this, her treacherous sister Judah didn’t return to Me with all her heart—only in pretense.”
This is the Lord’s declaration.
I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am Yahweh. They will be My people, and I will be their God because they will return to Me with all their heart.
When they sin against You—
for there is no one who does not sin—
and You are angry with them
and hand them over to the enemy,
and their captors deport them to the enemy’s country—
whether distant or nearby—
and when they come to their senses
in the land where they were deported
and repent and petition You in their captors’ land:
“We have sinned and done wrong;
we have been wicked,”
and when they return to You with their whole mind and heart
in the land of their enemies who took them captive,
and when they pray to You in the direction of their land
that You gave their ancestors,
the city You have chosen,
and the temple I have built for Your name,
read more.
may You hear in heaven, Your dwelling place,
their prayer and petition and uphold their cause.
May You forgive Your people
who sinned against You
and all their rebellions against You,
and may You give them compassion
in the eyes of their captors,
so that they may be compassionate to them.
When they sin against You—
for there is no one who does not sin—
and You are angry with them
and hand them over to the enemy,
and their captors deport them
to a distant or nearby country,
and when they come to their senses
in the land where they were deported
and repent and petition You in their captors’ land,
saying: “We have sinned and done wrong;
we have been wicked,”
and when they return to You with their whole mind and heart
in the land of their captivity where they were taken captive,
and when they pray in the direction of their land
that You gave their ancestors,
and the city You have chosen,
and toward the temple I have built for Your name,
read more.
may You hear their prayer and petitions in heaven,
Your dwelling place,
and uphold their cause.
May You forgive Your people
who sinned against You.
When He killed some of them,
the rest began to seek Him;
they repented and searched for God.
They remembered that God was their rock,
the Most High God, their Redeemer.
But they deceived Him with their mouths,
they lied to Him with their tongues,
read more.
their hearts were insincere toward Him,
and they were unfaithful to His covenant.
Come, let us return to the Lord.
For He has torn us,
and He will heal us;
He has wounded us,
and He will bind up our wounds.
He will revive us after two days,
and on the third day He will raise us up
so we can live in His presence.
Let us strive to know the Lord.
His appearance is as sure as the dawn.
He will come to us like the rain,
like the spring showers that water the land.read more.
What am I going to do with you, Ephraim?
What am I going to do with you, Judah?
Your loyalty is like the morning mist
and like the early dew that vanishes.
Perhaps they will listen and return—each from his evil way of life—so that I might relent concerning the disaster that I plan to do to them because of the evil of their deeds.
So the Lord relented concerning the disaster He said He would bring on His people.
remembered His covenant with them,
and relented according to the riches
of His faithful love.
How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I surrender you, Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
I have had a change of heart;
My compassion is stirred!
Tear your hearts,
not just your clothes,
and return to the Lord your God.
For He is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger, rich in faithful love,
and He relents from sending disaster.
The Lord God showed me this: He was forming a swarm of locusts at the time the spring crop first began to sprout—after the cutting of the king’s hay. When the locusts finished eating the vegetation of the land, I said, “Lord God, please forgive! How will Jacob survive since he is so small?” The Lord relented concerning this. “It will not happen,” He said. read more.
The Lord God showed me this: The Lord God was calling for a judgment by fire. It consumed the great deep and devoured the land. Then I said, “Lord God, please stop! How will Jacob survive since he is so small?” The Lord relented concerning this. “This will not happen either,” said the Lord God.
