Introduction
The basic meaning of the word repentance is “to turn” or “to turn back or around”. It means a change of mind or direction. It is a choice to stop thinking or going in one direction and to turn and think or go in the opposite direction.
In essence, repentance is a composite of three
things: remorse; return; restitution. Remorse
is a deep and sometimes painful sense of regret for doing something wrong. Although it is not used very often these
days, the word compunction is the best single-word description of remorse: to
do something ‘without compunction’ is to do it without any sense of remorse or
regret. The ‘return’ element carries the
idea of turning back from doing wrong to do doing right. And restitution is the act of compensating
for loss or damage or injury caused.
Jesus told two stories that illustrate
repentance well: the account of Nicodemus the tax collector in John 3 and the
parable of the ‘prodigal son’ in Luke 15.
Genuine repentance usually contains all three elements.
Repentance Towards God
First, repentance is to change your
mind. Up to now, you have had
your own definition of sin and of how God sees sin. Repentance towards God means forsaking your
own ideas and totally accepting His
definition and appraisal of sin.
Also, up
to now, you have had your own ideas of how good and ‘acceptable’ to God you
are. Repentance towards God means
forsaking your own ideas and unreservedly accepting His appraisal of you.
As far as
God is concerned, whatever we are or do that does not have its roots in faith
in Him is sin. And he says: If you sin,
you die. We cannot be born again without
a profound sense of sin — of failure, and of not meeting God’s just
standards. (See Luke 18:10-14 — the
Pharisee and the Tax Collector.)
Second, repentance is to renounce your
past sin involvement. When we are
hit by such a profound sense of our sin and having offended God and His
standards, we will be so sickened by it that we will want to renounce every
trace of it and run from it as far as we can.
So, repentance towards God means to run in terror from sin to Him and plead with Him, like the Tax
Collector, to have mercy on us.
Third, repentance is to make restitution
where possible. A second result
of being hit by that sense of sin will be the guilt of having offended or
defrauded other people and we will be compelled
to go and make amends.
Chief Tax
Collector Zacchaeus is the perfect example of what this means:
“But Zacchaeus
stood up and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my
possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will
pay back four times the amount.’” (Luke 19:8). So repentance towards God includes restitution
towards offended or defrauded humans.
Repentance means a complete switch to God’s definition of sin and a clean
break from it. [Isn’t part of the natural birth process to cut the umbilical cord and wash the
child?]
It is
important to recognise that it is the Holy Spirit who is responsible for
convicting us, not another human being.
He has laid the charge, and He can make it stick. He has affected my conscience so that I now
admit I stand guilty before God and, therefore, condemned to death.
The Holy Spirit
has in effect put me to death and buried me.
My only chance of living again is for God’s Spirit to revive me.
Repentance From Sin
We refer
here to sin as a state of being — what theologians call “original sin”. Essentially, all sin in the human race is a
matter of rebellion against God. It may
be active, it may be passive. Repentance
from sin then is to turn and change my attitude towards God from
one of rebellion to one of submission and co-operation.
Besides sin,
(original sin) there are also sins (specific acts of wrong). Theologians refer to these as
‘transgressions’ which means that, on the issue in question, my action has
crossed the line between right and wrong.
Repentance
from sins is a change of attitude from seeing good and bad, right
and wrong, from my own perspective to seeing them from God’s perspective. And it is a change of behaviours in
accordance with that change of attitude.
We begin to see what the apostle Paul called “the sinfulness of sin.”
Repentance
from Dead Works
Here repentance
has the same idea — but what are dead works?!
Repentance
from dead works is a change of mind so I cease to imagine that any of my right
attitudes or behaviours score any ‘brownie points’ with God. We have only one way to stand approved before
God and that is to stand clothed in the righteousness of Christ.
Why is it
that way? So that no-one can boast that they are better than another!
“for
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and [all] are justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus... Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On
what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by
faith apart from observing the law.” (Rom
3:23 & 27-28)
Again, it
is important to recognise that none of these acts of repentance is possible
without the Holy Spirit. It was while we
were dead in sin that God initiated action and we would remain dead were it not
for the Holy Spirit’s convicting and energising power.
Repentance
as a Day-by-day Attitude
Repentance
is not only a once-off, once-for-all action.
It is also a day-by-day attitude.
The change of mind is not represented by a dot on a line, but as a continuous
line. Repentance is a settled state of
mind. Settled in its relentless attitude
of revulsion at sin and rebellion and its dedication to righteousness.
It is a
change of attitude away from sin and self, towards righteousness and God — as a
one-off act and as a settled attitude of life.
How Repentance Works
We shall
see a little later that baptism represents essentially death, burial and
resurrection by the Spirit into Christ.
Repentance is then the death part.
In repentance, I ‘taste death’ and it is the doing of the Spirit of
God. But that is not the end. If repentance is my death with Christ, then
faith is my resurrection with Christ.
(See next section.)
This is how repentance works:
·
I
hear the truth - about myself and the facts and promises of the good news
·
I
agree with God - concerning myself
and the good news
·
I
agree to stop rebelling – both active
and passive
·
I
agree to stop self-effort - the
“dead works” of Hebrews 6:1 and 9:14
·
But it kills me - I have nothing left to stand on
I no
longer have a leg to stand on but I realise that the leg I was trying to stand
on is useless anyway. [Read the
account of the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37] I am, as
it were, dry bones — discarded and devoid of breath. God asks, “can these bones live?” and my
reply is, “Sovereign Lord, only You know!”
In the
matter of our relationship with God through Jesus Christ, repentance is one of
three steps. But we need to remember
that Jesus, it is recorded, “tasted death for every man” and it did not kill
him. Yes, he died – but if you read the
account carefully, death didn’t kill Jesus, Jesus killed death. Jesus laid down his life according to his own
will and the commandment of His Father – and he took it up again. And therein is the core of our hope. Jesus tasted death for every man; as a result,
we can “taste death” in repentance and it doesn’t kill us, just so long as we
understand it is not the end of the matter.If it were the end of the matter, then life could truly be said to be futile, meaningless and absurd, but it’s not the end! Repentance without faith is roughly the same as death without resurrection. We come next to Faith.
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