Repentance in Scripture

The message of repentance, especially in the four gospels is a problem for many Bible teachers, preachers, and expositors. Some, who will land on the “lordship salvation” side of the debate will interpret this to mean a turning from self and sin to Christ and changing your life to make Jesus Christ the Lord of it. This is what these teachers will teach as salvation.

Others, who will land on the “free grace” side will argue that this repentance has nothing to do with sins but is about a change of mind. It could be anything from changing one’s mind about who Jesus Christ is to changing one’s mind about whether the kingdom was going to come or not, to thinking on a different level about what God wants from man. I have heard all of these and more, dealing with this word and idea of repentance.

Sometimes we can tell the confusion this brings when Christians argue and debate about whether it is enough to say “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” to be saved, or do we need to say “repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ”? Is repentance understood as part of the word believe, making “repentance” unnecessary, or is it an individual act that needs to be part of the process?

To correctly understand the repentance in the Four Gospels, the context is the key. The context, however, is not the present age in which we are living today, where salvation is sent fully and freely preached through the death of Christ on the cross for our sins and His resurrection from the dead.

The context is the prophetic Scriptures. John the Baptist was a prophet. The Lord said that “Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist” (Luke 7:28). His message was consistent with the prophets that the Lord had sent before him. He was the forerunner—

“To make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:17).

The prophet Jeremiah also had a central message for Israel. To repent!

When the prophets spoke of judgment to come, there was a thrust to it. This is what is going to happen, but the LORD did not send His prophets with a “doom only” message, but the prophets spoke what the people needed to do to avoid the coming judgment. There often was a message that said “this is what is going to happen, but if you, Israel, repent, then I, the LORD, will repent.”

Below are several verses from the prophet Jeremiah where the message to repent is pretty plain, and we should be able to get a clear understanding of what John the Baptist, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Twelve Apostles were teaching with the message of repentance. We would surely be remiss to say it has nothing to do with turning from sin. It had everything to do with turning from sin. Later, the message had everything to do with turning from the act of rejecting and crucifying Christ, as in Acts chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 7.

We see this from Jeremiah the Prophet:

Jeremiah 3:1 — “They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD.”

Jeremiah 3:7 — “And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.”

Jeremiah 3:12 — “Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the LORD; and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the LORD, and I will not keep anger for ever.”

Jeremiah 3:14 — “Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion…”

Jeremiah 3:22 — “Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto thee; for thou art the LORD our God.”

Jeremiah 4:1–2 — “If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith the LORD, return unto me: and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight, then shalt thou not remove. And thou shalt swear, The LORD liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness; and the nations shall bless themselves in him, and in him shall they glory.”

Jeremiah 4:14 — “O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?”

Jeremiah 4:27–28 — “For thus hath the LORD said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end. For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black: because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.” {Notice this is God saying that He will not repent}

Jeremiah 7:3–7 — “Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these. For if ye throughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye throughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbour; If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt: Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever.”

Jeremiah 8:6 — “I hearkened and heard, but they spake not aright: no man repented him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? every one turned to his course, as the horse rusheth into the battle.”

Jeremiah 15:6 — “Thou hast forsaken me, saith the LORD, thou art gone backward: therefore will I stretch out my hand against thee, and destroy thee; I am weary with repenting.” {Again, the LORD is here fed up with repenting and witholding His wrath on a people that deserved it}

Jeremiah 15:7 — “And I will fan them with a fan in the gates of the land; I will bereave them of children, I will destroy my people, since they return not from their ways.”

Jeremiah 15:19 — “Therefore thus saith the LORD, If thou return, then will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before me: and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth: let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them.”

Jeremiah 18:7–11 — “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them. Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you: return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.”

Jeremiah 23:22 — “But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings.”

Jeremiah 25:5–6 — “They said, Turn ye again now every one from his evil way, and from the evil of your doings, and dwell in the land that the LORD hath given unto you and to your fathers for ever and ever: And go not after other gods to serve them, and to worship them, and provoke me not to anger with the works of your hands; and I will do you no hurt.”

Jeremiah 26:3 — “If so be they will hearken, and turn every man from his evil way, that I may repent me of the evil, which I purpose to do unto them because of the evil of their doings.”

Jeremiah 26:13 — “Therefore now amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the LORD your God; and the LORD will repent him of the evil that he hath pronounced against you.”

Jeremiah 26:19 — “Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him at all to death? did he not fear the LORD, and besought the LORD, and the LORD repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against them? Thus might we procure great evil against our souls.” {Again, the Lord repented from His wrath and judgment that were well deserved}

Jeremiah 31:18–19 — “I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke: turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the LORD my God. Surely after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh: I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth.”

Jeremiah 35:15 — “I have sent also unto you all my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, saying, Return ye now every man from his evil way, and amend your doings, and go not after other gods to serve them, and ye shall dwell in the land which I have given to you and to your fathers: but ye have not inclined your ear, nor hearkened unto me.”

Jeremiah 36:3 — “It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them; that they may return every man from his evil way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.”

Jeremiah 36:7 — “It may be they will present their supplication before the LORD, and will return every one from his evil way: for great is the anger and the fury that the LORD hath pronounced against this people.”

Jeremiah 42:10 — “If ye will still abide in this land, then will I build you, and not pull you down, and I will plant you, and not pluck you up: for I repent me of the evil that I have done unto you.”

One from Ezekiel for good measure and I would be remiss if I did not add it as I came across it:

Ezekiel 18:30-32 — “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord GOD. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.”

In the beginning of that which we call our New Testament, Israel was at a point of crisis. God’s promise of a coming deliverer was coming to fruition. Were they ready? No! The message of John the Baptist, Christ Himself, and the Twelve Apostles to Israel was to prepare them, because in the state that they were in, the nation as a whole was not on God’s side. I think that the saying today is “the right side of history”. They needed to repent. Christ was here! The Kingdom was at hand.

This is not the Lord’s message for today to the lost. The whole world is already judged as under sin and found guilty. The cross is the preaching for today. The sinner must come in faith believing in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ for his sins and he will be be justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24).

You will be saved today when you take God at His word about His Son and you will be forever saved.

“Free Grace” preachers should not water down the message of the prophets to the people that surely needed to repent. They didn’t need to just change their minds, they needed to amend their ways and their doings and make straight the way of the Lord. Don’t change that message to conform it to the present message of grace.

On the other hand, the “Lordship Salvation” preachers should also not bring the Kingdom message to the covenant people into the present day. They make it a weight that they tie around the neck of the sinner in order to be saved. It is a weight that he cannot bear in order to be saved. We are saved by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and at that point the saint can turn from sin and live the Lord’s way, but not as a condition of salvation. The new life found in Christ is the fruit of the Spirit, not the price of salvation.

Now in case anyone should say that Paul also preached repentance, I would absolutely agree. He certainly did. That would certainly be an excellent subject for a future Bible study. You can do it on your own as well.