It is fascinating to see the way that careless readings of well-known texts keep resurfacing in different contexts. One of those relates to the central teaching of Jesus, as he begins his ministry in Galilee after John the Baptist is imprisoned:
After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1.4–15)
We can immediately see why the meaning of ‘repent’ is important: it is related to faith (‘believe…!’), salvation (‘the kingdom of God’) and our response to what God is doing (‘the time has come…’). And it forms a key thread of the teaching of both Jesus and Paul in the New Testament, and is also prominent in the Book of Revelation (of course).
Historically, the first major issue with this term was its translation by Jerome in the Vulgate, the Latin Bible used throughout the West until translations into the vernacular started to appear with the movement that became the Reformation. The Greek term that Jesus uses μετανοεῖτε was translated by Jerome into Latin as poenitentiam agite, which would normally be understood as ‘do acts of penance’. This does three things to the command:
- it shifts it from being focused on attitude and outlook to being concerned with ritual acts;
- it moves it from being a response to God to being set in the context of the institution of the Church (whose priests alone could dispense forgiveness through the rite of penance and confession);
- and it became a habitual ritual rather than an urgent response to the ‘end times’ coming of God.
Thus it has shifted from a response to the move of God in the teaching of Jesus, and the coming of the kingdom in his person, to being a sacramental system of penance inextricably tied to the institution of the Church.
But in our contemporary context, the challenge to understanding this key teaching of Jesus comes from an entirely other direction. For many today, the central message of the gospel is claimed to be ‘Jesus comes and accepts us and affirms us as we are.’ This is not just in relation to sexual identity (though it is prominent in this), but is widespread in parts of our culture which might be said to take a ‘therapeutic’ approach to human flourishing. There is no doubt that one part of the gospel message is that Jesus brings healing—you just have to look at the importance of miracles of healing in the ministry of Jesus to see that (though it is worth noting that the need for healing contradicts the idea that Jesus merely ‘accepts people as they are’.)
But it is hard to escape the impression throughout that gospels that, more than ‘accepting’ people, Jesus comes to bring challenge and change. His love for us calls us to live a better life—which includes affirmation, but quickly moves beyond that.
A quite different contemporary agenda is brought to bear on this word, from the world of queer theory.
Queer theory is a field of post-structuralist critical theory which is broadly associated with the study and theorization of gender and sexual practices that exist outside of heterosexuality, and which challenge heteronormativity.
It is rooted in the deconstruction of Michel Foucault, which is ultimately based on Marxist theories of conflict and power, and seeks to deconstruct not only sexual identity, but all senses of boundaries in our views of the world. I came across a current example on Facebook, in a reel by Tim Barnett (a Christian apologists who works under the title of Red Pen Logic) where he critiques a ‘queer’ reading of Jesus’ teaching on repentance:
Jesus is a queer person. The first thing that Jesus says, that’s recorded in Scripture, he says a word that has been mistranslated as ‘repent’, which then Empire took and said ‘Oh this is a way to control everybody!’
This word translates metanoia, a word that actually means ‘change your mind’, go beyond your mind, so what he is saying is: go beyond what you thought you had to be, go beyond what Empire is telling you you have to be, because you can be so much more than that.
Break through the chains, break through the boxes, break through the borders and the barriers, and become something fabulous! And that, to me, that is an act of queering.
(I think Tim Barnett does quite a good job of critiquing this approach in the reel.)
These poor readings of what Jesus said need not lead us to despair! Texts do mean things, even though people can distort what they mean by reading poorly. Our response to these approaches should be to learn to read well—hence my writing my Grove booklet on How to Interpret the Bible. And so I post here the comment I wrote ten years ago about this term, which still appears to have relevance!
The idea of ‘repenting of sin’ causes us a bit of a problem nowadays. It causes us a problem in relation to those outside the Church as well as those inside the Church and faith. For those outside, there is a sense that Christians are ‘holier than thou’, and are telling them that they are ‘sinners’ whilst we are ‘righteous’, which feels like a put down. And there are wider questions about whether the language of ‘sin’ communicates anything at all; it is not a category that ordinary people understand.
But there is a problem for those on the inside too. Last week at New Wine [in 2016], Danielle Strickland suggested that we need to recover a sense of God’s creation and blessing of us, rather than continually dwelling on our sinfulness. Some might have heard in this echoes of Matthew Fox’s ‘original blessing’, but others welcomed it; a well-respected evangelical leader said to me ‘We need to get away from our obsession with Augustine on this!’
