Regret.
Repentance implies abandoning our independence from God, our enmity and rebellion against him, to turn to his justice. This will lead us to hate sin, but also to a positive desire to do God's will. It is a firm and consistent decision to change sides. It implies going from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul explained what this implied in the following terms:
(Col 1: 13-14) "God has delivered us from the power of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins."
Therefore, repentance leads us to assume a new mentality, new desires and a new willingness to please our new King. It is not only about correcting some defects of our personality, or acquiring some new religious routine, it is something infinitely more radical. It has to do with allowing God to really assume all the control of our life, which will necessarily result in a total change with respect to God, to ourselves, to sin and to justice. Our life will have a new direction, a new perspective, new expectations and commitments.
True repentance encompasses the intellect, emotions and will, in which God comes to have absolute supremacy.
1.A change in the way of thinking
Repentance implies a radical change in the way of understanding the gravity that sin has as an affront to the holy God and that therefore deserves divine wrath and punishment. It also implies recognition of our own responsibility and acceptance of our state of complete spiritual bankruptcy before God. All this should lead us to claim as the publican of the parable that the Lord Jesus Christ related:
(Lk 18:13) "God, be merciful to me, sinner."
Repentance that leads to salvation must also include a change of thought about who Jesus is and the place he should occupy in our life. Basically we can summarize it by saying that he is the "Lord" and that he has every right to govern our lives. This is a radical change with our previous rebellious attitude, when we thought that we had the last word in what we decided and did. True repentance should lead us to an acknowledgment of the Lordship of Christ, as Paul explained in his letter to the Romans:
(Ro 10: 8-9) "This is the word of faith that we preach: that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is the Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."
2.A change in the way of feeling
From the emotional point of view, authentic repentance is accompanied by a feeling of sorrow and sadness when discovering the filth and gravity of sin. In the Old Testament, the repentant person often wore sackcloth and covered himself with ashes as symbols of mourning and pain (Job 42: 6) (Jon 3: 5-6).
In our days it is sad to see how modern man almost does not feel ashamed for almost anything. It is not difficult to listen to people who, after having a life full of personal failures, nevertheless affirm with pride that they do not regret anything. But this reaffirmation in sin can only lead to new failures.
In any case, it is also true that one can become saddened or ashamed of some concrete sin and yet not reach salvation. For example, the rich young man who came to Jesus was afflicted and saddened by what the Lord told him (Mark 10:22), but he did not change his attitude. Judas, after delivering Jesus, felt a strong remorse for what he had done, although surely, what he most regretted was that things had not gone as he had planned (Mt 27: 3).
It is difficult to imagine a true repentance that does not include a certain element of shame, but it must be clarified that this does not guarantee that it is genuine. Sometimes, that shame is motivated simply by the fear of being ridiculed when others learn of one of our failures or sins, but not because we feel the gravity of our offenses before God. In those cases, after a time, when everything is forgotten, life will continue without major changes.
3.A change in the way of life
Third, repentance also includes a change in the will of the person. There is a firm determination to abandon the old way of life to change it for a new, radically different one. It implies the abandonment of stubborn disobedience to God to surrender our will to Christ. It is a call to lay down our arms, to stop fighting against God and to surrender to his will.
Credits for the Bible school following the teacher.
References queen velera 1960.
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