one28 PodcastToward True Joy
The Meaning of Repentance
2 Corinthians 7:9-10
2009.01.27
09SR Session Three
What do we think about when we hear the word “repentance”? What immediately comes to mind? What things are associated with repentance? What synonyms would we use?
Perhaps an even more important question is, when was the last time we repented? Do we repent on a weekly, or daily basis? Is repentance only something we do once, when we get saved? Or is repentance something we do only when we’ve committed a huge sin?
Repentance is certainly a word closely connected with the Bible, or at least it used to be. Prophets preached repentance in the Old Testament and apostles preached repentance in the New Testament. Certain cities and nations were spared for repenting (Ninevah). Other cities and peoples were dramatically destroyed for failing to repent (Sodom and Gommorah, even Jerusalem). John the Baptist came preaching repentance. Peter preached repentance on the day of Pentecost. Jesus revealed that His earthly mission was aimed not to find the righteous, but to call sinners to repentance.
Yet repentance has largely disappeared from our vocabulary, even in our Christian conversations. The people who use it on a regular basis come across as angry. They stand in front of football stadiums wearing sandwich board signs and shouting “Repent or die!” and “Turn or burn!” We might use repentance as a last resort, keeping it in the bag until the last possible moment, fearing that any talk of repentance might turn people away from Jesus.
In our daily spiritual walk we rarely refer to, let alone practice, repentance. When we encounter God’s discipline or when we’re feeling guilty over sin, we talk about change, or maybe we talk about doing better next time. But I can’t remember the last time I heard someone come out and say, “I had to, or need to, repent.”
To be fair, there is a small community of “grunge” Christians who have responded to the goody-two-shoes, Sunday-best Christians, who know we’re not pure, and who have run the other direction. It seems like these brothers and sisters can only talk about how wicked, vile, and sinful they are. They write songs and blogs divulging their sinful secrets and demanding that every Christian does the same if they want to be “real.” But ironically, I’m not sure they understand repentance. It is as if being bad and wallowing in sin is more authentic than confessing sin and then moving away from it.
So what is repentance? Our goal is to answer that question in this session. Last night we did exegesis of a paragraph, and this morning we studied biography and church history. Tonight we’ll do a mini-theology of repentance, and hopefully it will have very practical and immediate benefit. We’ll try to unravel the biblical teaching on repentance by asking three simple questions.
What is repentance?
As I mentioned already, repentance recurs regularly in the Bible. In the New Testament, the Greek word translated repentance is metanoia (μετάνοια), which in its most basic sense means “a change of mind.” But as we examine its usage, I think we can get a more precise understanding of what is involved in that change of mind. I want to point out three parts of this change of mind, or three ingredients of repentance.
1. Repentance involves remorse over our sinful nature and sinful acts.
There would be no need for repentance if there were no authority, who held no standard, of if we were perfectly obedient to that standard. I’m convinced one of the reasons repentance is not a regular topic of conversation is because we have a relativistic (no one standard) and pluralistic (no one authority) mindset. Repentance assumes God is the authority and that His Word is the law.
According to His Word, we are all guilty of disobeying His standard. The very first man God created broke the only rule he was given within the first few days of his existence. Since then, we are sinners by nature. We inherit a sinful nature from Adam. Even more, that nature inevitably causes us to act, and the more we act, the greater our slavery to sin. All of us have sinned. None of us, not even one, does good. We are all guilty.
Repentance begins with a humble, sorrowful acknowledgement of our condition and conduct. The acknowledgment is what we call confession.
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10)
1 John is addressed to believers, so even after salvation, confession or acknowledgment of sin is an ongoing need. The fact is, “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy” (Proverbs 28:13). Confession is a part of repentance, not separate from it. I draw that conclusion because John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2). In verse six, those who responded to his message were being baptized and “confessing their sins.” Confessing sin is part of repentance.
But as I said, it is to be a humble acknowledgment. Again, the “kingdom of heaven” was at stake in Matthew 3:2. Jesus preached the exact message about the kingdom connected with personal repentance in Matthew 4:17. Then in Matthew 5:3, the kingdom of heaven is constituted by the “poor in spirit.” In other words, God’s people are spiritually humble people. These blessed ones also “mourn” (Matthew 5:4), presumably over their sin. A truly repentant person is broken by their sinful condition.
