J.C. Ryle once wrote, “Let no man ever delude you into supposing that you can be happy in this world without repentance.” The world offers its version of happiness, laughter, vacation, good company, cheerful songs. None of those things are wrong in themselves. But Ryle is right, true happiness is only found when we understand who we are in Christ and when we are living a life in which we are repenting of sin and turning toward him. “Quarreling with sin” makes a man happy.
So what is repentance? Theodore Beza defined it this way: “Repentance is the true conversion of our life unto God, proceeding from the true and sound fear of God, whereby the sinner, leaving the folly of sin, comes home again and changes the former purpose of his mind into a better.” It is a conversion of life. It is a turning. It proceeds from a true and reverent fear of the Lord, and it results in coming home to something far better than what was left behind.
The Words for Repentance
To understand repentance rightly, we need to understand what the Scriptures mean by the word itself. There are only a handful of words in the original languages translated as “repent” or “repentance,” and each of them adds something to our understanding.
The first Hebrew word is naham, to be sorry, to relent, to comfort. It carries with it an emotional component, a deep inward feeling of grief. Biblical repentance is not merely a directional change, as if someone was doing A and now does B instead. True repentance has an inward dimension. There is a desire, a feeling, a real inward grief over sin that accompanies the turning.
The second Hebrew word is shub, and it is the most common Old Testament word for repentance. It means simply to turn, or to return. “Return to me and I will return to you,” says the Lord. This word is found hundreds of times throughout the prophets. It is the constant call of the covenant: turn from your ways, turn from your sin, and turn back toward the God who made promises to you. Shub emphasizes both behavioral and directional change.
Leaving the Old Testament, we find in the New Testament the Greek word metanoia, which means repentance. Meta means after or change; noia comes from nous, meaning mind. So literally, a change of mind. But in biblical usage it is something far deeper than an intellectual adjustment. It is a reorientation of the whole person; the mind, will, and affections together. This is the word Jesus used in his very first sermon: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Repentance was the central call of the gospel from the first moment of his public ministry. And importantly, in Revelation chapters two and three, Jesus calls the churches to repentance as well. Repentance is not merely the entrance into the Christian life. It is the continuation of the Christian life.
There is also metamelomai, which carries more of the emotional weight of repentance, to regret, to feel remorse, to care about what one has done. What is notable about this word is that it can describe the experience of both Christians and non-Christians. Someone can feel remorse for sin and change course without that change being a saving repentance. Paul addresses this in 2 Corinthians 7:10, “Godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.” There is a repentance that is unto life, and there is a worldly remorse that leads nowhere.
Repentance Unto Life
Our Larger Catechism gives us a full and careful definition in Question 76: “Repentance unto life is a saving grace wrought in the heart of a sinner by the Spirit and Word of God, whereby, out of the sight and sense not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins, and upon the apprehension of God’s mercy in Christ to such as are penitent, he so grieves for and hates his sin as he turns from them all to God, purposing and endeavoring constantly to walk with him in all the ways of new obedience.”
The first thing we are told is that repentance unto life is a saving grace. This does not mean that we are saved because we have repented, as though repentance were a meritorious work. Repentance accompanies the grace of God and is itself a demonstration of that grace at work in the soul. As one writer put it, “There is nothing legal or meritorious about repentance. It is not something we can produce in and of ourselves. It is a gracious gift of God implanted in the souls of His people by His Spirit.” The Spirit and the Word of God are the cause of repentance. It is not self-produced.
Legal or Evangelical Repentance
Legal repentance changes behavior only out of fear of consequences, without the gospel compelling the change. Evangelical repentance says, for the love of Christ, because the gospel has changed me, I will walk differently. The test worth putting to your own heart is this: Am I not doing this thing merely because I fear the consequences?
The catechism identifies several motivations for repentance. There is the danger of sin, sin is genuinely dangerous, eternally and temporally. There is the filthiness of sin, sin is not something to be trifled with or minimized. There is the odiousness of sin. Odious means offensive. it is something God hates, it is offensive to him. And there is the apprehension of God’s mercy in Christ to such as are penitent. This last motivation is the sweetest of all. When we look at the Scriptures and see how Christ interacts with those who grieve over sin and desire to turn from it, we see mercy displayed again and again. Richard Sibbes put it like this, “There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us.” Without that vision of mercy, anything going by the name of repentance is merely a legal attempt at moral reformation.
