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by Charlie Wolcott

Repentance is the second part of brokenness. One will not repent unless he has first been broken over his sin. And if he does not repent, he has not been broken over it. Brokenness leads to a disgust of sin because that is where we taste the death it produces, or we see what it does in someone else and we decide we don’t want to go that way.

What is repentance? The short answer is that repentance is the turning away from doing one thing and going to do something else. It is the changing of both mind and will regarding a particular topic. To be more specific, repentance is not the mere ceasing of engaging in a sinful action or behavior but developing a loathing for that sin and a desire to have nothing to do with it. When David repented of his sin with Bathsheba, he never committed adultery again. He never slept with anyone else besides Bathsheba (she was Solomon’s mother). When he was dying, a young virgin was given to him and David refused to sleep with her. David’s famous prayer of repentance and penitence in Psalm 51 was backed by a total disdain for that sin.

David is one of the few pictures we get of true repentance in the Old Testament; throughout the Old Testament, we continually see the people going right back to their old sins. We see more repentance in the New Testament. Zacchaeus, Peter, and Paul are very clear examples of repentance. Zacchaeus met Christ and completely changed his way about his job as a tax collector. Peter denied Christ three times and he never would do that again, even taking a crueler death to not die like Jesus did. Paul was a persecutor and murderer of Christians and then became a Christian himself. There is no one in history who illustrates what the Christian life is and is about better than Paul.

People often ask if repentance is a work or a fruit. Is repentance something we do to earn salvation? No. Though it is something we do and we are responsible for doing, God does not save us IF we repent, as though repenting makes God owe us salvation. A murderer can murder once, instantly and forever regret ever doing it, but it doesn’t make him any less a murderer. He is still guilty and still in need of a Savior. But at the same time, why should God save anyone who wants to continue in sin? John Bevere shares his testimony in being delivered free from pornography, and the turning point was when he finally gained a total disgust for it instead of a thrill from it.

So does that make repentance a fruit, a result of God’s work on us? Actually yes. But at the same time, it is also a work. It is both. When God works in our heart and that process changes our heart of stone into a heart of flesh, we begin loving the things of God more and hating the things of sin more. While repentance was a command given by John the Baptist and Jesus to do prior to receiving the Gospel, it also is a work of God in a person.

But repentance is something more than that. It is a work that we do that doesn’t earn us salvation but rather prepares us for salvation. It is a fruit that results in the work that God has done in us. It also a third thing: it is a gift. Repentance is something that God offers. God pleads with us to repent, and He gives us the opportunity to do so. Keep in mind, repentance does not happen without brokenness. Brokenness only happens through the conviction of the Holy Spirit that we have grieved Him. Without that, we would not care about our sin, and we’d ride it straight to Hell, fighting God the whole way there. Yet God cares about us so much that He draws us to Him and uses the pain and sting of sin to bring us back to Him. Repentance is a gift in which we have a responsibility to use and follow the directions, which also produces fruit in our lives.

But here is something else repentance is not: a momentary thing. Repentance starts in a moment, but it is a continual practice. One thing that most unbiblical these days is the “altar call.” I am not talking about responding to a sermon due to the conviction of the Holy Spirit. I am talking about the preacher summoning people to come up to respond to emotion. I am talking about “Who would like to ask Jesus into their heart? I see that hand.” While there are some who do genuinely begin the process of repentance at such events, the going up the aisle, getting prayer from someone, saying a prayer, and being declared saved is not repentance. That’s just emotional hype. Statistics have shown that 95% of those who do such things walk away unchanged. I can tell you right now and many will agree: if you walk away from that altar unchanged and you go right back to what you used to do and be like, you never encountered God nor were you convicted of any sin.

We need preachers preaching repentance again. We need them preaching what it is, what it looks like, how it behaves, and how it continues. We need to not merely preach that sinful things are sinful, but that there is so much more than what sin offers. We need to preach that there is a way out from those sins and that life in Christ, while it will be difficult, is far more satisfying than anything this world has to offer. Christ is the only One who DOES satisfy.

There is one more thing that preaching a correct response to the Gospel deals with: faith. Throughout Jesus and the Apostles’ ministries, they taught two responses: repentance and faith, or repent and believe. Let’s look at that next week.

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