We know that repentance is a total change of spiritual direction, turning away from sin towards Christ in faith. To go deeper into understanding repentance, it is helpful to break it down into three aspects. First, we will look at the intellectual component of repentance, that is, the way our minds are involved in repenting. For the next two sections, we will study the way repentance engages our emotions, and finally, how it impacts our will. To begin, let us consider how our minds are involved in repenting. Simply put, to repent we have to know the following to be true:
- “I am a sinner.” This may seem overly obvious, but it is the starting point. If we don’t think we sin, then there is no point in repenting.
- “I am guilty before God and deserve to be punished for my sins.” If we believe we are sinners, we know that it is God we have sinned against. In rebelling against God’s authority and law, we become guilty and deserve his just punishment.
- “I am helpless to save myself and need God to show me mercy.” If we believe that salvation is something we can or must accomplish on our own, then repentance is unnecessary. Why lower ourselves to beg for forgiveness if we can fix the relationship on our own? Repentance flows out of an understanding that our only hope is that God forgives us despite our sin.
- “God is merciful and will pardon me for my sins.” If we don’t believe God is merciful, then repenting would be vain. Only if God is a loving God who delights to show mercy does it make any sense to repent. True repentance cries, like the psalmist, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you, there is forgiveness, that you may be feared” (Psalm 130:1-4).
- “Repentance is a gift from God, given through Christ.”The Bible teaches that “God exalted him [Jesus] to his own right hand as the Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel” (Acts 5:31). As we have seen above, repentance is a gracious gift of God.
In order to truly repent, we must believe that these are all true. If we don’t believe any one of them, the concept of repentance or the reason to repent quickly disappears. Yet repentance is not a purely intellectual act, to be real and meaningful it must engage our emotions as well.
