Repentance--How Can I Be Sure?

The words repent and repentance are Bible words, words hardly ever used outside of a religious context.  In reading one’s New Testament, beginning with the gospel accounts, the first preaching that is recorded is that of John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matt. 3:2 NKJV)  In Matt. 4:17 we see Jesus preaching the same message.  The call to men from inspiration from the very beginning of the unfolding of the New Testament was a call to repentance.  Jesus said it was a matter so important that it was repent or perish, an either-or proposition. (Luke 13:3, 5) 

Repentance is a command to all men everywhere in all time to come as long as the earth shall stand.  You and I are not exempt.  Paul, in his speech in the Areopagus in Athens, made this statement:

“Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained.  He has given assurance of this to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:30-31 NKJV)

After his resurrection, while meeting with his apostles, Jesus said, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:46-47 NKJV)  It was thus essential then and essential now that repentance be preached.  We see the beginning of such preaching shortly thereafter.

In the very first gospel sermon ever preached, after Christ’s ascension back to heaven and the Holy Spirit’s descending upon the apostles on the Day of Pentecost, in Acts 2, the conclusion of Peter’s inspired sermon was, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.” (Acts 2:38 NKJV)  Repentance was made essential to salvation (as was baptism).

Who must repent?  Sinners.  “For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.  As it is written:  ‘There is none righteous, no, not one.” (Rom. 3:9-10 NKJV)  “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23 NKJV)  Repentance is repentance of sin against God.  God “commands all men everywhere to repent.” (Acts 17:30)

Well, if I am commanded to repent on the penalty of repent or perish what must I do?  What does it mean to repent?  It is very common to find people who do not understand and who simply think to repent means to be sorry. 

If sorrow was repentance then Judas, the betrayer of the Lord, was a saved man.  The Bible says, “Then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that he had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders.” (Matt. 27:3 NKJV)  His sorrow was so great he went out and hung himself.

All of that be as it may Jesus said of Judas, “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed!   It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.” (Matt. 26:24 NKJV)  That could not have been said if Judas was to be saved.

Besides this statement we have Paul’s comment in 2 Cor. 7:10 that “the sorrow of the world produces death.” (NKJV)  Since we know assuredly that the sorrow Judas had led to death (spiritual death for he was not saved according to Jesus) we know his sorrow was of the world.  A lesson we ought to learn from this fact is that a man or woman can be as sorry as sorry can be and yet not repent nor be pleasing to God.

Paul speaks of another kind of sorrow in the same passage in 2 Cor. 7, a sorrow that leads to repentance.  He says, “Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance.  For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing.” (2 Cor. 7:9 NKJV)  From this, we learn that there is a type of sorrow that leads to repentance.

In 2 Cor. 7:10 it is called “godly sorrow.”  “For godly sorrow produces repentance to salvation, not to be regretted.” (NKJV)  Peter is an example of a man who experienced godly sorrow.  He denied Jesus three times when Jesus was in the custody of those who would be responsible for his death.  Peter had deep regret and sorrow and went away and “wept bitterly.” (Matt. 26:75 NKJV)

What then is the difference between the two types of sorrow, say the sorrow of Judas versus the sorrow of Peter?  Namely this, godly sorrow leads one back to God.  Judas fled from God.  That was not something he had to do.  Peter said on the Day of Pentecost to those assembled there that day, “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” (Acts 2:36 NKJV)  See also Acts 2:23.  They were guilty of crucifying the Lord as much as Judas was and yet we see later in that same chapter 3,000 of them repenting of that sin that very day, being baptized, and becoming Christians.  Judas could have repented also but he chose another course.  Peter, while he had denied the Lord after the Lord’s arrest, came back to the Lord.

There are a couple of lessons here for us.  (1) Do not underestimate God’s love and willingness to forgive.  Did Judas do that?  (2) Do not destroy yourself by despair.  I speak of destroying yourself spiritually as did Judas (although, admittedly, he destroyed himself physically as well).  There are men and women who are sorry for the things they have done but will not turn to God for forgiveness thinking they have been too evil to be forgiven.  They despair.  This is a worldly sorrow.  It shows a lack of faith in God’s love and willingness to forgive and thus a lack of faith in God and his word.

Others are also sorry for their sins but it is because they have been caught in them and have suffered as a result (adulterers, those having affairs, are often an example of this type).  They are sorry for a reason but it is not a sorrow that has anything to do with God or God’s laws. They are sorry because they were caught.   This is another type of worldly sorrow.

Godly sorrow on the other hand leads one to throw himself upon God and his mercy and grace.  Godly sorrow is not repentance but is the thing that leads to it.  If you are being led to a thing then you have not yet arrived there although you will in due time by continuing the course.

Repentance is the actual surrendering of one’s will to God’s will.  It is a determination to turn from sin to God, from unrighteousness to righteousness; it is a matter of the human mind and will.  The idea is that I will cease being my lord in life.  Jesus will now be my Lord.  His will will be my will.  It is a determination to follow God.  It is the determination to make Jesus my Lord and Savior with all that implies.

