“Spiritual humility—the recognition of one’s dependence upon God for all things temporal and spiritual, coupled with a willingness to accept his law—is a precondition for true repentance. Some achieve this humility only after they have been ‘compelled to be humble’ by those ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ of which Hamlet soliloquized. Some do so only after they have been brought face-to-face with the stark truth about themselves and the God they defied, or never knew.
“Some will never learn humility and, therefore, never repent even when they stand before God with a ‘perfect knowledge’ of their guilt and uncleanness” (Turner, Faith unto Salvation, 19–20).