Repentance: Choosing God Again by Pastor Dolapo Lawal: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

What Repentance Actually Means

The Greek word behind "repentance" is metanoia. It means to change your mind, to think differently after, or to reconsider. More precisely: to change one's mind or perception after gaining new understanding.

This means that when someone repents, they stop seeing things the way they previously saw them. The simplest definition of repentance is this:

Repentance is to start to see things the way God sees them.

Both John the Baptist and Jesus opened their ministries with the same announcement. Matthew 3:1–2: John came preaching in the wilderness, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Matthew 4:17: From that time Jesus began to preach and say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Their messages sounded alike — which is why in Matthew 16, the disciples reported that some said Jesus was John the Baptist. The call to repentance was the defining note of both.

When they said "repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," the word for kingdom is basileia — authority, dominion. And in Matthew 6:33, Jesus says "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness." He does not say "its righteousness" — he says "his righteousness," personalizing the kingdom. The kingdom is not a place. It is wherever God's authority and dominion are exercised. So the call was: change your mind, because God's authority and God's way of seeing is now present among you.

The Veil and the Turning

2 Corinthians 3:14–18 — Their minds were blinded. Until this day, the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. Nevertheless, when one repents — turns to the Lord — the veil is taken away. For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And we all, with unveiled face, behold the glory of the Lord.

The veil is not removed by intelligence. It is removed by turning. You can be reading the Old Testament and still be reading the old covenant, if your mind has not turned to see Christ in it. You can be reading the New Testament and be reading the old covenant, if you have turned away from Christ. Repentance is what lifts the veil.

A Change of Mind About Everything

Because repentance means starting to see as God sees, it touches every category of thought:

• About sin — Not a weakness, not a flaw, not just "my struggle." Sin killed God. It is a big deal.
• About money — Not merely currency. Something that defines who you marry, what you study, how you value yourself. Something with that level of influence over a human life is a god. God did not call Satan "God." He said there are two masters: God and Mammon. A repented mind sees money the way God sees it.
• About death — When a believer dies and those around them mourn without comfort, something is wrong. Not that mourning is forbidden. But mourning as though there is no hope, to the point of inconsolability, reveals that the person's mind has not yet been changed about what death means for those in Christ.
• About enjoyment — Not all enjoyment is God's will. Martin Luther, following Augustine, called the root sin incurvatus in se — the soul turned inward, seeking its own glory rather than God's. Even moral behavior, done to look good or feel righteous, is sin at its root if it is not to honor God.

You cannot be a Christian and be opinionated in the sense of reserving the right to reject what God says. What was received was not merely a Savior. Romans 10:9 says confess "the Lord Jesus." The Greek word there is Kyrios — owner, possessor. He is the owner. The Christian is a steward.

The Difference Between Conviction and Repentance

Acts 2:37–38 — When they heard Peter's message, they were cut to their hearts. That phrase in the Greek is katanusso — to be pierced deeply, stabbed in the conscience, to feel sudden sharp conviction. They cried out: "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" That was verse 37. Verse 38 is the response: "Repent."

Peter's answer makes a crucial distinction. Verse 37 is what they felt. Verse 38 is what they were commanded to do.

• Conviction is what they felt in verse 37. Repentance is what they were commanded to do in verse 38.
• Conviction touches the heart. Repentance changes the life.
• Conviction is the Spirit piercing. Repentance is the person turning.
• One is the impact of truth. The other is the response to truth.

An opinion is what you hold. A conviction is what holds you — it functions like an arrest.

You may also like

Conversations On Faith Crisis

by Apostle Femi Lazarus

arrow_forward

Hardness of Heart

When a person is doing something wrong, they first feel bad. Then they feel bad less often. Then they stop feeling bad entirely. That stop feeling bad is not growth. It is not release. It is judgment.

Romans 1 reveals how God judges a generation: by withdrawing his voice and leaving them to what they have chosen. When God stopped speaking to Esau, there is not a single recorded conversation between them in all of scripture. When Esau went and married someone he was not supposed to, God said nothing. But when Jacob cheated Esau, God judged Jacob by engineering that Laban would also cheat him. The chastisement of a father is the mark of love. Who the Lord loves, he corrects. The absence of correction is the sign of abandonment.

There are people in church who have entered hardness of heart. They are no longer troubled by what once troubled them. They have found theology that accommodates their contradiction. The Bible says they "heap up for themselves teachers" — finding voices that confirm what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear.

If the divine nature is truly at work in a person, it takes more effort to disobey than to obey. What is visible in many lives is the opposite: it is a struggle to obey. That is the sign of a genuine conversion problem.

The church is being prepared for the day of Christ's return — as a bride for her husband. He is coming for a church without spot or wrinkle. Repentance is part of the preparation.

Repentance Is a Daily Practice

Repentance is not a one-time event. It is a daily, continuous practice of bringing every area of thought and life before the word of God.

Paul's letters to the Corinthians are structured around this. In 1 Corinthians, he asks repeatedly: "Know ye not?" — "Do you not know?" He saw the problem in the church and prescribed knowledge as the solution. What God gives in repentance is a knowing. He will teach. He will instruct. He will show the root.

When someone is struggling with lying, the prescription is not simply "stop lying" — it is to identify the root. Lying often grows from exaggeration, or from fear of hurting someone, or from people-pleasing. The root issue is what produces the fruit. When the root is addressed, the branches dry up. The Holy Spirit will teach — but the posture required is openness, not strategy.

That take-it-away prayer is the wrong prayer. What is needed is not removal but instruction — a knowing that becomes a conviction, that builds a resistance at the point of temptation.

John 15:1–5 — Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit. For without me you can do nothing.

The branches do not produce fruit. The vine produces. The branches bear — meaning they carry what the vine has grown. The branch's role is to remain connected, not to generate. And the way the word of God produces this kind of abiding connection: John 17:17 — "Sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth." John 15:3 — "You are already clean because of the word that I spoke to you."

The prescription when struggling is not white-knuckle willpower. It is to pray in the Spirit — allowing the Spirit to hover over that deep, that dark place — and then to receive the quickened word that God brings. That word cleanses. It begins to teach from the inside out.