It is not yet reformation of life for reformation is the fruit of repentance.  John the Baptist commanded “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” (Matt. 3:8 NKJV)  Reformation is, to a degree, a measure of repentance.  A man who truly repents reforms his life.

Let me clarify that last statement.  There are sincere people who truly have repented who come to doubt their conversion at this very point.  When we obey the gospel we have it in our minds that we are going to live an almost perfect life thereafter.  We are committed as we ought to be.  Unfortunately, we never live the perfect life.  When we next sin we begin doubting our conversion.  Did I really repent?  If I did why did I commit this sin?  Doubts arise about our conversion.  We begin to wonder am I doomed to just live my life a hopeless sinner.

There is no such thing as living a sin-free life after conversion unless of course you die almost immediately upon being converted.  The apostle John in speaking to Christians says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:8-9 NKJV)

Repentance, unlike baptism, is not just a one-time act.  While there is no true conversion without repentance we are unable to live sin-free over any extended period of time.  David Lipscomb once made the comment that he doubted that any man ever lived a single day without sin.  Whether or not that is true I do not know but my suspicion is that if not true it is not far from it.  There are sins of commission, sins of omission, sins of ignorance, sins of the mind, of heart, and attitude.  We are what we are and none of us will live without sin after our conversion.

We must also bear in mind that if we could be perfect law keepers we could be saved by law, by works, and that is clearly not the case.  All who are sincere in their Christian life will readily bear witness to the fact that despite their best efforts they fail in keeping the law of Christ from time to time.  We can bear witness for we can name our sins.  We know our failures.

The Law of Moses was designed to bring the Jews to Christ by showing them this very thing; namely, you cannot keep God’s law perfectly and thus the road to salvation cannot be found in perfect obedience. (Gal. 3:24, Gal. 3:10)  That was true under the Law of Moses and under the law of God under which we live today (the New Testament).  The need for God’s grace is obvious.

The New Testament is full of admonitions to those who are already Christians but who are involved in sin to repent.  Read First and Second Corinthians.  Even the apostle Peter needed to repent (read Gal. 2:11-13).  In the books of First and Second Corinthians Paul does not raise the question whether or not those brethren who were caught up in sin were genuinely converted.  They were true Christians but they had nevertheless sinned after their conversion and needed to repent.  Let me list a few examples.

There was the man who had his father’s wife in a sexually immoral relationship (1 Cor. 5:1); there were those he wrote of in 2 Cor. 12:21 who he feared might not have “repented of the uncleanness, fornication, and licentiousness which they have practiced.” (NKJV)  They were also taking one another to courts of law (not an act of love). (1 Cor. 6:7) 

We could also read about various churches in the Book of Revelation chapters two and three who needed to repent in one way or another.  We could talk about the Galatians.

But my point is this--if you were sincere in heart when you obeyed the gospel with regards to your repentance and you then followed through and completed your obedience of faith as per Acts 2:38 being baptized for the remission of sins (Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16), baptized into Christ (Gal. 3:27, Rom. 6:3), then there is no reason down the road to look back and wonder if you were truly converted, to doubt your conversion.  Many have done that and we need more teaching about it so minds can be set at ease on that point.

You will never live perfectly.  If you are a human being you will sin again after your conversion (dare I say many times?).  That does not mean you were never converted.  It does mean you need to repent just as Peter needed to in Gal. 2.  Having repented, confess your sin and pray and ask for God’s forgiveness and ask for the forgiveness of any you may have personally sinned against. (1 John 1:9, James 5:16)  God will forgive if we will repent and ask his forgiveness.

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Jesus Defines Repentance

The Bible clearly teaches that repentance is a command of God to all men (Acts 17:30) and that if we fail to repent we shall perish (Luke 13:3, 5).  It is essential then that we come to a proper understanding of the meaning of repentance.  What does it mean to repent?  Jesus tells us and we can find no higher authority on the subject than Christ himself.  Let us hear what he has said.

“The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.” (Luke 11:32 NKJV)

The book of Jonah where we are told about this is a very short book of only 4 chapters so it is not hard to find out what the men of Nineveh did which Jesus calls repentance.

Nineveh was a city God described as a wicked city (Jonah 1:2) to which God sent Jonah to give them the message that in 40 days Nineveh would be overthrown (Jonah 3:4).  Now note the first response to this message.

“So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.” (Jonah 3:5 NKJV)  Now belief is not repentance but it is a prerequisite to it.  Where there is no belief there will be no repentance, it is impossible.  One might quit a sin for any number of reasons (health, reputation, family, etc.) without repenting.  We say it is hard to get people to repent and so it is but why?  One of the biggest reasons is failure to believe God, what he says in the scriptures. 

What must one believe in order to repent?  He must believe God is (Heb. 11:6).  He must believe he stands guilty before God (Rom. 3:23, 1 John 1:8).  He must believe he is a condemned man in his present state (Rom. 6:23).  Belief is thus a necessary prerequisite to biblical repentance.