Grief, sorrow, and mourning are clearly connected by Paul in 2 Corinthians 7:8-10.
For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
The apostle had written to confront their sin, and their response was sorrow. The acknowledgement of sin, of having violated the standard and offending the Authority, is not an unaffected, cold assessment. It includes remorse, that is, deep regret for a wrong committed. Repentance involves heaven, broken-hearted sorrow. Job illustrates this attitude when after God confronts him for four chapters, he responds “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6).
Yet we can’t miss that grief, in and of itself, is not equal to repentance. There is a “worldly grief” that leads to death. It is possible to be sorry and not repent. It’s possible to feel bad, to have pangs of conscience due to sin, and still not be repenting. Augustine spent at least nine years previous to his conversion overwhelmed by sorrow, but not yet repenting.
By the way, we don’t repent because we’re afraid of hell. Augustine asserted that, “A man who is afraid of sinning because of Hell-fire, is afraid, not of sinning, but of burning” (quoted in Brown, 372). Repentance involves godly grief, remorse over our sinful nature and acts, but there is more.
2. Repentance involves renunciation of our self-sufficiency and self-righteousness.
Repentance is not turning away from sin and bringing something to God, it is coming to Him because we know we have nothing good to bring. We admit our inability to please Him, as well as our inability to desire Him. We give up attempting to offer our goodness or holiness to please or appease Him.
Denial of sin is the first enemy of repentance, but the second enemy is declaring our righteousness. Trying to do good may keep as many people away from God as those who defy Him. He is not interested in what we have or what we can do. We don’t meet His standard, which is perfection. When we repent, we not only sorrowfully acknowledge all the wrong we’ve done, we also give up claims to any good on our own.
That is the reason John the Baptist rejected the Pharisees and religious leaders when they met him at the Jordan River in Matthew 3. They thought they were bringing their own good to the table. John told them to “bear fruits in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:8). We saw last night in session one, that the people who think they have something to offer not only misunderstand their condition, but also need to repent from making such an arrogant claim.
Confessing our sin but claiming righteousness kept the Jews from salvation.
For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. (Romans 10:2-3)
I think renunciation of self-righteousness is also the reason why belief is so closely connected with repentance. Repent and believe…what? Believe that Christ bore the penalty for our unrighteousness and the provider of His righteousness. Repentance includes abandoning any reason for boasting in ourselves.
3. Repentance involves reorientation of our passions and pleasures.
Maybe that sounds strange. Depending on what first comes to your mind when we hear the word repentance, it is likely to be odd. But I think this is the part that’s missing most, this is the part that we misunderstand most, and the reason that our repentance is often so short-lived.
Too often we think about repentance as stopping or avoiding sin. Repentance is not less than change of behavior, but it also must include a change of desires. Repentance keeps us from worldliness, not because our mind is changed about the definition of sin. True repentance keeps us from worldliness because our mind is changed about wanting sin. Note how Paul perceived “godly” grief in the Corinthians:
For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter. (2 Corinthians 7:11)
Godly grief produces “earnestness” and “eagerness.” It produces “zeal” instead of lukewarmness (Revelation 3). Repentance is a change of mind, resulting in changed wants not merely changed ways. We stop denying that we’ve disobeyed His standard. We stop declaring that we have our own righteousness. And we start desiring God as our greatest pleasure! Chew on that and we’ll come back to it later in the message.
So what is repentance? It is a change of mind that involves remorse over our sinful nature and acts, renunciation of our self-sufficiency and self-righteousness, and reorientation of our passions and pleasures.
What is repentance from?
Other than having ended the question with a preposition, and other than having said that we repent from sin, Augustine can really help us here. His piercing insight and painful honestly so closely identifies with our current context, it is almost as if he were living among us. As I see it, there are at least four things that enslaved Augustine, things that enslave many of us, for which he had to repent.
