Your Daily Slice

AV 13

Fruit of Repentance

“Produce the fruit of perfect repentance.”  (Matthew 3:8 Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, George Howard, ©1995)

According to the forces of nature, we know that apples produce apples, corn produces corn, and roses produce thorns, but eventually also roses, and some even produce ‘rose hips’ as well. Elohim spoke it, decreed it, and every seed produces after its own kind (Genesis 1:11). ‘Fruit,’ according to the dictionary, can also mean the “production, effect or consequence” of an action or event^[1].

Let us therefore look at the action of “perfect repentance.”  First, repentance is not remorse, simply being sorry we got caught doing something we should not have been doing. Nor is it just the fear of the consequences for our actions, the discipline and punishment. Repentance is the gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, deep-feeling sorrow that we experience, knowing that we have offended and dishonored someone we love and respect dearly: our Creator and Father. And with this sorrow is the recognition of the need to change. Whatever the course of action was that led us to the place where we violated Elohim’s Covenant and Word, whatever it was that brought us to the instant where we knew we needed to repent, the fact remains that a change is required.

This change in our actions, our lifestyle, is the “fruit of perfect repentance.”  When we make a deliberate decision, an act of our own choice, to no longer do the things that are in direct opposition to and abuse of the Word of Elohim, we are producing the correct fruit. We are choosing to allow Elohim to have His way within us, and to allow HIS fruit to mature in us as well (see Gal 5:22-26). And this is how the world will know to whom we belong …

“You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in My Name He might give you.”  (John 15:16)

Repent, therefore, and return—so your sins might be blotted out, so times of relief might come from the presence of Adonai and He might send Yeshua, the Messiah appointed for you.  (Acts 3:19-20 TLV)

©2025

[1] American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster, 1828