Repentance is a change of mind, heart and purpose once you realise you are out of alignment with God. It’s to turn from thinking, believing and doing things your way, and to think, believe and do things God’s way. This is a wonderful thing that every believer should be regularly doing. I love repentance. As soon as I discover that my thoughts, beliefs and actions are out of alignment with God I immediately repent. I have surrendered my life to Christ and He is Lord of my life so repentance is not hard. If repentance is hard for you, then perhaps you haven’t surrendered your life to Christ and your will is clashing with His.
I don’t do repentance to get into God’s presence. I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus and I have access to His presence any moment of the day, even if I have sinned (God forbid). And when I get into His presence, guess what? repentance just starts happening. I suddenly become aware of area’s in my life where my thoughts, attitudes, beliefs or actions are out of line with God and His Kingdom. As soon as I become aware of these I change my mind and heart. Consequently my actions follow this change.
What repentance is not.
Repentance is not abhorring yourself and grovelling before God in an act of penance and punishing yourself with guilt to try and atone for your sins and remove them so you can be “restored to fellowship with God”. That is a very misguided view on repentance and is totally unbiblical.
It’s important to understand New Covenant theology when trying to understand repentance. Repentance is not trying to get something that a born again believer already has in Christ. If you are born again and in Christ, then you have forgiveness of all your sins and you have permanent access to God every moment of every day. Repentance is not to get forgiven or restored to fellowship with God. You have those things and can never lose them.
What repentance is.
The Greek word in the New Testament for repentance is the word Metanoia and literally means to change your mind and think differently. This change of mind leads to a change of purpose and behaviour. The true and wonderful goal of repentance is so that we can walk with our mind, heart and purpose aligned with God and not head off down a deceptive and destructive pathway of thinking, believing and behaving. Repentance is to help us continue to walk in the truth of Christ and under His lordship. Repentance is surrender. It’s to give up our will and purpose, our way of thinking and believing and to submit to God’s way.
Personally I don’t live my life from one repentance event to the next repentance event. I live a life of repentance. In other words I live a life where my thoughts, my beliefs and my actions are continually yielding to God and aligning to His ways. As soon as I think, believe or do something contrary to God’s ways and become aware of it I repent instantly.
Repentance should never be a long drawn out religious ritual. It should be lightning fast and instant – as fast as revelation and as fast as faith! As soon as I realise I’ve gone off a bit, I’ll repent instantly and snap straight back into alignment.
Repentance is happening in our life more than we realise. It’s happening when we read the Word and get a revelation of truth, or when we hear Spirit-filled teaching. Repentance is taking place as revelation is coming. As the lights come on, truth is being revealed and you are aligning to the light, sometimes even without realising it. Certain ways of thinking and believing you once had are being changed. That change is called repentance!
Should a believer repent of sin?
Well it depends how you define repentance. If you define repentance as a work to get rid of your sin then no we shouldn’t do that because it’s only Jesus who gets rid of our sin. But if you define repentance as changing the way you think about sin and aligning to the way God thinks, then yes, of course we should repent of sin.
Ryan are you saying we shouldn’t confess our sin and say sorry to God for it? No, I’m not saying that. But if your confession and apology is a ritual to try and gain forgiveness and restoration of fellowship, then your thinking is out of alignment with the New Covenant and you need to change the way you think. That’s right, you need to repent of this kind of repenting!
I do believe that if we sin we should acknowledge that sin to God and apologise to Him for it. That’s just healthy. Then we should agree with grace and draw near to God with boldness.
- Acknowledge you sinned.
- Apologise to God.
- Agree with grace.
- Approach with boldness.
But here’s the thing, you could do any one of these things at any point. It doesn’t have to be in this order or any order. It’s not a formula or ritual. You could do it backwards if you want. You could approach God with boldness even before you’ve acknowledge or apologised for your sin! Because that’s the difference between works and grace. You could even do them all at the exact same time.
Now when you do all this, it shouldn’t be a long drawn out process of punishing yourself with guilt to try and pay for your sins to earn your way back to God. It’s a terrible offence to the Cross to believe it was insufficient to forgive us all our sins and secure us in unbreakable union with God and that somehow we maintain this all through our repentance. No, I don’t acknowledge and apologise for my sin to get rid of it, I do it because I love God and walk close with Him.
What if someone is not repentance of sin?