There are two or three passages in the New Testament that put repentance before belief (Acts 20:21, Heb. 6:1, Mark 1:15).  I will make a comment or two and go on without going into a long excursion on these passages.  Where the passages address a Jewish crowd one must remember the Jewish people had believed in God for generations.  They had sinned against God.  They needed to repent of that and then believe something new to them – faith in Jesus.  Jesus was new to the world.

The second comment I will make in passing is that the order of the wording does not necessarily imply that the one action preceded the other.  Paul, in Rom. 10:9, puts confession before faith, “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (NKJV)  Do you think Paul meant to imply that confession is to come before faith?  How would that work?  How could Jesus be Lord if God did not raise him from the dead--if you did not believe that he did?  So we see that faith precedes the confession even though the word order is what it is.  Faith must precede repentance if there is to be repentance.

Now back to Nineveh.  The faith of the people of Nineveh was so strong that they had no doubt that what Jonah was telling them would come to pass.  They saw themselves as a doomed people.  They were confirmed believers that disaster was about to befall them.

Having believed they then humbled themselves before God.  All put on sackcloth from the least to the greatest (Jonah 3:5), they fasted (3:7), they cried to God (3:8).  One of the hardest things for a man to do is humble himself before God and man.  To admit sin is belittling to the proud.  

Pride is a great destroyer of people and is something every person has to deal with in their life.  Pride is one of the things God hates (Pro. 8:13).  It is a forerunner of shame (Pro. 11:2) and comes before a fall (Pro. 16:18); it will bring a man low (Pro. 29:23).  Those who are proud cannot humble themselves and confess they have sinned and repent.  They will pay for their arrogant spirit.  The men of Nineveh will not be of their number.   

What more did the people of Nineveh do?  Jonah 3:8 says the King decreed that “every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.” (NKJV)  What did they do?  They ceased doing evil.

Let us summarize the events that transpired here in a city that Jesus said repented.  Here is what we have seen:

(1)  People heard a message from God condemning them and believed it.

(2)  This brought godly sorrow to their hearts.

(3)  They humbled themselves and sought God turning from their evil ways.

This sums up the process of repentance from beginning to end.  Today when we hear the gospel message if we believe it we see we are in a condemned state before God.  We are convicted in our hearts of our sins.  Believing this brings sorrow to our hearts.  If we are then willing to humble ourselves before God, seek him, and turn away from evil to do good, as defined by God in his word, we can rest assured that we have met the requirement for repentance for we have fulfilled all the things the people of Nineveh did and Jesus said they repented.

How long does it take to repent?  It takes just as long as it takes you to be convicted in your heart and then determine with your will to cease your sin and turn to God in faith and obedience.  Repentance is not reformation of life for reformation of life is a result, or fruit, of repentance.  Repentance is a matter of the heart and a determination of the mind or will.

One can hear a single gospel sermon and repent immediately if the heart is good and honest and tender toward God.  Thus we have those 3,000 who repented on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 after hearing Peter’s sermon.  The Bible says of that day and of that preaching that when the people heard it “they were cut to the heart.” (Acts 2:37 NKJV)  They saw themselves as condemned before God and were ready and willing to repent.  This Peter told them to do as well as be baptized for the remission of sins. (Acts 2:38)

So, how long did it take them to repent?  Not long.  Just as long as it took to hear the preaching, believe it, be pricked in the heart, and as a result create a willingness of heart to seek God and turn away from evil.  The time it takes to repent depends on the hardness of the heart.  There will never be enough time for some hearts.  For the good and honest heart it will not take long.

I want to deal very briefly with a few common misconceptions before closing.  Many believe that sorrow for sin is repentance and that the giving over of the will to God is faith.  Neither is true.  Godly sorrow for sin leads to repentance and is not repentance itself.  “For godly sorrow produces repentance.” (2 Cor. 7:10 NKJV)  I might add not all sorrow for sin is godly.  Prisons are full of people who are sorry for their sin because they got caught but God and his will has no part in their thinking.

The giving over of the will to God is often called faith but God calls it repentance.  True, the giving over of the will is based on faith but is not faith itself but rather repentance.  We ought to call Bible things by Bible names as it allows us to reason more correctly.

Reformation of life can also easily be misconstrued as repentance.  You can turn away from doing evil for various reasons.  Men quit adultery for fear their wife will find out and their marriage be destroyed.  Others quit cheating on their taxes for fear of getting caught.  The list could go on.  This kind of reformation of life is not repentance nor does it have anything to do with repentance.  God is left out of the picture.  All concerns are over worldly matters and relationships, not God.

Repentance is repentance from sin and thus God is always in view in true repentance.  He is not in view in reformation of life for worldly reasons.

True repentance results in a reformation of life growing out of faith and a seeking of God.  It means necessarily a turning away from sin to righteousness.  One ends up with a changed life because of a changed outlook.  The proper order of events is godly sorrow first resulting in repentance (a changed outlook – a changed will) that leads to reformation of life.   

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