Part of this question relates to different understandings of atonement, and whether (for example) we should understand Jesus’ death and resurrection as dealing with the problem of human sin and God’s wrath, or whether (as I believe) there is a range of different ways of understanding this. But there is a much more straightforward issue to consider: the question of Jesus’ own language in relation to his announcement of the kingdom of God.
There is no doubt that the coming of God’s kingdom means the inversion of current structures of power and the dethroning of the rich and powerful, as Mary in the Magnificat eloquently expresses in Luke 1.46–55. This contradicts many human expectations, and is expressed by Jesus in the saying that ‘The first will be last, and the last first’ (Matt 19.30, 20.16 and elsewhere).
But centre of Jesus’ teaching is the proclamation of the kingdom—even the most sceptical NT scholar has agreed that his teaching in Mark 1.15 belongs to the historical core of what Jesus said and taught. And the announcement come with the invitation not just to receive good news, but also to ‘repent’. The background to this language is the idea of God’s coming in the OT, and in particular the idea that develops of the ‘great and terrible day of the Lord’. But this idea is distinctly ambiguous. On the one hand it will involve the deliverance of Israel from its enemies who will be judged by God (Is 2.12, an idea which we also find in Luke 1.71), but also accountability of Israel to her holy God (Amos 5.18). The visitation of God is consistently associated with the purification of his people as well as with their vindication.
It is hardly surprising, then, that John the Baptist’s announcement of the coming kingdom is expressed in the language of judgement, both in Matthew and in Luke. Some of the elements of judgement are not carried over into Jesus’ teaching (compare Jesus’ quotation in Luke 4.18–19 with the original in Isaiah 61.1–2), but the consistent feature of Jesus’ teaching is the inclusion of the language of ‘repentance.’ When I mention this in an online conversation a few days ago, a friend responded ‘Ah, but metanoia is a much richer idea than that.’ Is it? And what precisely does it mean?
I was recently pointed to Craig Keener’s helpful article on ‘Bible interpretation methods you should avoid‘ and it included this important observation:
One should also avoid determining the meaning of words by their etymologies. That is, you cannot break a word down into its component parts and always come up with its meaning, and you usually cannot determine the meaning a word has by looking at how it was used centuries earlier or how the word originated…
For example, some take the Greek word for “repent,” metanoieo, and divide it into two parts, of which the second, noieo, is related to thinking. Therefore, they say, “repent” simply means a change of mind. The problem with this interpretation is that the meaning of words is determined by their usage, not by their origins! The New Testament generally uses “repent” not in the Greek sense of “changing one’s mind” but in the sense of “turn” in the Old Testament prophets: a radical turning of our lives from sin to God’s righteousness.
It was interesting to see the despair and anger in the comments online when this was posted; earnest clergy were cross that Craig’s comments were robbing them of well-used methods of word study in teaching and preaching, and he was accused of being ‘elitist’ in his restriction of how we are allowed to read the Bible! The challenge here is the question of how we ever know what words mean.
Many people will look to etymology—the origin of a word. But ‘nice’ originates in the Latin word for ‘foolish’, and that is not what we usually mean when we use the word. (The idea that the meaning of words is shaped by their origin is called the ‘genetic fallacy’). We might then look at surrounding culture—how was the word used in Greek and Roman culture? Metanoia is indeed used in the sense of ‘a change in thinking’ in Plato and Menander (according to the Liddell and Scott lexicon), but this was several hundred years earlier, and in a different context. Just think of how words are used differently in a church context from wider culture.
Keener puts his finger on a key question: how was this term used in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint (referred to as ‘LXX’). I have a print lexicon (Abbott Smith) which gives exactly this information: what Hebrew word does this Greek word translate. This is vital because of continuity between the OT and the NT, because the NT writers quote the OT so much, and because, when they do, they most often quote from the LXX rather than translating from the Hebrew—because it was the LXX which was most read by both Jesus followers and the diaspora Jewish community. And the verb metanoeo translates the Hebrew term shuv, which literally means ‘to turn around’ and is used in the way we would used the word ‘repentance‘.
Repentance, which literally means to turn, is the activity of reviewing one’s actions and feeling contrition or regret for past wrongs. It generally involves a commitment to personal change and the resolve to live a more responsible and humane life.
The other issue that Keener raises is the use of the term in the NT, and reviewing this is sobering. If you do a word search, you will find that, far from being a ‘rich idea’ associated with ‘thinking again’, the verb and the noun metanoeo and metanoia are straightforwardly used in the sense of turning from sin in response to the invitation of God.
Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. (Matt 11.20)
And the consequences of failing to repent are judgement and death.
Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish! (Luke 13.2–5)
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild? I think not!
There are, of course, rich resources in the NT in relation to ‘thinking again’, not least Paul’s invitation to us to allow God to ‘renew our minds’ in Romans 12.2. And, crucially, grace is linked to repentance, in that it is only God’s grace which gives us the moment, the resources, and the opportunity to repent:
Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? (Romans 2.4)
For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self–controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. (Titus 2.11–12).
This does not immediately answer either the ‘inside’ nor the ‘outside’ questions in relation to sin that I started with. But when Jesus (and others) talking about ‘repentance’, they really do mean ‘turning from sin’ and turning to the invitation of God, rather than anything more sophisticated which we might find rather more congenial.
Buy me a Coffee
I was thinking of Romans 12 as I was reading this, so pleased to see the mention of v2 “changing our minds”. But, for me, this verse lives together with v1, about our bodies being “living sacrifices”. The order these are presented – living sacrifices, changing of our minds suggests to me the idea of what we do leads to us giving God permission to changing our minds.
Here’s the way I think about it:
1) Grace – God calls us when we are far away and not looking at him, causing us to turn our ears and listen
2) Repentance – our reaction to what we hear, now not just our ears, but our whole bodies to face him – the start of the living sacrifice
3) Power of Holy Spirit flows through us as we face him, gives us the strength to walk towards him, and away from our sin – the working out of the living sacrifice, which changes our minds, and makes that previously attractive sin less attractive. Ozempic for the soul?
I’m a fan of the Step Bible – stepbible.org, and not just because when I was a research student I cycled past Tyndale House every day. I used it this morning to examine how the verb metanoeō. I can examine in parallel ESV, Hebrew and LXX (and NT). Finding Mark 1:15, I pull up information on the verb in question. That has a link which then brings up the uses of the verb in LXX and NT. There are 18 in the LXX. I can then compare the Hebrew and Greek…
In 14 of the 18 cases metanoeō translate the Hebrew na.cham which the ESV translates, mostly, ‘relent’. The KJV typically translates this as ‘repent’.
The verses are these:
1 Sam15:29, Prov 20:25 (ba.qar), Prov 24:23 (shit), Prov 30:1 (?), Isa 46:8 (shuv), Jer 4:48, Jer 8:6, Jer 18:8, Jer 18:10, Jer 31:19, Joel 2:13, Joel 2:14, Amos 7:3, Amos 7:6, Jonah 3:9, Jonah 3:10, Jonah 4:2
I have given the Hebrew verb where this is not na.cham. The first half of Prov 30:1 in the LXX is not a close translation of the Hebrew.
Most significantly, in many of these verses God is the subject of the verb.
So, there is one case where shuv is translated using shuv, which is not a strong link.
However, in a number of the verses na.cham and shuv are in poetic parallel. These are associated concepts. The mental change leads to a change in action.
My favourite association of repentance and turning is Acts 3:12-26, Peter’s speech after the healing of the lame man:
v19: Repent therefore, and turn back [to God]
v26 …by turning every one of you from your wickedness
Repentance is associated with two turnings, away from sin and to God.
May I make another comment relating to “Jesus loves and affirms us as we are”?
For me, a passage which confounds this is Luke 15 as a whole. It starts with the Pharisees and scribes grumbling about Jesus receiving “tax collectors and sinners” and eating with them. Note that they are coming to him (v1) and not the other way round. Jesus’ response is to tell three stories about lost things being found: a sheep, a coin and (note) two sons.
The first two end with a “in the same way” about joy in heaven, before the angels (so it is God himself who shows the joy) concerning a sinner who repents. Here repentence is at least a change in mind about sinful behaviour, presumably leading to a change in behaviour.
The third, famous story has the younger son “came to himself”, which sounds like a change of mind, and realisation of the foolishness of his actions leading to turning back to go home. The story ends with the father inviting the older son to change his mind.
Jesus said that he had come to seek the lost sheep of the house of Israel. This was not to affirm them in their lostness, but bring them back in. It is worth noting that much of Jesus’ healing of physical ailments brings about the same restoration of individuals.
George van Kooten, Reverberations comes out strongly in favour of the original etymological meaning: rethink.
On what basis?
Is Salvation by faith alone or by repent and believe?
Thomas Brooks writes“The work of repentance is not the work of an hour, a day, or a year, but the work of a life. A sincere penitent makes as much conscience of repenting daily, as he does of believing daily; and he can as easily content himself with one act of faith, or love, or joy, as he can content himself with one act of repentance.”
