Weekly Devotional 10-24-11 What is Godly Repentance?
Throughout Scripture men are asked (are required) to repent of their sins and turn to God, but what is repentance? Is it an emotion that originates in the heart of man or a mental determination that moves him toward God? Emotionalism alone cannot lead to true repentance because, as the wind, emotions are ever changing. They run hot, then cold. Emotions are often spurred to a fever pitch by great speeches, by tragedy or acts of love and may cause one to regret a particular action, but regret is not necessarily repentance. The same could be said of mental determination. One may regret a particular action but when the memory of that action fades so does his mental determination, and he often finds himself involved in the same action(s) again. Godly repentance reaches further into the soul of man than a repentance that is merely regret. It is mitigated on both the emotion of the heart, mental determination, and is also a work of God.
Unregenerate (the spiritually dead) man is not capable of repentance; he must first be made spiritually alive. Jesus said that a person must be born from above before he can see (or even understand) heaven or enter into it; explaining that this is the work of God the Holy Spirit (John 3:1-8). The reason for this, Jesus said, is that “man loves darkness rather than light, because his deeds are evil” (John 3:19). And, the Apostle Paul explained, “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). That repentance is sourced in God is further testified by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel,
Jeremiah 24:7 “Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart”….Ezekiel 36:26-27“26I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”
These passages refer to the people of Israel, but are non-the-less applicable to all men. It is God who is the giver of a new heart.
The apostle Paul affirms this in his letter to the Galatians, who were not Israelites but Gentiles, “1And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. 4But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:1-5)
As God moves upon the heart, the heart is softened, becomes responsive to His testimony, and the solicitation of the Holy Spirit. Man finds within himself a desire to turn from that which is offensive to God to pleasing Him. Godly repentance results in a change of heart, a change of desire, and a change of direction. It is a turning from that which is of self to that which is of God.
All sin is offensive to God and it will be offensive to each one of us if we are truly repentant. We are not truly repentant if we still revel in the things of the flesh or worldly enticements.
We cannot slander the Lord in word or deed and be repentant.
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