Personal Salvation and Evangelism: Session Four
Once we believe that God reigns, that Jesus is Lord, and that we can be born anew, we must repent.
What Does It Mean to Repent?
When I say the word repent, what comes to your mind?
Do you think of an annual revival service and the guy who, under the impact of the preaching, feels remorse for his sinful ways, and each year tearfully answers the altar call to rededicate his life, but nothing ever changes? He needs to learn to spell altar with an e: alter, meaning change.
Repentance is simply the flip side of the faith coin, and it is closely connected to the new birth that we studied in our previous session. We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the crucified Savior, the risen Lord, and that the Holy Spirit enables us to be born from above, to begin to live our lives from godly sources of wisdom and love. Repentance is the decision to begin to think and to live by what we believe, the decision to unite our wills with the Spirit’s transforming work.
The Joy of Repenting
Real repentance has little to do with remorse (although godly sorrow sometimes plays its part in repentance—2 Corinthians 7:9). Repentance has everything to do with change. Of course, when we repent, we will experience remorse over the time, resources, energy, and influence we have wasted (or worse than wasted) in worthless living, but the dominant emotion should be the joy of discovering something better.
In fact, I think that two of Jesus’ kingdom parables about the joy of discovery can be seen as parables of repentance:
Matthew 13: 44-46 (ESV) “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
Let’s add a bit of imagining to the first parable: A man is taking a shortcut through a neighbor’s field. He discovers a valuable treasure, covers it, and goes and sells all that he has to be able to buy the field from the neighbor. He has forfeited what he had before in exchange for possessions of much greater value. If he chooses, he can cash in the treasure and still have the field which we must assume was worth what he paid for it.
Now let’s try the second parable: A man buys and sells pearls to earn his living. In order to get a living from his trade, he must buy low and sell high. But one day he sees a pearl of such great value that he must purchase it no matter what. He sells all that he has to buy the pearl. Now he has nothing that he is willing to sell, and he has nothing with which to buy more trading stock. He is out of business. But he does not care because he has a satisfaction that is worth far more than anything he has ever had before.
These parables are different. In one, the guy gets ahead in every way. In the other, he gets only satisfaction. Sometimes repentance works one way and sometimes it works the other. What the two stories have in common is that sometimes when we repent and enter the kingdom of God, we may feel that we are giving up everything that has up until that point given worth to our lives, but we gain far more than we gave up. We always gain more than we lose in repenting, and usually we gain more even in this life. Jesus promised the disciples in Mark 10:29-30, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.”
We always gain more than we give up; usually that is already true in this life, but it is always true when eternal life gets figured into the equation. So much is it true that we generally benefit even in this life that Jesus spoke of 100-fold payback. That is not always material payback. Part of the equation Jesus used included the believing friends we gather. When we give up one pattern of associations, the ones that kept us away from God, we gain a new pattern of associations, people who pray for us and seek our best.
Jesus may also have had in mind the value of discovering that our lives now count for something of lasting worth. But, often enough, even our finances are blessed when we turn everything over to God. Our lives gain order, our spending habits come under control, our work habits improve, our health increases, our confidence and emotional condition improves, and, on top of all that, God supernaturally provides the things that we need to carry out our work for him.
But Jesus does not want us turning all of this into a formula. He reminds us that believers also face persecution that does not come to others. Nor does Jesus want us trying to run his promises backwards, figuring, like Job’s so-called friends, that there must be something morally or spiritually wrong with someone who is not prospering. Not so. God said that the friends spoke wrongly of him and made them ask Job, whom they had labeled a sinner because of his misfortunes, to intercede for their forgiveness.
The main point is that the gospel is the hidden treasure, the pearl of surpassing worth. It is worth more than anything we have ever had before. If we give up everything about our previous lives to gain the kingdom, it is still a great bargain.
Other Scriptural Teachings on Repentance
Philippians 3:4-10. We looked at this passage in the previous session, but it does not hurt to return to it with an eye on repentance. Paul junked everything he previously had for the sake of the new life in Christ to which he now totally turned.
