True Repentance

Mark 1:14-15 Now after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Luke 5:1-11

James 4:17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

2 Corinthians 7:10 Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.

Romans 12:1-2 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.

James 4:7-10 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

What is repentance? Saying sorry or asking for forgiveness isn’t repentance. Even being truly sorry isn’t repentance. Many people are truly sorry for something they have done, yet their lives haven’t changed - they are the same after their action as they were before it. They are still the same person. Usually, these people are sorry about the consequence of their action but they aren’t really sorry about what they did or who they are. Many of us think that if we are truly sorry for what we did, God will forgive us all our sins and we will go to heaven. Though it is true that God said that He will forgive us of our sins (1 John 1:9), we need to recognize that He is saying this about people who have already repented and are Christians. In other words, He never said that He would forgive us if we have not repented or have not become true Christians. There are a lot of people in the church today that think they are Christians though they have never repented. There were people like this in Jesus’ day who expected that they would enter into heaven. They said all the right things and even performed miracles in the name of Jesus. Yet when the time came for entrance into heaven, Jesus said, “I never knew you” (Matthew 7:21-23). Their sins were not forgiven, even though they did all these wonderful things. Doing wonderful things, even in the name of Jesus, does not take the place of repentance.

What we are going to learn today is that repentance is not about saying a prayer. Nor is it about asking for forgiveness. It is not about doing things in the name of Jesus. All of these things are outward expressions that when we look at ourselves, we say, “look at me, I did this!” Then mistakenly, like those who Jesus rejected, we think we deserve eternal life. If we view repentance this way, then we too will hear the words, “I never knew you.”

John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus by preaching a message of repentance. “Repent, the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” (Matthew 3:2). Yet, when the Pharisees came to be baptized, John hurled insults at them - “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” (Matthew 3:7-8). Going through the actions of repentance does not mean you have repented.

True repentance is a change in our inner being. Where we once had no problem working against God and having the mind of the world, repentance changes our hearts so that we have no problem working against the world and having the mind of God. You do see the fruit of repentance in the work of those who have truly repented. You also see the desire for forgiveness of those who have repented. But these are the outward expressions of a change inside. When a person truly repents, they have given up their old ways and now the ways of God are their new ways. For us to have eternal life, we must repent.

Jesus taught this during his ministry on Earth. (Mark 1:14-15) He taught that the Kingdom of Heaven was near and that repentance and belief in the Gospel were intertwined and necessary. You cannot truly believe in the Gospel without repentance and you cannot truly repent without belief in the Gospel. It is not a chicken and egg situation – it is that both occur at the same time. We hear the true message from God and something happens inside us. We are told that Jesus died for our sins and we both believe it to be true and have a change in heart at the same time. This change in heart is our repentance. It is our turning from sin and changing our lives from going in the direction it was going to going in the direction that God calls us. It is the turning from sin, the recognition of how far off the mark we are, that causes us to ask for forgiveness. It is the change in mind that causes us to do the things of God rather than the things of man.

When Jesus teaches from Simon Peter’s boat and then shows the people who he is by the miracle of the fishes, Simon Peter falls down and repents (Luke 5:1-11). He knows that he is in the presence of the Son of God and that he is unworthy. This is a repentant heart. This is someone who has heard and has seen and has realized that his ways were much lower than God’s and his thoughts were much lower than God’s. He knows whose presence he is in and he recognizes that he isn’t worthy of even being in the presence of Jesus. In the previous example, we saw those people who were full of action in his name or even truly sorry for something they did and yet Jesus rejected them. In this case, we see that Jesus accepts Simon Peter and tells him not to be afraid and that he would be used of God to bring others into the kingdom.