John Calvin says “Repentance is the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of Him; and it consists in the mortification of the flesh and the renewing of the Spirit.”
“True repentance is firm and constant, and makes us war with the evil that is in us, not for a day or a week, but without end and without intermission.”
D. A. Carson remarks “There is no alternative to repentance, no other way to experience the blessing of the Lord. The nature of repentance in Scripture precludes the nonsense of partial repentance or contingent repentance. Genuine repentance does not turn from one sin while safeguarding others; partial repentance is as incongruous as partial pregnancy. Loyalty to God in selective areas is no longer loyalty, but treason. To repent of disloyalty in select areas, while preferring disloyalty in others, is no repentance at all. God does not ask us to give up this or that idol while permitting us to nurture several others; he demands, rather, that we abandon idolatry itself and return to the God against whom we have ‘so greatly revolted’.”
“The Puritans called repentance ‘the twin sister of faith.’ They go together in a genuine salvation experience.”
“We are trying to get young people to say,
‘Here am I’ before they have ever said, ‘Woe is me!’”[ Vance Havner ]
Shalom.
“The first word of the gospel is not ‘love.’ It is not even ‘grace.’ The first word of the gospel is ‘repent.’
From Matthew through the Revelation, repentance is an urgent and indisputable theme that is kept at the very forefront of the gospel message.”
God does undoubtedly command us both to repent, and to bring forth fruits meet for repentance; which if we willingly neglect, we cannot reasonably expect to be justified at all: therefore both repentance, and fruits meet for repentance, are, in some sense, necessary to justification.” J.Wesley.
It is “the obedience of Faith” Shalom.
The problem with such a view is that it goes against people’s experience. Wasnt it grace first that intervened with the apostle Paul when Jesus appeared to him? I suspect he didnt repent until after that experience and him being struck blind. And where does that grace spring from? Surely God’s love. So love-grace-faith/repentance.
I remember a sermon many years ago when the rather-overweight vicar illustrated the meaning of metanoia (shuv) by leaping up and turning round to face the opposite direction in the pulpit, causing an ominous cracking of its timbers. It is memorable vignettes like that, which make a sermon worthwhile.
Some quick thoughts.
I shan’t rehearse my problems with Critical Theory again (which are many) but I think it’s an error to assume that everyone who disagrees with you on the sexuality question is signed up to the CT arguments. There is a challenge here in that if you think being gay is something to be repented of (sexual identity/orientation is malleable and droppable, or at least can be minimised so it recedes away) that this isn’t what happens to people in the Church. This is where some people are talking past each other – pretending if you say you have a sexual identity this is somehow unChristian because your only identity is in Christ, but then being quite content with people making song and dance about their national identity, identity as a father, etc. etc.; whilst those who do talk about being gay as their sexual identity are doing so as a shorthand for saying it isn’t a choice and so they aren’t able to choose to change it, and it is in that sense part of who they are (and not a trivial aspect either as sexuality is not trivial).
I’m not sure that the contemporary problem with repentance is that it sounds holier than thou. Rather there’s a split in our understanding between whether you’re thinking of repentance and salvation as a single moment in time – e.g. you can look back to the point where you repented and were saved; or whether you think of it repentance and salvation as an ongoing lifelong thing, much like the Orthodox view of theosis. The former is rooted in a legalistic view of sin, where you’re meant to be sorry for your sins (violations of the divine naughty list) and so its very important that you have a very accurate view of your sins in order to be sorry for them, and if you’re not then the angry wrathful God will come and destroy you. The latter is rooted in a sickness view of sin, where we have to recognise the sickness and allow God in his grace to heal us, working and praying for that, improving our understanding, reorienting ourselves to Him and growing and flourishing in salvation that is ongoing. In God we have life, so if we persist in the sickness of sin, we cut ourselves off from God the source of life, so the wages of sin are death.
So long as you present the false dichotomy
‘can choose vs can’t choose’
and don’t admit that there are more than 2 options,
and then compound that by ignoring the times when other options have already been suggested,
e.g. ‘could once but can no longer’
or
‘the steps or Rubicons in question were executed at a time before the choice issue crystallised itself’,
then talking past one another will be exactly what will happen. But it only ever happens with people who, wrongly, have no interest in understanding.
Thanks Adam. I don’t think I anywhere say ‘all who disagree on sexuality buy into critical theory’, rather I note that buying into critical theory does lead you to a different view on sexuality.
