Salvation
What Does Repentance Mean in the Bible?
Discover what biblical repentance means, why it is more than feeling sorry, how repentance relates to faith and conversion, and why Christians continue to repent.
MORE THAN FEELING BAD
Regret and repentance are related, but they are not identical.
A person can feel terrible about consequences without actually turning away from the path that produced them.
Biblical repentance reaches deeper. It involves a changed disposition toward sin, God, and obedience.
That is why Scripture can speak about sorrow leading to repentance rather than simply treating sorrow itself as repentance.
Paul distinguishes godly sorrow that produces repentance from sorrow that leads only to death.
JESUS PREACHED REPENTANCE
Repentance belongs near the beginning of Jesus' public proclamation.
Mark summarizes Jesus' preaching by joining the arrival of God's kingdom with a command to repent and believe the gospel.
Those ideas are not rivals. Repentance describes turning toward the God whose reign is being announced, while faith receives the good news and trusts the One who announces it.
The gospel therefore does not merely ask people to add Jesus to an otherwise unchanged life.
Jesus announces God's kingdom and calls people to repent and believe the gospel.
PETER PREACHED REPENTANCE
The first major sermon in Acts ends with a call to turn.
At Pentecost, Peter's hearers are cut to the heart after hearing that the Jesus who was crucified has been made Lord and Christ.
When they ask what they should do, repentance stands at the front of Peter's answer.
Acts 3 uses similar language, calling hearers to repent and turn so that sins may be wiped away.
Peter calls his hearers to repent and turn to God in connection with sins being wiped away.
REPENTANCE CHANGES DIRECTION
Paul describes repentance as turning to God.
In Acts 20, Paul summarizes his ministry as testifying about repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus.
In Acts 26, he says he preached that people should repent, turn to God, and perform deeds consistent with repentance.
That last phrase is especially useful. Changed behavior does not purchase repentance; changed behavior demonstrates that the turning is real.
Paul says people should repent, turn to God, and demonstrate repentance through their deeds.
REPENTANCE AND FAITH BELONG TOGETHER
Turning from one allegiance makes sense because a person is turning toward another.
Repentance without faith could collapse into self-improvement. Faith without repentance could collapse into intellectual agreement.
The New Testament places both under the lordship of Christ.
Paul can therefore summarize his preaching with repentance toward God and faith toward Jesus Christ.
REPENTANCE DOES NOT EARN GRACE
Turning to God is not a payment offered in exchange for salvation.
Nothing about repentance makes God indebted to the sinner.
The possibility of forgiveness exists because of God's grace and Christ's saving work.
But grace does not turn repentance into an unnecessary idea. The same apostolic preaching that announces grace also commands people to repent.
Who Changed the Church? repeatedly distinguishes earning salvation from obeying the God who offers it.
REPENTANCE IS NOT ONLY FOR NON-CHRISTIANS
Believers can also be called to repent.
The New Testament does not discard repentance after conversion.
When Simon sins after believing and being baptized in Acts 8, Peter tells him to repent and pray.
The letters to the churches in Revelation repeatedly call existing congregations to repent.
Repentance is therefore both part of turning to Christ and part of a continuing life that remains correctable by Him.
CAN SOMEONE REPENT WITHOUT PERFECTING EVERYTHING FIRST?
Repentance is a change of allegiance and direction, not instant moral perfection.
If repentance required a person to eliminate every sin before coming to God, no sinner could ever begin.
The New Testament instead calls people to turn toward God and then live consistently with that turn.
Growth, correction, confession, and continuing obedience belong to the Christian life that follows.
A PRISON CELL MAKES THE QUESTION CONCRETE
What does repentance look like when people encounter the command without a theological system explaining it away?
Late in Who Changed the Church?, Don tells of prisoners who decided to read the Bible without denominational materials telling them what conclusions to reach.
They eventually encountered the command to repent and be baptized.
Don records that a number of those men had heard, believed, confessed, and become genuinely sorry for their sins—but the story did not end with sorrow.
What they believed repentance required next became part of the experiment at the heart of the book's closing argument.
- Repentance is more than regret.
- Jesus joined repentance with believing the gospel.
- Peter connected repentance with turning to God.
- Paul preached repentance toward God and faith in Christ.
- Changed deeds demonstrate rather than purchase repentance.
- Christians may need to repent after conversion as well.
- Repentance begins a changed direction; it does not require instant perfection.
Why It Matters
Biblical repentance is a real turning toward God that reaches beyond emotion into allegiance and direction. It does not earn grace, but neither is it optional in apostolic preaching. Jesus preached it. Peter preached it. Paul preached it. And Who Changed the Church? eventually places that command in a setting far removed from first-century Jerusalem: men inside a prison, reading the text without a denominational script, forced to decide for themselves what turning to God actually required.