What is repentance?
Wednesday, May 30, 2007 at 8:47PM A long time ago I promised George that I'd do a few posts on the meaning of repentance. Over the next few days I'll post some different views on the word. Take a look and let me know what you like. After a few days we'll see if we can get to the bottom of it.
Here's a comment from A.W. Tozer on repentance:
Now I've heard for the last thirty years that repentance is a change of mind, and I believe it, of course, as far as it goes. But that's just what's the matter with us. We have reduced repentance to a change of mind. It is a mental act, indeed, but I point out that repentance is not likely to do us much good until it ceases to be a change of mind only and becomes a wound within our spirit. No man has truly repented until his sin has wounded him near to death, until the wound has broken him and defeated him and taken all the fight and self-assurance out of him and he sees himself as the one who nailed his Saviour on the tree.
What do you like? What's not clear? What would you change?
Reader Comments (4)
Perhaps you'll get to this in the future, but here's a quote about repentance from N.T. Wright's book, The Challenge of Jesus: "Jesus' opening challenge as reported in the Gospels was that people should "repent and believe". This is a classic example. . .of a phrase whose meaning has changed over the years. If I were to go out on the street in my local town and proclaim that people should "repent and believe," what they would hear would be a summons to give up their private sins. . .and to "get religion" in some shape or form; either experiencing a new inner sense of God's presence, or believing a body of dogma, or joining the church or some sub-branch of it. But that is by no means exactly what the phrase "repent and believe" meant in first-century Galilee. . . .Consider, for example, the Jewish aristocrat and historian, Josephus, who was born a few years after Jesus' crucifixion and who was sent in A.D. 66 as a young army commander to sort out some rebel movements in Galilee. His task. . .was to pursuade the hot-headed Galileans to stop their mad rush into revolt against Rome and to trust him and the other Jerusalem aristrocrats to work out a better modus vivendi. So when he confronted the rebel leader, he says that he told him to give up his own agenda and to trust him, Josephus, instead. And the word [sic] he uses are remarkably familiarto readers of the Gospels: he told the brigand leader to "repent and believe in me". . . (p. 44)
Tozer's defintion, or to put it more accurately, description of repentance, sounds more like conviction of sin than repentance. Conviction of sin is as necessary as repentance and may well be a part of it, but I think that what Tozer describes is what leads a person to repent. You will not change your mind and behaviour (which is what repentance is) without that change of attitude to your sin. I will never flee what I love and until I hate my sin I will not turn away from it.
I agree with Ken and I think that's what Tozer is saying. There has to be a brokeness over sin before a person is led to repent. And a question for Marc. What does Wright say the meaning is then of the phrase "repent and believe" PS: congrats on your degree Darryl
It may be a little late for this, George, but he means "give up your agenda and trust mine."