REPENTANCE IS SURRENDERING TO JESUS, MAKING A U-TURN FROM EVIL DOING.
“For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of; but the sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Cor. 7:10).
Examine yourself! How’s your Christian life going? Scripture demands self-examination. In fact, we are supposed to examine ourselves regularly—we see that in Scripture every time we partake of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:28). Once we have come to the foot of the cross, and there given our lives to Jesus Christ—we become new creatures in Christ. Our old life is gone—all has become new. Self makes it very difficult to relinquish what we used to be, but desiring to grow in Christ every day should be a life-changing transformation we want to accomplish. Our Comforter, the Holy Spirit, will guide and direct us along the way and help us. It takes time, so daily examination is an essential prerequisite for authentic assurance. It is the process by which we evaluate the quality of our own faith, and the fruit of repentance is the evidence we must seek. Most Christians today do not test their assurance by God’s word to see if growth is taking place—so we need to examine ourselves in the process of coming to grips with assurance. True believers should not be unnerved by the biblical call to self-examination.
What is repentance? The Greek word for “repentance” is metanoia, from meta (“after”) and noeo (“to understand”). Literally it means “an afterthought” or “a change of mind,” and some insist that this is all the word means—a shift in one’s way of thinking, with no necessary moral ramifications whatsoever. We know that the true meaning of any term must be defined by how it is used in scripture and not merely by an appeal to the strict literal sense of the Greek word derivation.
Repentance begins with awareness that what we have done is wrong. They say that recognizing your problem is the first step in solving it. The confession that is the beginning of repentance is not just recognition of a mistake, but it is an understanding that we have offended God with our action or inaction. The confession that is the beginning of repentance is not just recognizing that our bad behavior hurts other people, or hurt ourselves; it is recognition that our bad behavior hurts God.
In our “repentance” we can often times be concerned more with stopping feeling bad, rather than understanding the offence of our sins. Psalm 32 speaks of the weight that our sins can have on us. When revival came to the Orkney Islands off Scotland, the Spirit of repentance was so strong that sailors sailing past found that they had to put into port and find a church to confess because the weight of their sin was so great. According to the scripture verse we are looking at, godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. God wants a change of heart, and he wants a change in behavior. We need to prove our repentance by our good deeds. Repentance doesn’t demand a response from God. It is not a way of twisting God’s arm so that he must forgive us. As if when we say the right words, and do the right actions God must obey us and forgive us. No, we can rely on his promise that when we repent, he forgives, but true repentance does not demand it.
Repentance is a move of the Spirit. Without the work of the Spirit in our lives, we would never repent. When we repent of our ways, God allows us to return where we should have been if we had never gone down the road of running from God in the first place. No matter how far we run from God, Jesus continues to knock at the door of our heart, to be let in. He doesn’t stop knocking, but we can stop hearing the knock—our brain tells our ears that it is not an important sound and we take no notice of it. The longer we ignore the knock, the harder it is for us to respond to it. Is Jesus knocking on the door of your heart? Is there something in your life that you need to repent of? We have God’s promise that when we repent, that he will forgive us and bless us with his Spirit
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Repentance, of course, is an essential starting point of the Christian journey. We begin our walk with God by admitting that we need Jesus’ sacrifice and expressing our sorrow for the sin in our life. If we’ve have had a genuine moment of repentance, we should necessarily see the fruits of repentance in our lives. When we begin at the point of repentance—bowing and admitting that we cannot earn our way into heaven, acknowledging our sin and questionable motives, speaking out our need for Jesus’ blood, asking for God to forgive us—there is humility that comes into our hearts that cannot come in any other way. We are sinners and yet God has forgiven us anyway—that is a humbling place to be, because you have received what you did not deserve.
An essential part of genuine repentance is that it leads to a changed life. The act of repentance includes admitting that you messed up, that you tried to run things on your own and you failed. We need to remember that we serve a mighty Lord who is able to provide all the resources we need for victory in our journey. The key is that we must recognize our need to depend on Him and trust in His strength. Too many of us are trying to experience “victory in Jesus” via our own power, smarts, and insight. We will inevitably fail. Those who have started at the point of repentance will remember their failure and turn to the One who is able to bring them through.
Repentance begins with recognition that I am a sinner. Repentance continues with confession. Repentance isn’t complete until I change my behavior. Many want to have Christ in their life but they do not want to subtract sin from their lives. If you have Christ in your life, you will have to subtract sin from your life so that your life could move forward. Repentance is like soap, if you do not apply it—it will not work for you.
Repentance is the total sacrifice and surrendering of oneself to obey and to submit to the word of God in all situations. It is to deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow Jesus. It is to come to Jesus with an attitude of “I cannot do it alone, help me, Lord.” It is to come to Jesus with a broken, humble, helpless, hopeless and unworthy heart. It is to completely change one’s mind. It is to feel remorse for your sin against God. It is to be sorry and feel terrible about your sin and decide to change. Repentance is when you are carefully aware of your spiritual poverty. It is the Lord’s way of changing our behavior. Repentance is when you come to the realization that everything is vanity. It hates those things you have once loved. It is releasing your hand from the object it has clung to.
The repentance that does not bring tears to the eyes, that brings no mourning for sin, that brings no remorse, that makes you just believe that you are right—it is not repentance. True repentance hates all sins. If you know the havoc that sin does, you will hate all sins. For repentance to be sincere, it must be total. The tears of repentance are so precious to the Lord that He puts them in a bottle. The evidence of true repentance is what the Bible describes in Matthews 7:20, “Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them.” When you truly repent, the practice of willful sin will stop. You do not preplan sin again. It does not get reduced, it stops. True repentance goes deep into your heart—it causes you to cry over your sin and mean it. You find you do a complete U-turn and—it changes your life forever! Praise God!!!
