Repentance In Your Name vs Repentance In Christ's Name

BY MARTIN LUTHER

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations… -Luke 24:45-47

What is repentance in His name? Hereby he singles out the repentance that is not made in His name, and therefore the text compels us to consider two kinds of repentance. First, a repentance not in His name is, when I come with my own works and undertake to blot out sin with them; as we all have been taught and have tried to do. This is not repentance in God’s name, but in the devil’s name. For this is striving to propitiate God by our own works and by our own strength, a thing God cannot allow.