The enemy had control of my will, and from that had made a chain to bind me fast. From a perverted act of will, desire had grown, and when desire is given satisfaction, habit is forged; and when habit passes unresisted, a compulsive urge sets in: by these close knit links I was held (quoted in Brown, 173)
We should turn from any and all disobedience, including lukewarm or misdirected affections. But the following four sinful longings are particularly tyrannizing to many young persons.
1. Education
Augustine was smart. Not only did his father seek to give him opportunities to learn, he had exceptional God-given abilities.
…I had by myself read and understood all the books I could get hold of on the arts which they call liberal….I learnt about the art of speaking and disputing…with no great difficulty and without a teacher to instruct me….I was not aware that these arts are very difficult to understand even for studious and intelligent people, until I tried to explain them to such people and found the student of outstanding quality was the one who did not lag behind me in my exposition….My agile mind found no difficulty in these subjects, and…without assistance from a human teacher I could elucidate extremely complicated books. (IV. xvi.)
You know, Lord my God, that quick thinking and capacity for acute analysis are Your gift. But that did not move me to offer them in sacrifice to You. And so these qualities were not helpful, but pernicious, because I went to so much pains to keep a good part of my talents under my control. (.ibid)
But he came to realize that his education was worthless apart from God.
What advantage came to me from the fact that I had by myself read and understood all the books I could get hold of on the arts which they call liberal, at a time when I was the most wicked slave of evil lusts?
He was a slave to education, learning, his own academic abilities. He didn’t abandon books when he got saved, but he stopped serving books.
2. Esteem
Much of the reason, perhaps, for his pursuit of knowledge was motivated by his desire to be respected and praised by men. He was enslaved by the opinions of others. He positioned himself to be seen and to raise his position.
I aspired to honours, money, marriage, and You laughed at me. In those ambitions I suffered the bitterest difficulties; that was by Your mercy–so much the greater in that You gave me less occasion to find sweet pleasure in what was not You. (VI. vi.)
3. Entertainment
At least for some period of his life, Augustine loved entertainment.
I was captivated by theatrical shows. They were full of representations of my own miseries and fueled my fire. Why is it that a person should wish to experience suffering by watching grievous and tragic events which he himself would not wish to endure? (III. i.)
He described the plunge of his friend Alypius into watching the gladiators, “He was struck in the soul by a wound graver than the gladiator in his body.” “He looked, he yelled, he was on fire, he took the madness home with him so that it urged him to return not only with those by whom he had originally been drawn there, but ever more than them, taking others with him” (VI. viii.)
When he wasn’t pursuing learning, he was given to the theatre. He didn’t have on-demand movies and 100 cable channels. He didn’t have a world-wide-web to surf, endless songs to download, or a Wii to waste his hours. But what he did have access to was enough to waste his life.
4. Epithumia
I use “epithumia” to keep the “e” theme. Many of you have heard me use the word before. It is the Greek word for lust. By his own admission, Augustine’s pre-Christian life was dominated by unrestrained lust.
The single desire that dominated my search for delight was simply to love and to be loved….The bubbling impulse of puberty befogged and obscured my heart so that it could not see the difference between love’s serenity and lust’s darkness. (II. i.)
I was in love with love. (III. i.)
I longed for the happy life, but was afraid of the place where it has its seat, and fled from it at the same time I was seeking it. I thought I would become very miserable if I were deprived of the embraces of a woman. I did not think the medicine of Your mercy could heal that infirmity because I had not tried it. (VI. xi.)
I was an unhappy young man, wretched as at the beginning of my adolescence when I prayed You for chastity and said, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” I was afraid You might hear my prayer quickly, and that You might too rapidly heal me of the disease of lust which I preferred to satisfy rather than suppress. (VIII. vii.)
So Augustine was a slave of lust and sex. He lived with a concubine for 15 years, and when he made her leave due to an arranged marriage, he took another. When we was saved, he lived the rest of his life in abstinence, but beforehand, he was addicted to love.
Even if education, esteem, or entertainment don’t define our pursuits, our culture is awash in lust. It is a modern day Carthage, a hissing cauldron of lust. Though I realize not all young people are as sexually active, I would guess most of here have struggled, or are currently struggling, with slavery to lust. It only loosens its grip occasionally. But we are in love with love. We want to love and be loved.
