Looking back today after 16 years later, I questioned myself was that true repentance or was it just an emotional, guilty confession of my misbehavior and bad things I’ve managed to do. There are two ways people used to ask a person if he/she was saved. ‘Maru Manassu’ (మారు మనస్సు) [Repentance] and another one ‘Rakshana’ (రక్షన) [Salvation]. Believers interchangeably used these words who mean to ask if he or she is born again. We will come to see that they are related, but not the same.
[one_half] I can’t agree more with Tim Challies in saying,
“It seems that the idea of repentance has fallen out of the church in favor today. We love to stress decisions, worship, faith, and growth but seem to leave out one rather critical aspect of the Christian faith. We need not look far to find people who confess Christ, yet continue to live in ways that would call their confession into question. Because our society so hates the idea of repentance, many churches, out of a so-called “seeker-sensitivity,” has stopped speaking about it, choosing instead to teach about sorrow and brokenness.”[/one_half] [one_half_last][quote]Repentance is not a tangential concept in the Bible; rather, it is central in conversion and justification[/quote][/one_half_last]
Thus, it is important to recognize what it is, and what it demands.
The word repentance comes from a Greek word metanoia. The prefix meta can mean ‘with’, ‘beside’, or ‘after’. The root noia is the verb form of the noun that we can find frequently in the Bible as nous. This is simply the Greek word for “mind”. So in the Greek language, it came to mean “a significant changing of one’s mind.” Thus, in the most basic sense, the concept of repentance in the Bible means “to change one’s mind.”
The changing of one’s mind is not just a matter of intellectual judgment, such as changing our approach after trying to solve a problem. Generally speaking, metanoia has to do with the changing of one’s mind with respect to one’s behavior. It involves godly sorrow from a previous form of behavior. It’s a response to the spirit’s regenerative work in a person. Repentance is taking full responsibility for the sin. It is turning from the idol we once served to the one true living God.
Repentance is key to believer’s conversion.
Most people think that this is a one-time happening at the point of believer’s conversion, though it is partially true but is also an everyday process. I like what Tim Keller titled his article, “All of Life is Repentance” and the introduction was a summary itself,
Martin Luther opened the Reformation by nailing “The Ninety-Five Theses” to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. The very first of the theses was: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ… willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance”. On the surface, this looks a little bleak! Luther seems to be saying Christians will never be making much progress. But of course, that wasn‘t Luther‘s point at all. He was saying that repentance is the way we make progress in the Christian life. Indeed, pervasive, all-of-life-repentance is the best sign that we are growing deeply and rapidly into the character of Jesus.
Repentance about cleansing too. We are free from sin by the power of Christ, but we still have to deal with every day life’s sin.
My favorite theologian R.C Sproul says, “We may be tempted to think of repentance merely in terms of forgiveness, but it is also about cleansing. We are corrupt, and we must be made clean. We may also be tempted to think of repentance as an optional add-on to faith. Justification, after all, is by faith alone. But justification does not exclude repentance. Repentance is not a tangential concept in the Bible; rather, it is central in conversion and justification.”
When a person repents, he comes to God hating what he once loved and loving what he once thought so little of. Such an intense change in thinking about sin and Christ results in believers and doing “works befitting repentance.” Acts 26:20 as a person thinks, so he or she acts.
In a nutshell, this is what Repentance does to a sinner,
- There will be a change of Mindset.
- There will be a change of Direction.
- There will be a change in Life.
- There will be a change in affections.
- There will be a change in priorities
- There will be a change of choice.
- There will be a change in how we make decisions.
Repentance is more than acknowledging your sin, it is transformational.
