“True repentance allows sorrow to fuel our actions.”
Thoughts from daily Bible reading for today – February 28, 2026
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:18, ESV
As far back as Thomas Aquinas, love has been helpfully understood as the “willing of the good of another.” Thus, a failure of love is the failure to seek another’s good, with the most common culprit being love of self! More often than we’d ever care to admit, the root cause of our many ailments is disproportionate concern for ourselves to the exclusion of the needs of others. When our lives are filled to the brim with our desires, our goals, and our pleasures, how is it possible to, at the same time, will the good of someone else?
When we realize this, sorrow is an appropriate response. It is good to feel the weight of our brokenness and realize how it has impacted those around us, often the people who are closest to us and know us the best. Yet sorrow over sin is only the first step. True repentance allows sorrow to fuel our actions. Loving words are a great start. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t ask how your presentation went.” “I’m sorry for how I spoke to you last night in anger and frustration.” But these words must be coupled with actions and truth, as 1 John reminds us today.
Repentance is an active and deliberate form of love. It sees our brokenness, invites the Spirit’s transforming presence into that place of need, and then walks in healing and newness of life. If we apologize daily for being angry or harsh toward a loved one, yet never grow in our self-control, our words are hollow and empty and only add fuel to the fire. Love demands action, where we not only want to seek the good of the other, but we do so in deliberate, intentional, and even habitual ways.
Habit is not the enemy of love. Do whatever it takes to build a way of life that cultivates this kind of active repentance. Set reminders for yourself that encourage intentionality. Ask yourself each morning, “How can I live today in a way that dies to my desires so I can seek their good?” This can be exhausting, no doubt, for we must struggle daily against the ever-present temptation toward sin and self, yet by the strength of the Lord at work within us, we can overcome and become truly repentant people who love in words, speech, actions, and truth.
Prayer
Father, teach us to truly love in word and deed, as you have loved us through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Application
How can your sorrow over sin be transformed into the fuel needed to live a life of active and intentional repentance?
Related Reading
Matthew 5:23-24; Luke 19:8; Acts 26:20
Worship Resource
Maverick City Music: Refiner
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