Now we’re getting close to understanding why repentance is so key, and why our repentance is often so ineffective.
Why don’t we repent?
Or maybe another way to get at that question is, what is the common thread in each of the sins that enslaved Augustine? It wasn’t only that they replaced God or that each one broke His standard. Why were they such powerful masters? It is because they brought him pleasure. He was terrified that he would miss those delights.
My sin consisted in this, that I sought pleasure…not in God but in His creatures, in myself, and in other created beings. (I. xx.)
The single desire that dominated my search for delight was simply to love and to be loved. (II. i.)
I aspired to honours, money, marriage, and You laughed at me. In those ambitions I suffered the bitterest difficulties; that was by Your mercy–so much the greater in that You gave me less occasion to find sweet pleasure in what was not You. (VI. vi.)
Vain trifles and the triviality of the empty-headed, my old loves, held me back. They tugged at the garment of my flesh and whispered: “Are you getting rid of us?” And “from this moment we shall never be with you again, not forever and ever.” And “from this moment this and that are forbidden to you for ever and ever.”…They were not frankly confronting me face to face on the road, but as it were whispering behind my back, as if they were furtively tugging at me as I was going away, trying to persuade me to look back….The overwhelming force of habit was saying to me, “Do you think you can live without them?” (VIII. xi.)
Then listen to his new response after conversion.
Suddenly it had become sweet to me to be without the sweets of folly. What I once feared to lose was now a delight to dismiss….Already my mind was free of “the biting cares” of place-seeking, of desire for gain, of wallowing in self-indulgence, of scratching the itch of lust. And I was now talking with You, Lord my God, my radiance, my wealth, and my salvation. (IX. i.)
That’s why he prayed:
Bring me to a sweetness surpassing all the seductive delights which I pursued. Enable me to love You with all my strength that I may clasp Your hand with all my heart. (I. xv.)
Here is the key to Augustine’s life, and the key to repentance. Repentance is more than turning away from the bad, it is turning toward the better. It begins with remorse and renunciation, but it does not stop there. Repentance must involve a reorientation of our pleasures. Therefore, repentance is a doorway to delight.
John Piper,
Far too much Christian thinking and preaching in our day (including Reformed thinking and preaching) has not penetrated to the root of how grace actually triumphs, namely, through joy, and therefore is only half-Augustinian and half-biblical and half-beautiful. (56)
When we think about repentance, we tend to think of the negative, what we must avoid. We think about what we’re giving up, not what we’re gaining. We stay in the room with the sins that we think make us happy. We turn toward the door of repentance, but we’re afraid to go through the door and shut it behind us. We act like the only reason for repentance is because the standard tells us we should. We don’t get that God turns man to take greater pleasure in praising Him, because He made us for Himself, and our heart is restless until it rests in Him.
Sin is the hindrance to repentance, yes. But it is the deceiving, sweet pleasures of sin that make us such willing slaves. Any misery in repentance shouldn’t be from losing old joys, but from having spent so much time away from the true joy.
Conclusion
Kenny Chesney song, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to go now.” Get their wings and fly around.
God could be letting us go, enjoying vain things, as a punishment, or in His providence, to make us hate that life.
Won’t we give up the joy of pride? It is a heavy burden to always be making much of something of so little value: ourselves. Humility is a much lighter load for the repentant. Won’t we give up our desperation to be liked and loved? Repentance frees us for peace in Christ, even when we’re alone in this world. Won’t we turn from blindness to receive sight? Won’t we turn from poverty to receive His riches? Won’t we stop toiling for righteousness when we could be clothed in His? Won’t we give up laziness for real rest? Won’t we repent from anger and let Him take revenge?
Let us buy gold, white garments, and eye-salve from Him. It starts with repentance.
[A]re we in bondage to the pleasures of this world so that, for all our talk about the glory of God, we love television and food and sleep and sex and money and human praise just like everybody else? If so, let us repent…and let us pray: O Lord, open my eyes to see the sovereign sight that in Your presence is fullness of joy and at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). (Piper, 74)
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