You are right about people talking past each other. But the mainstream of orthodox Anglicans doesn’t believe anything like ‘repenting of being gay’. I am not aware of anyone saying that ‘Being a father shapes my whole outlook on life. It defines who I am’. `
As James and I say, salvation is past, present, and future. Repentance is the gateway onto the path of discipleship and salvation. But because we are on a journey towards holiness, we need to repent of our sins habitually in order to return to that pathway.
I am not sure that your description of two different views of sin are so polarised. They appear to belong together to me.
“Mainstream” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Where’s the border of “mainstream”? Those views were certainly in circulation in the 2000s. It’s all over the debate in the US. If Archbishop Ndukuba’s letter to ACNA in 2021 is anything to go by the conservative bishops in Africa align with those views. Do you really think no one’s contemplating bringing it back?
As for no one saying that ‘Being a father shapes my whole outlook on life. It defines who I am’ – I hear that quite often. It’s a pretty common attitude.
The problem with the word “repent” is that most people think it means “grovel”.
Nothing wrong with a bit of grovelling…
“We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table…”
But you’re right that that’s not what repentance is.
Yes, I agree. I note that at the beginning of the older piece after the introduction.
I like the quote “ God loves us the way we are, but too much to leave us that way” (Leighton Ford). For me, repentance is our active response to his offer to change us.
Yes, I think that is very helpful too. I wasn’t sure where it originated.
For decades the preaching of the Gospel
Of Repentance and Faith has been neglected
Leaving a vacuum for ignorance and pseudo christianities to flourish unabated.
Why is repentance such a dirty word among modern Christians?
Acts 3:19 “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”
Suggests that there is more to repentance than just sorrow or regret it unleashes a torrent of peace and overflowing joy, grace in actual fact.
Proverbs 28:13 “Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”
“Far too many Christians fear Holiness than they fear Sin”
was once remarked by someone.
Holiness is an overwhelming delight as Gift.
Read the holy scriptures, God is always saying
If you will repent you and your land will flourish
Rivers of oil, abundance of sheep, abundant fruits
Abundant life
Wake up church, preach the Cross preach The Gospel
Preach Resurrection Life!! Shalom.
Recommend reading a comprehensive biography of
Blaise Pascal
Year of grace 1654, Monday 23 November, feast of St. Clement . . . from about half past ten at night to about half an hour after midnight, FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars. Certitude, heartfelt joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. God of Jesus Christ. “My God and your God.” . . . Joy, Joy, Joy, tears of joy. . . Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. May I never be separated from him”.
This he wrote on a paper and had it sewn into his coat.
The Catholics hold him in high regard.
See pope Francis’s estimation of him. [I do not agree with some of his own concussions but is the best appraisal I have seen so far. ]
@ insidethevatican.com/news/newsflash/letter-106-2023-mon-june-19-pascal-night-of-fire/
Shalom.
ERROR Not concussions but conclusions. Oops.
As C S Lewis puts it in ‘Mere Christianity’: ‘Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement; he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.’ It is the Lord Jesus Christ who disarms us.
A minor point: While pœnitemini agite has indeed been understood by many in the ways you outline, I wonder whether this was Jerome’s own understanding of the phrase or whether he sought to express his belief that biblical repentance is not something that happens in one’s mind only. (At Mark 1:15 he actually seems to have used pœnitemini.) Note the beginning of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses!
I think that is an interesting question. I will post here Adam Morton’s comment on Facebook, which explores this question from Luther’s perspective quite well I think.
In the book of Acts, the word ‘love’ doesn’t appear. Words with the meaning ‘repent’ or ‘turn’ occur 30 times. Today’s church has totally screwed up gospel proclamation and the disposition of heart required to receive the kingdom of God.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
John 3
You can’t cut love out of the Gospel. It would cease to be the Gospel.
But the word ‘love’ here does not have the same semantic domain as our word ‘love’. That one means ‘will the best for the other’, whereas ours often mean ‘give me what I want’.
Does it? In some quarters it seems that “will the best for each other” has descended into the perverse mentality of “spare the rod and spoil the child”, or using the excuse to “tough love” to able to avoid any consideration of actual love. What you caricature as “give me what I want” is perhaps better seen as an appeal to not be lied to, not be ignored, and not be gaslit anymore.
God so loved…How? In this way- through the cross of Christ, as seen in the remainder of John.
Does it include John 3:17 or is that verse to be ignored?
Full atonement is multi-faceted, like a diamond. It is indivisible. The benefits of atonement do not exist outside of the Person of Jesus, like some floating detached metaphysical sweet tray.
To get the benefits, we have to “get” Jesus. He is King of Kings, the Kingdom of God is in Him.
Many of us would prefer that hitting the “repeat” button, is what is meant, not repent.