A prominent preacher asked me the following questions concerning the Biblical doctrine of repentance some time ago in connection with my study on the subject here. I thought that his questions and the response he received might be of benefit to the readers of What is Truth, so I have posted them.
His questions:
Is the salvation decision two steps or one? Are repentance and faith two distinct acts of
the will or are they two sides of one coin?
Must the word "Repent" be part of every valid
Gospel appeal?
Is repentance a decision confined to the matter of
salvation, or is it a concept applicable to many issues?
Fundamentally, is repentance of sin a promise to do better,
verified by doing better? Will
repentance alone change a life, and how much?
Is the sinner sick and in need of a doctor, or can he get rid of his sin
by simply repenting of it?
Doesn't the Greek word for repentance really mean a change
of mind, based on its etymology?
Does true repentance include deep sorrow for sin, or does
godly sorrow lead to repentance?
My response:
The salvation decision is certainly one step, one of turning from sin to Christ as Lord and Savior.
The word “repent” is not necessary in every Gospel appeal (Acts 16:31) in the
same way that the word “believe” is not necessary in every Gospel appeal
(Acts 3:19). My own
practice is that I will essentially always use “believe” or a synonym in giving the gospel, and I will
essentially always use “repent” or a synonym also.
Certainly repentance is applicable to many issues, just as faith has to do with many
things in addition to justification.
Neither repentance or faith will change a life, but coming into union with Jesus Christ will always
change a life, and one comes into union with Christ by repentant
faith, and one who does not want to be changed will not be brought into
union with Christ because he does not really want the Savior.
The word metanoeo/metanoia sometimes, but not always, meant an
“afterthought” that might or might not result in any change many hundreds
of years before the NT was written, but that sense does not exist in
the NT and, as far as I can tell, in the literature of early
Christendom. We recognize that a word can change very dramatically in
meaning in, say, 800 years; we do
not assume that what a word meant in Beowolf is what it means in modern English. A detailed English dictionary will trace the history of words back to the times of Beowolf, and
then Chaucer, etc., but we see what a word means today by its use
in modern times, not by how it was used in Old or Middle English. When we look at the many uses of metanoeo/metanoia in the NT and in Koine
Greek, the word means what all the lexica say—in the first century
NT, in contradistinction to what the word meant many hundreds of
years earlier, the word means what a standard lexicon such as
Louw-Nida says: “[T]o change
one’s way of life as the result of a complete change of thought and attitude with regard to sin and
righteousness — ‘to repent, to change one’s way, repentance.’ . . . Though
in English a focal component of repent is the sorrow or contrition that
a person experiences because of sin, the emphasis in metanoeo and
metanoia seems to be more specifically the total change, both in
thought and behavior, with respect to how one should both think and act.
Whether the focus is upon attitude or behavior varies somewhat in
different contexts. . . . Though it would be possible to classify
metanoeo and metanoia in [the category of words for] [t]hink[ing], the
focal semantic feature of these terms is clearly behavioral rather
than intellectual.”
True
repentance includes sorrow for sin if we are speaking about the Hebrew nacham and the Greek metamelomai,
and godly sorrow leads to repentance if we are speaking about the
Hebrew shub and the Greek metanoia; all four words are translated as
“repent” at various points in the KJV.
Readers who want to see an example of how to explain repentance in an evangelistic encounter are encouraged to examine the study here or the video here, as well as the evangelistic Bible study here. The theology of repentance is explained here as well as in many articles at What is Truth, and is stated well in many standard Baptist confessions of faith.
2 comments:
Just to clarify, the last paragraph starting with the words "Readers who want to see" was no longer part of my original response.
Jesus gave an example of what the "change of mind" should look like.
Matthew 12:41 The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.
He calls what the people of Nineveh did "μετενοησαν". That was not just some sterile change of mind. It was repentance with a boom, not a whisper. Three days of sackcloth and no water.
That event in Nineveh was something that Jesus called repentance. It was not the only example, but it is one example, and was more than just saying, "I was going that way, now I will go this way."
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