Getting Saved - What is Repentance?

Repent of your Sins?

I do street preaching, and the approach preachers take, in any context, to preaching the Gospel is important. We want to convey God's heart to people. All are called, indeed commanded, to repent, Acts 17v30. Some preachers exhort listeners to 'repent of their sins'. 

Listeners don't always know exactly 'repent' means.

'Repent of your sins' was used in 'sinner's prayers' from people like Dwight Moody and Billy Graham. It's still commonly used during a call for salvation. These were great men of God, and achieved amazing things in their times. However I want to go back to the Scriptures and see how the Gospel was preached by the early church. There may be a subtle departure from what God intends. I'll leave you to decide.

'Repentance' can sound like a heavy word, full of impending gloom and judgment, and can give a sense of impossible demands from an angry God. However it is part of the Good News, the light yoke Jesus offers us. Has something gone wrong in our perception of a word intended for our immeasurable blessing?

'Repent' is the first word the evangelist should use in his exhortation. 'Repent, believe, and be baptised'. That sequence is there in the New Testament many times. However you'll find the phrase 'repent of your sins' is not. Not directed at the unbeliever.

Why would this matter? A series of conversations with others made me think perhaps it matters quite a bit. Does this 'repent of your sins' phrase scare people away unnecessarily? Are we burdening people in a way God is not? I love to hear that people are getting saved, and I love to listen to their individual experiences. But people being convicted about a list of sins to repent of hasn't really come around in the conversations. Instead, when they came into the Kingdom, the people I spoke to called out to Jesus; not always out loud but in their hearts. They were hoping for mercy and not judgment. I've yet to hear an instance where a person laboured over individual sins at the point of salvation.

Now it is perfectly true that people must, in turning to Christ, turn away from their life without Him. It's similar to when a man marries; he's very likely to lose certain facets of his previous life, good or maybe bad. Our old life without Christ was full of sin, infected with sin beyond self-remedy. We are, in repenting, turning from that life. We are now joined to Christ. 

Before we get to looking at the scriptural salvation-call records we have, I want to highlight the fact that Jesus, according to Paul, is not wishing to impute (or account) our sins to us. 

.... in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

2 Corinthians 5:19

What the NKJV calls 'impute', and the ESV here calls 'count against', is a Greek word 'logizomai', which basically means 'to take an inventory of' or 'to reckon'. God is not wishing to take an inventory of people's sins to use against them. 

We have Good News. There is no answer until we have embraced Him. So what we don't need to do is make people think they have to sort their lives out and clean themselves up first. 

When Christ came, His emphasis was on reconciliation.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

John 3:16-17

 

Interestingly the popular NLT (New Living Translation) does use the phrase 'repent of your sins' several times in Acts. It is always an addition to the original text. The Good New Bible does the same sometimes. You can see it at Acts 26v20. Other translations, such as the ESV, NIV, KJV, and NKJV, are more literal.

Here's the NLT 

...all must repent of their sins and turn to God—and prove they have changed by the good things they do

The ESV has

 ......that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.

If you search an accurate New Testament translation you just won't find 'repent of your/their sins' anywhere.

Acts 2v38, 3v19 and Acts 17v30 have also been doctored in this way by the NLT. 'Of your sins' is an addition. 

At the end of Acts 3 is a verse which accurately sums up the dynamic of salvation as it concerns our sins. 

To you first, God, having raised up His Servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities.”

Acts 3:26 NKJV

Iniquities are sins. God is the active lead in turning us away from our sins. We are not required to identify our sins. We are not even required to turn from them by ourselves.

In every instance I'm aware of, when directed to unbelievers, the New Testament sees the forgiveness of sins as a result of repentance. It's a by-product, an outcome! There's no real sense we need to confront our sins and tackle them in some manner first. Yet a lot of our outreach is inclined to make people think they need to do this. I know one person who wrestled with her inability to sort her life out and it prevented her from thinking Christianity was for her. In outreach, believers often emphasise sin, and name individual sins, like adultery, theft or homosexuality. Well these things are sin, and they do need dealing with at some point if we want eternal life and not Hell. But it seems God's preferred emphasis is on the invitation to eternal life, and His desire to have us and include us as family members.