Peter is a great example of someone who recognized his sinfulness, recognized God’s heart and repented. We don’t say Peter repented because he fell on his knees or because he asked for forgiveness. We say Peter repented because he had a change in heart. His falling on his knees and his following God’s will instead of his own will is evidence of his repentance but the repentance occurs inside. This is why we are told not to judge other people’s heart or salvation because only God knows the heart of men and only He knows if we have truly repented in our hearts. We could be like those Jesus rejected, saying all the right things and doing all the right things but internally, we’ve never repented. Although we cannot judge other peoples’ hearts, we certainly can judge our own. Have we truly repented? Have we truly recognized how far short we fall and how sinful we really are? Have we understood the Gospel message that because of our sin we can never come into God’s presence on our own, by our good works or our sorrowful confessions? That only by the grace of God, did Jesus come down from heaven and humble himself to become a man like us and shed his blood on the cross so that the gap that is between us and God could be overcome simply by recognizing that this is the only bridge that allows us to be reconciled to Him again? Has this understanding changed our view of ourselves, what we’ve done, what our priorities are and what is right? If the answer to any of these questions is “no”, then we are like the Pharisees who think that doing something (in their case, getting baptized) is sufficient for forgiveness but we have not truly repented and we should not be surprised when Jesus says to us, “Away from me, I never knew you.”

However, if you say “yes” to all these questions, then you do have a repentant heart. Yet, it is to these people that James says, “faith without works is dead”. If we have truly repented and yet are always asking God for forgiveness because of our sin, then we have a dead faith. James says that if we know we should be doing something and don’t do it, we are sinning (James 4:17). If we have repented and yet continue to live in the same way we did before, we have a dead faith. We will be forgiven (1 John 1:9) but we will not be rewarded (1 Corinthians 3:12-15). Worse, we are a bad witness and vile in Jesus’ eyes. When Jesus sees these types of Christians in the church of Laodicea, he tells them that they are lukewarm (Revelation 3:15-16). Lukewarm means halfhearted, unexcited, apathetic, indifferent. How would you like to be called those things by the one who will judge the living and the dead? But this is what you are if you have repented and yet continue living the same life you did before.

Instead, God has taught us what true repentance looks like in Romans 12:1-2. We are to give our lives as a living sacrifice. A Living Sacrifice means that though we are alive, we have died to self. We no longer live for ourselves but we live for God. When we do this, we are holy and pleasing to God. Instead of hearing “I never knew you”, we hear “well done, good and faithful servant”. When we present ourselves as a living sacrifice to God, we are accomplishing true and proper worship. We like to think that true and proper worship is how we sing our songs or how we say our prayers. What we find God tells us about the matter is that we must die to self for us to give proper worship. All other worship is for ourselves or for others, but it isn’t for God. We cannot worship God short of dying to self.

No one who puts their hand to the plow and looks back is worthy of Him. We must change from caring about what the world thinks and we must begin to care about what God thinks. We must stop conforming to the world’s thinking (what is good and normal by the world’s standards) and we must be transformed by renewing our minds and having the mind of God. If we could only recognize that God is calling EVERY ONE of us to be radical for Him, we would finally start to get it. It is not someone else’s mind that needs to be transformed, it is our own mind that needs to understand what God expects of us. God is not asking us to be like all the other Christians in the Church. If the Church was so good, we would see people coming to Jesus in droves. The problem is the Church has fallen far short. The bigger problem is that most Christians don’t think there is anything wrong with that. You can’t change what other Christians think or do, but you can change what you think and do. Repent! The kingdom of Heaven is at hand! Change your life – make it one that is pleasing to God. Do not be shaped by the world. Die to self, live for God! Be radical, not normal! Normal is lukewarm. Do not be satisfied, lukewarm. Do not be spit out!

When we do this, we have repented. When we do this, we truly understand God’s desire for us. Then we become great witnesses for Him, we become totally His and God can do miracles with people who are totally His.

Send mail to david@TheArkNY.org with questions about the church or comments about this site.
Last modified: Jun 5, 2011

The Ark Church - Ronkonkoma, Suffolk County, NY - A non-denominational church for Jesus Christ