By Sidharth Mohandas
 
As Nathan has put across in his previous posts, laying the proper foundations is vital for our lives to be stable and strong in the Lord, without which it is impossible for us as Christians to mature.
 
Our blueprint for this foundational series will be Hebrews 6:1-2, where Paul mentions six “elementary teachings of Christ”. The very word “elementary” suggests that without graduating from these, you can’t go any further in the faith. These are the ABC’s you and I need to be founded on.
 
Today I want to take you into the first lesson of this series: Repentance from dead works.
 
Let me start off by saying that repentance is the first and foremost response the Gospel of the Kingdom demands from an individual.
 
Let me show it to you from Scripture:

Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the Gospel [Mark 1:14-15]

Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you …. [Acts 2:38]

And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have shewed you, and have taught you publicly, and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. [Acts 20:20-21]

And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem [Luke 24:46-47]

This again lines up with the order we see in Hebrews 6:1: Repentance from dead works preceding faith towards God.

So what is repentance? The Greek word used for “repentance” is the word “metanoia” and it simply means “to change ones mind”. Why would the Gospel demand such a response from us? It’s because we go where our mind goes. Hence repentance involves not only a change of mind, but also a change of direction. The wordings Paul uses in Hebrews 6:1 makes it abundantly clear that there is a turning from something that is dead to something that is alive by God’s standards.

In 1 Thessalonians 1:4-10 we read Paul relating of how the Gospel came to those at Thessalonica and then goes onto record their response to the Gospel. Here is true repentance summarized in the above reference: “They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” [1 Thess 1:9].

Now you must understand that anything below the standards of God is considered dead. That is exactly what sin is. The Hebrew word for sin simply means “to miss the mark”. For example imagine an examination where the pass percentage is 50%. A person who gets 3% and a person who gets 49% both fall under the same category: “failed”. I remember one time in school when I failed in a test, instead of being worried that I had failed I was more concerned of how many got lower marks than me! That’s exactly how many of us are. We have our own standards, but God is calling us to change our mind-set to His standards of sin, judgment and righteousness and thereby turn to Him for our complete salvation. Without such repentance, Christ Himself said, “….you will all likewise perish” [Luke 13:3]

In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent. [Acts 17:30]

In the upcoming post Justin will take you more into the topic of repentance before I conclude on it.

Courtesy to cgi.org

By Sidharth Mohandas

Many people go about the motions of repentance but don’t bear the fruit of repentance. You can probably shed barrels of tears for your sinful ways and still not be repentant. Scripture distinguishes this as “worldly” and “godly”.

Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. [2 Corinthians 7:10]

Do you still show symptoms of death in you even after you “repented”? Then you probably didn’t repent with true godly repentance. This reminds me of an incident that happened many years back… I was having an argument with a pastor about a particular doctrine. I clearly knew I was on the right. But after I finished talking to him and retired to my room I was filled with guilt. As I was praying, the Lord showed me that I spoke with disrespect and insulted an authority He had placed in His kingdom [Acts 23:1-5]. I immediately said I had sinned against Him and asked that He forgive me. However, that as I lay on my bed the Lord started dealing with me about the same issue. In my mind I was still trying to justify saying… “But I was right…he was clearly on the wrong!”. The Lord took me to the Scripture where Saul disobeyed the Lord. God had asked him to kill all the Amelakites- every one including the men, women, children, infants, the sheep and the cattle…but though Saul went to attack the Amelakites, he spared the best of the sheep and cattle and spared Agag the king. When God sent Samuel to Saul, Saul tried covering his disobedience by saying that he had actually spared the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the Lord. But then Samuel says to him, “To obey is better than sacrifice” [1 Samuel 15: 22]. Saul now goes through the motions of repentance and says that he had sinned against the Lord and His instructions. But look at Saul’s wordings here, “But please honor me before the elders of my people and before Israel…” [1 Samuel 15: 30] The Lord pointed out to me that just like Saul was concerned all about honor, all I wanted was that this pastor that argued with would bow down to what I said. In true repentance I changed my way of thinking that night and looked into it through God’s thoughts. I surely was right about what I said, but my motives and thoughts were wrong. All I wanted was that that this man agreed with me, and not that the Word of God be honored. The next day I went to apologize to this pastor for the disrespectful way I spoke to him.

Let us examine our lives today and see if we have truly repented. Are we showing forth the fruit of repentance? Or is our life just a “show of obedience”, rather than true obedience?