After being led to believe that the Law alone is the tool that should be deployed to terrify "secure sinners" and drive them to repentance, I read that "God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance" (Romans 2:4). And now I am inclined to believe that some people are neither secure nor insecure in their sins but, in a word, feral -- fearful, hostile, wayward, diseased, abused, dissatisfied with life, grabbing what they can get, and unaware of even the possibility of new life trusting in what Christ has done and taught.

With divine compassion, the Son of Man came to seek and to save the feral. Imagine a shepherd going out and loudly scolding and threatening a bunch of a wayward sheep who have never seen him before. Will that induce them to repent, turn and follow him?

To repent is to turn away from what is evil and toward what is good. Like being unable to turn toward light that you have not yet seen, you cannot turn toward what is good unless you first become aware of it. And what makes you aware of it is the Good News that this goodness is being offered to you. So repentance is a response to both Law and Gospel.