Repentance

According to the belief of my former Church affiliation, repentance is the first step one must take to be saved.  From their believe, I viewed repentance as the act of going to the altar or wherever you are at the time, and crying out to the Lord asking Him to forgive you of all your sins. But now I see it differently.

Repentance is not an outward act but it's an inward change, a heart change, or a change of mind.  The change takes place in the heart. So even God gets credit for that. When Christ gives us a new heart (regeneration), this then leads to the actions (crying, speaking or confessing, raising hands, etc) that are taken that shows evidence of repentance, that took place in the heart first.

My husband gave me an example to help me better understand repentance. He said that the British Army at one time used "Repent" as a command that meant for them to turn around and go the other way. This is what it meant to "repent", to turn around.  This helped me to see and understand that even the act of "turning around" and living our life differently (repentance) was done because of what has already taken place in the heart.  In order for a person to even want to turn around and live differently, there was a change that happened on the inside (heart change) first. I mean, think about it. Did you want to do things to please God before salvation took place? I can remember living in the world and I had no thought of God or what He wanted.

Another way to look at repentance is it being a fruit or a result of what the Holy Spirit has been doing in His preceding work.  It is a natural response.  Look at Romans 2:4. "Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?"

God's kindness and goodness has already been at work in our lives before we even think about repentance, which I would believe is a change of mind that issues forth a change of direction. The possibility then exists, that I may not realize that this is how the Holy Spirit works salvatioin in a person's life.

This becomes the greatest weakness of my former church. To a degree, they disregard the work of the Holy Spirit in a person's life prior to repentance. Why would we even have a desire to repent unless our will, mind and affections hadn't been changed by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit?  In fact, it is impossible for us to repent until the Holy Spirit accomplishes these works in our life.

God granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life. (Acts 11:18)  Did they repent to get life or did they repent because life was already present? I believe the latter. So I would say that a person (born again, heart regenerated) places their trust in the Lord prior to repentance even though it may be indistinguishable to us in the time/space continuum.

Repentance is the change of mind and heart that leads one to turn away from their sin and turn to God for forgiveness.