Affections and Actions
The catechism also teaches us that repentance involves affections. Christians are not Stoics. Reformed Christians sometimes get accused of having only a cerebral Christianity, but true repentance is not merely cerebral. The catechism names two affections in particular: grief over sin and hatred of sin. We grieve our sin because it disrupts our relationship with God. We hate our sin because it is the enemy of our soul and is an offense against a holy God. We ought to grieve that we have sinned against God, more than over suffered consequences on account of our sin. That is an important distinction. The grief that produces life is grief oriented toward God, not merely toward personal consequence.
But repentance is not only affection. It also involves action. The catechism names three: a turning from sin, a purposing to walk with God, and an endeavoring to walk with God. Turning is the heart of repentance: turning away from sin, toward God in Christ. But there is also a purpose, a desire to live differently. And beyond even that, there is an endeavoring, an active, ongoing working toward that end. Purpose without endeavor is wishful thinking. True repentance is not passive. It is not the person who says they want to change but makes no effort to change. It is the person who turns, desires, and then labors.
Beza describes this in terms of mortification and vivification. There are things that need to die in our repentance: the old man, the natural corruption. There are things that need to come to life, new obedience, new desires, new conformity to the will of God. These two together, the putting to death and the bringing to life, are the shape of repentance in the Christian life. And as Jonathan Dickinson, the first president of Princeton, wrote of the sincere penitent “He is never satisfied with partial reformation or external duty. He is pressing toward perfection, watching and striving against his corruptions, and aiming at further conformity to God.”
A Case Study in Repentance
Psalm 51 gives us a case study in biblical repentance. Its superscription tells us the occasion: “To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”
David’s repentance begins not with his own merit but with the covenant mercy of God: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness.” He does not appeal to his kingship or anything within himself. He throws himself entirely on divine grace. That is where biblical repentance always begins: not with our own effort, but with the covenant promises of God.
He sees his sin as filthy and cannot escape it: “My sin is ever before me.” He understands the vertical dimension of sin: “Against you, you only have I sinned.” He traces the root of sin all the way back to his nature: “In sin my mother conceived me.” And then he asks not merely for behavioral modification but for something altogether new: “Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me.” That is shub, total reorientation.
And then repentance turns outward. The restored soul desires that others would also turn from sin: “Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners shall be converted to you.” There is fruit in true repentance. It is not an inward, navel-gazing exercise. It produces worship, witness, and joy. “My tongue shall sing aloud of your righteousness.” Repentance and doxology belong together.
Encouragements for a Life of Repentance
There are several encouragements toward a life of repentance that are worth applying in the Christian life. First, Jesus Christ is a gracious Savior. He is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God through him. Do not think that you must get your life together before you come. Come now, as you are, because Christ is merciful to sinners. Second, the Word of God is full of gracious promises: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” It means what it says. Third, the parables of our Lord are full of the mercy of God toward those who repent. Read them with eyes for repentance and you will see it everywhere. The tax collector who would not lift his eyes to heaven, he went down to his house justified. Fourth, the examples of penitent people in Scripture abound. David, Manasseh, Peter, great sinners, all of them, met by a great and merciful God when they turned.
To own repentance in the Christian life is to make it, as the Puritans said, “the business of your heart.” It is not a one-time event. It is not something done at conversion and then set aside. It is the daily work of the Christian, in prayer, in worship, in the reading of Scripture, in the whole of the Christian walk. It is a repentance always turning toward God, not toward works righteousness or self-effort. It is a repentance that forsakes sin, not merely feels badly about it. And it is a repentance that is always bound up with Christ.
Never separate your repentance from your trust in Jesus Christ. Judas repented, but he did not believe. He felt the conviction of his sin, threw the silver back, and went out and destroyed himself. He did everything in his own power to forsake that sin. And yet it was not repentance unto life, because it was entirely separated from Christ. He never looked to Jesus in the midst of it.
Your repentance must look to Jesus. We are washed in his blood. We are forgiven through his merit. We are restored by his mercy. And there, in him, is where true repentance, and true happiness, is found.
Written by Dr. Nathan Eshelman