Meaning of the word translated 'Repent' ?

The Greek word metanoeo is translated 'repent' in nearly all English versions in nearly all cases.

Metanoeo means 'think again', 'change your mind', 'reconsider'. It derives from two other Greek words meaning 'again/after' and 'think'. 

Over 200 years before the time of Christ, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament was made, which we now call the Septuagint. It uses metanoeo in 1 Samuel 15v28,29. Speaking to Saul, through Samuel, God says He will not metanoeo concerning His decision to tear the Kingdom from Saul and give it to another. He won't change His mind. The word does not inherently refer to sin, regret or shame. God is repenting here, and He doesn't suffer from these problems.

You'll find plenty of people out there saying 'repent' means 'turn around', and even that it was a Greek military term. You won't find any actual evidence for that. It appears to be hearsay with no distinct source. My wife heard a sermon saying that Alexander the Great spread the common Greek language (true) and that the term was used routinely by his soldiers to get them to march in the opposite direction. It's a nice story, and variations of it are in widespread circulation, presented as fact. Try Googling what 'repent' means in the Bible; you'll see all sorts of posts from church leaders saying stuff like this. It's just that it's flat out wrong. If metanoeo  means 'change course', it means it only in the metaphorical sense for a change of mind.

There's also a problem with the word as it's usually understood by English-speaking people. 'Repent' is a word in  common English usage. But the English word has come to mean something substantially different from the word it is used to represent.

Repent (Cambridge English Dictionary) 'to be very sorry for something bad you have done in the past and wish that you had not done it'

Repent (Greek metanoeo) 'to reconsider (something in the light of new knowledge)'

The result can be that we impose a meaning on the text which isn't there. We must go back to what the writer meant, not what the translation has come to mean to us. To re-iterate: a call to repent is simply a call to change your mind and think differently. Of course a change of mind about one thing, here Christ, will affect many other things.

It is noteworthy that there are 30 occurrences of metanoeo, 'repent', as a command, in the New Testament, and of those, only in Luke 17v4, Acts 8v32, and Revelation 2v21,22 are there things to be 'repented of'. The context of Acts 8v32 is Peter rebuking Simon the Magician, who has already believed and been baptised. In Revelation 2 Jesus is confronting churches. Luke 17 is talking about forgiving a 'brother'. In all other cases, the 'repent' command stands alone; no object is given.* 

In summary, two things are often misunderstood. The meaning of 'repent', and the fact that 'of your sins' was not present in the Greek texts. Between these two things, we could easily get the thrust of the 'repent' message in evangelism wrong.

People will not first turn from their sins, and in fact they cannot. They will likely be driven away, unnecessarily. But they can turn to Jesus. The twelve disciples were not told to 'repent of their sins' by Jesus before they could follow Him. Neither did He say to the crowds, 'Come to me, you weary and burdened, and I'll also demand you work out where you are sinning and deal with it all'. 

Now it's true, you cannot turn to something or someone, and not turn away from something else. In turning to Christ, it is implicit that you turn away from your life without Him, sin and all. But the focus is not on the sin. The focus is on giving everything to Him, and living with Him, accepting Him as He accepts us. He is after relationship. Once we have that connection established, He can work in our lives to clean us up and transform us.

Christianity is first and foremost a release from burdens, an empowerment, a gift, and a change of identity; 2 Corinthians 5v17, 21. There are requirements too, but the requirements follow on, and they flow from the new identity, the new sense of personhood! And they are an outcome of walking in the Spirit! The Holy Spirit graciously provides the power to live differently, and He changes us, mostly, in gentle stages. He is not an impossible taskmaster, as the wicked servant accused in Matthew 25v24. This difference concerning repentance I've outlined here may seem subtle but it is important, and it seems to me we may have had this rather wrong!

