Ready to go deeper? As we’ve previously seen, the Bible describes our broken condition before Christ with some heavy words like iniquity, transgression, and sin. But it also explains our response to God graciously sending Jesus to die on the cross with another power-packed word that you might not be used to, when God urges people to “repent.”

So what does repentance mean? It’s about turning — a total about-face in the opposite direction. Peter called his listeners to, “repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19). You may have heard the story about Jonah and the big fish, but imagine how you’d feel if God told you to preach salvation to one of your enemy nations. After Jonah ran away, got swallowed by a giant fish, and then spit out onto a beach, he decided to listen to God’s instructions. His message to Nineveh? “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Hearing his message, that whole wicked city “turned from their evil way!” (Jonah 3:8-10). And when God saw how they repented, he turned and “relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it” (Jonah 3:10).

What do we need to do? It’s the same question a bunch of Jewish people asked John the Baptist — Jesus’ cousin — in the wilderness of Judea. He told them to “bear fruits in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:8). In other words, “talk is cheap — show that you’ve changed!” So, they asked him multiple times, “What shall we do?” His answer covered a broad range of everyday changes like, “whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” He told them to “collect no more than you are authorized to do.” And he said, “do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.” (Luke 3:10-14). 

But why should we make a break from our old life? Paul describes “godly grief” as that which “produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret …” (2 Cor. 7:10). God uses sorrow, alongside his grace, to motivate us to turn from sin. True repentance involves both this inner sorrow and a tangible change in behavior away from sin like impurity and sensuality. Knowing that it was our sins that sent Jesus to die, it should develop within us an earnest desire to follow God (2 Cor. 7:11). 

So, repenting isn’t the sadness of our sin — but it’s motivated by that sadness. And it isn’t our behavior change — but that’s what comes from it. In between the sorrow and the changed life comes this decision to turn to God. That act of our heart and will is the hinge of a Christian’s life! That is repentance.