The PrinciplesFoundation Stone 1 · Word Study
What is repentance?
Repentance means changing your mind about sin and about God, and letting that change turn your whole life around.
The New Testament was first written in Greek. The word translated “repentance” is metanoia. It is built from two smaller words: meta, which carries the idea of “after” or “change,” and noeō, which means “to think” or “to understand.” Put together, it means to think differently afterward: to reconsider.
Three things happen when we repent
- We see it differently. God opens our eyes, and we agree with Him that sin is wrong.
- We feel it. The old word for this is compunction: a real, godly sorrow over sin. It is not shame that crushes us. It is sorrow that leads us to God.
- We turn around. Repentance is a reversal of direction. We stop walking away from God and start walking with Him.
“For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.”
2 Corinthians 7:10Fruit that fits repentance
John the Baptist preached to the Pharisees and Sadducees. These were religious people who trusted their birthright, their family line, and their traditions to save them. John told them that real repentance shows up in how we live.
“Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance.”
Matthew 3:8 · “meet” means fittingThat fruit is not something we produce by trying harder. It is what the Holy Spirit grows in us:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”
Galatians 5:22–23Recommended reading: Matthew 3:1–10, and Galatians 5:4–26, where the apostle Paul writes to people trying to be made right with God by keeping the law.
What are “dead works”?
Hebrews calls this “repentance from dead works.” Dead works are anything that cannot give life: the sins we used to live in, and also our own efforts to earn God’s approval. We turn away from both. Our new life comes from Jesus, not from trying harder.
“How much more shall the blood of Christ … purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
Hebrews 9:14The good news
Repentance is not a punishment. It is a doorway. When we turn to God, He forgives and He refreshes.
“Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.”
Acts 3:19“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
1 John 1:9Have a question about repentance? Send it in and we will answer from the Word.