Do we threaten them with separation from God and punishment or loss of salvation to get them to repent? Well if we do that and they do in fact repent, would it really be true repentance? This kind of threat I’m convinced leads to worldly sorrow and not godly sorrow. The goal is for someone to feel godly sorrow not worldly sorrow. Worldly sorrow only cares that I got caught and will say or do anything to get out of trouble. Godly sorrow cares that my actions are wrong and grieve God.
Before repentance can happen we must first have a revelation that what we’re doing is wrong and grieves God. This revelation leads to godly sorrow where we become genuinely sorry to God. Then repentance happens. Which is simply coming into alignment with God’s truth, which then causes our actions to change.
Sometimes for people to have this revelation we need to lovingly challenge and confront them with truth.
This is what we see in the famous Corinthian church situation. In 1 Corinthians 5:1-3 Paul addresses a terrible sin that is being committed by someone in the church. A man was sleeping with his father’s wife. Paul’s main focus is actually not on the man committing this sin, but rather the church’s attitude towards it and their handling of it. Instead of being troubled about the sin, they were strangely proud of it. They seemed completely unaware that it was wrong and potentially destructive to the church because of its terrible example. Paul, as a caring father, confronts them in order to wake them up and help them see things the way God sees things.
1 Corinthians 5:1-3 “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this?”
What follows from this rebuke is the exact response that Paul was hoping for, godly sorrow leading to repentance. These Corinthians have a profound revelation and come back into alignment with God:
2 Corinthians 7:8-13 “Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while— yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter. So even though I wrote to you, it was neither on account of the one who did the wrong nor on account of the injured party, but rather that before God you could see for yourselves how devoted to us you are. By all this we are encouraged.”
What a wonderful result! This is the beauty of true repentance. This is the goal of discipline. It’s not to hurt or inflict harm but to lovingly bring people back into alignment with God. We even see the effect of the churches discipline on the man living in this sin, who must have repented too:
2 Corinthians 2:4-8 “For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you, with many tears, not that you should be grieved, but that you might know the love which I have so abundantly for you. But if anyone has caused grief, he has not grieved me, but all of you to some extent—not to be too severe. This punishment which was inflicted by the majority is sufficient for such a man, so that, on the contrary, you ought rather to forgive and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one be swallowed up with too much sorrow. Therefore I urge you to reaffirm your love to him.”
This seems to be so different to how much of the Church handles repentance today.
The nature of repentance to the Revelation churches.
Even when Jesus rebukes some of the Revelation churches, it wasn’t to hurt them but to correct them back onto the path of faith. They were allowing idolatry to creep in and were tolerating certain deceptive people who were bringing in ungodly doctrines and practises. They needed to deal swiftly with these people and their own hearts, or Jesus was going to close down their church. Christ is jealous over His Bride and these deceptive beliefs and practises were perverting His Church and the Gospel. Christ was warning them to turn away, or repent from idolatry and come back to a pure faith in Him. He wasn’t threatening them with hell, but rather removing their candlestick which is symbolic of closing down their churches. It’s important to note that Christ’s tone is not cold, angry or implacable. His rebukes are fatherly and come to the churches with grace and peace as he warns them, like a loving father, to correct their course.
Revelation 1:4 “To the seven churches in the province of Asia:
Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come…”
Revelation 3:19 “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.”
Revelation 3:3 “Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.”
Revelation 2:15-16 “Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.”
Concluding thoughts:
We need to renew our mind to the true definition of repentance and limit our scriptural application of it to within this boundary, for to go beyond would constitute distortion of sound doctrine.
And this is the true definition: Repentance is turning from dead works toward God through faith in Jesus. It’s giving up that old way of thinking that our works earn us something with God and submitting our thinking to the grace and truth of God. It’s renewing our minds to align with Christ. Ultimately repentance is about aligning our heart and mind with God’s heart and mind. Right behaviour will always follow this.
In the next Bible study (part 3), I am going to give a commentary on all the repentance scriptures in the New Testament and seek to place them in their proper context so that as we apply them to people today we do so appropriately.
By Ryan Rufus.
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Articles you may find interesting:
Part 1: Thinking right about repentance.
Part 3: A commentary on all the Repentance scriptures in the New Testament.
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Elaine: “Repentance leading salvation” is not confusing. It is as clear as daylight. Doing a work-around is what causes confusion in the church, acceptance of ungodly behavior, and ultimately error, even heresy.