C. S. Lewis told the story of a little boy who loved chocolate better than anything. Consequently, he was overweight, had a bad complexion, and frequently was covered with smears of chocolate. None of that stopped his love of chocolate. But, one day, he saw a beautiful girl across the room and was irresistibly drawn to talk to her.
With mouth still full, he greeted her, “Hi!”
“Ooh, you’re disgusting!” A detailed list of objectionable characteristics followed.
Thus ended the boy’s fascination with chocolate. Lewis says that, when we receive Jesus as our Lord, we naturally want to turn from anything that does not please and honor him, anything that gets in the way of our loving service to him. That is repenting.
There is an initial repenting when we come to faith, but there is also ongoing repenting as we learn to recognize things in our lives that are not in harmony with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
With ongoing repenting, the actual moment of repenting is usually the middle step between confessing and receiving forgiveness. When we confess that our lives are out of line with God’s will for us, we are agreeing that God’s way is right. This is the first step in the process.
But we must also decide to change. It is the Holy Spirit who actually does the change in our lives, but the Spirit will not work to change us without a decision from us that we want the change, that we want to turn and live according to God’s will in the problematic area of our lives that has just come to our attention. Repentance begins with the desire to change, and God honors that desire so long as it remains sincere, but the job is not over until we have actually changed. To be effective, the change may require that we understand the roots of our sin, that we know what lie we are believing that is causing us to sin so that we can replace that lie with the truth of the gospel. Whenever we repent, we must begin to live some part of our lives from a new source, a godly source.
Romans 12:1-2. Like new birth, repentance involves a change in our ways of thinking. Romans 1:18-32 describes the manner in which sin takes hold in our lives: there is a downward movement from (1) failing to honor and thank the Creator to (2) choosing our own gods from the created world, to (3) debasing our minds, and on to (4) dishonoring our own bodies/selves. The application of this passage should not be limited to homosexual behavior, but covers all sin (even self-righteousness in which we make gods of ourselves; see 2:1).
Romans 12:1-2 shows the reversing of the sin process as we (1) spiritually worship the Creator; (2) seek to be holy and acceptable to the one true God, (3) become transformed by the renewal of our minds, and (4) present our bodies/selves as living sacrifices to God.
James 3:13-18; 4:1-10. Repentance involves turning from worldly values to godly values. Worldly values are characterized by competition, bitter jealousy, and selfish ambition. This is true in traditional vices. It is also true in religious pursuits. Sin comes in all forms. It almost always leads to discord. Where people are focused on defending and advancing their personal power, it is hard to see the mind of God. Wisdom from above is focused on the redemptive work of God.
Sometimes the wise believer must take bold and decisive actions that others may mistake as ambitious, but the discerning eye should see a difference. The wise believer will show humility and kindheartedness even when being decisive.
James explains that worldly people are seeking the wrong things in the wrong way from the wrong sources, and they get the wrong results: warfare. If we proceed from a worldly foundation, we cannot expect to get spiritual results.
James tells us that we cannot have a foot in each camp, but that we must submit ourselves wholeheartedly to God and resist the devil, thereby purifying our hearts, and getting rid of our double-mindedness. That is repenting. James promises great rewards for thus changing our mindset. When we resist Satan, Satan must flee. When we draw near to God, he will draw near to us.
Luke 15. The lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son are all found. In each case, a party follows. So it is when one lost child of God returns to the source of renewal. God is delighted when we repent. Our repenting is the occasion for great joy in heaven (and great rage from Satan). Part of our mission is hosting earthly celebrations when the one sinner repents. Those who do not understand their own need, like the prodigal son’s elder brother and like many of the Pharisees, will not be able to join in the spirit of the celebration.
2 Timothy 2:21-26. Leading people to repentance requires a good example and a simultaneous emphasis on clear teaching and patient love.
Discussion Questions
1. From what did you repent when you began your Christian life? To what did you repent?
2. What are some of the later moments in your Christian life when you have turned from destructive patterns toward God’s higher will for your life?
3. After this study, has your view of repentance changed?
4. What would you most like to tell others about repentance?
5. Is there a word that better conveys the meaning of repentance for non-believers today?
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