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trivialising sin. Sin is eternally lethal and needs an answer. The answer is costly, and precious, the Blood of Christ. But the answer is freely available. As far as paying the price, the penalty, is concerned, Christ has done that and we who believe are free from the judgment and penalty. That is wonderful. That is grace. A free gift of true life, and a paying-off of what you could never, ever pay yourself.

How many of us, prior to conversion, remember being convicted of particular sins and felt the need to try and change our behaviour? If you did, maybe it showed you were serious, which is not a bad thing. But I know someone well who had no sense of that. She merely cried out involuntarily 'Oh, alright then!' when Jesus was preached. She was prayed with and told to tell someone. Her life was one of much frustration and despair. But her awareness of her sin came later. I was similar. I was not convicted of particular sins before I confessed Christ publicly. I had been feeling a sense of general failure in relationships, and a sense of wanting to hide. Two others I think of were each walking away from God and each nearly died, one from drug use and one following a car crash. They experienced a sense of dread and terror. Both thought they were going to Hell. They cried out to Jesus to save them. Both had some previous knowledge of the Bible. The central decision was to reconsider Jesus and the direction of their lives and to turn to Christ. Acts 3v19 and Acts 26v20 add the extra word 'epistrepho' to denote the 'turn' bit. 

It's easy to see why people who are disappointed with behavioural lapses in new believers want to get them to put away sins, or promise to put them away, before they believe and are baptised. But that doesn't seem to be God's way of doing things. We see who Jesus truly is, we believe, we are baptised. He is the answer to our sinful condition. Our sins are forgiven, and we are given a new life. God has dealt with the root of sin, by our shared death and new life. He will graciously deal with sin which lingers around, and this may require our co-operation, but He isn't asking for our resolve to sort sins out before we receive Him! He came to bring rest for the penitent. Now if we are sincere, we will hand our lives, sins and all, to Him, to make what He will out of them. It's true we can't insist we keep hold of our sins. That is different from thinking we have to acknowledge them and get rid of them before He will receive us.

I encourage you to look at the Acts outreach sermons in a fairly straightforward translation such as the ESV or NKJV and see if they fit with the 'repent of your sins' teaching. I really don't think they do. We repent toward God, away from our life without Him. When we do that, forgiveness of sins is found too. We then believe, and get baptised. We also receive the Holy Spirit. We are thereby born again, saved, children of God. Good News.

Repentance is salvation. For salvation, repent and believe are inseparable processes. There's a rethinking of life and a believing in Jesus. Baptism is a visible sign and seal, ideally performed very soon afterwards, or immediately, in Acts at least. 

God is emphasising answer, not problem. I think we should do the same. The answer needs to be kept in easy sight. Jesus is the Way. 

A person stubbornly persisting in their sins will die in them, but usually they know they are sinning, or if they don't they will deny the very concept of sin, and probably deny God too. It is true that a person who says they are a good, kind person, and either denies their need for God, or believes He'll accept them because of their balance of good, likely needs to have the severity of their sinful condition spelled out to them. It is here that there seems to be a place for preaching very clearly on sin, and the fact that God cannot tolerate it in eternity. But perhaps we should wait for this defensive talk before we preach too much on sin. Again, emphasise the answer. God won't condemn people for their sin. They are born in a sinful condition. He'll condemn them for not taking the answer.

*A further 4 verses from Revelation report the failure of mankind, under suffering, to repent of things like idolatry and murder, and of not glorifying God. These verses are recording rebellion, and are not a command to repent and be saved. 

Certainly, there are other contexts to repentance. Repentance happens for people who are already believers in Christ, and it happened in the Old Testament. That's another discussion. Here we are looking at how it works at salvation.