“Repent!” This is recorded as the first word Jesus Christ uttered when He began His ministry on Earth.
“Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). Jesus preached this consistently throughout His ministry: “[E]xcept ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). He instructed His disciples “that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations” (Luke 24:47).
Have you repented? Do you even know what repentance is? You probably have a general idea. But did you know that the vast majority of people who believe themselves to be Christian have accepted an incomplete and, in fact, a treacherously false doctrine of repentance? Are you one of them?
Unless you truly repent, you will perish! So says Jesus Christ. You need to understand, believe and act on what repentance really is as taught throughout the Bible and by Christ Himself.
God is offering you eternal life through the terms of a covenant made possible by Christ’s sacrifice. Before you can receive salvation, however, God first requires a transformation of the mind to take place. You must become converted and receive the Holy Spirit so you can walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4, 22) . You must use the Holy Spirit to overcome your human nature while qualifying for the Kingdom of God.
And that all-important process starts with what Herbert Armstrong termed real repentance. He used the word real to describe repentance because he came to see that many people even within God’s true Church didn’t understand the difference between a real and a false repentance.
Why is that? Because real repentance doesn’t come naturally. We need God to grant it to us (e.g. Acts 5:31; 11:18). It requires spiritual understanding, and it is hard work. Thus, it is often too easy to default to a false repentance.
Consider the significance of this short but little-understood scripture: “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). Godly sorrow—or in Mr. Armstrong’s words, real repentance—leads to salvation. However, the sorrow of the world, a false repentance, will eventually lead us to eternal death. These two types of repentance could not be further apart in their real-world outcomes for us. We must know the difference between them. Our salvation is at stake.
This article will help you examine yourself.
Beware False Repentance
What does false repentance look like? Well, it can be very deceptive. As Mr. Armstrong said, human nature wants to be right, but not necessarily to do right. Repentance can be similar. If we have sinned, we can feel guilt and deep sorrow, we can shed tears and want to repent. But if we move past these emotions without the conviction to really change, then we end up reverting back to the same old sins. We have just experienced worldly sorrow—a false repentance.
Sorrow is not repentance: Change is repentance. Godly sorrow leads to permanent change. If we don’t come to abhor our sins and see them through God’s eyes, we end up experiencing mere self-remorse. Will remorse save anyone? Absolutely not. Repentance and conversion saves.
Sin unrepented of always increases. Problems grow out of hand, individual lives can be destroyed, families shatter, congregations suffer. Those are the fruits of false repentance. Unless we change, this will eventually lead to death. We must do everything possible to avoid a false repentance.
Paul describes the repentant attitude we should have toward sin: “For behold this self-same thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter” (2 Corinthians 7:11). This verse describes the attitude needed for God to grant repentance.
Here we will examine three pillars of real repentance.
One Real repentance produces a surrendered spirit
Mr. Armstrong beautifully described the attitude we need in his article “What Is Real Spiritual-Mindedness?”: “The spiritual mind is the surrendered mind. It is the yielded mind. It is the mind that has given up all wanting its own way. It is the mind that has been thoroughly conquered in its rebellion against God. It is the mind that, henceforth, is willing to obey God, no matter what the cost …” (Plain Truth, February 1934).
That surrendered, submissive attitude became the mind-set of those who had gathered to hear Peter preach at the temple on the first Pentecost after Christ’s death. God had just imbued those in the Church with the Holy Spirit. Peter stood up and delivered a powerful sermon that convicted the minds of the multitude. “Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37).
These men were pricked in their heart. Peter’s message had done its job: It broke down their carnal resistance toward God and His truth, and they now wanted to make changes in their lives. “What shall we do?” they asked. Peter then gave them the formula that would lead to the ultimate change: “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (verse 38, New King James Version).
Through the Holy Spirit, God worked with the multitude. Their surrendered, submissive attitude came first, before they could repent and be baptized.
As Mr. Armstrong taught from the Bible, there are only two conditions for God to forgive our sins: repentance and faith. However, a surrendered spirit is part of the process of repentance. It is where repentance begins! Often, as in this case in Acts 2, it is the truth that God uses to lead us to the point of surrender.
In a March 1982 sermon titled “Passover Examination,” Mr. Armstrong said, “I don’t believe anyone receives the Holy Spirit until the human spirit has been conquered by God and His Spirit. I often think of a spirited young colt. You try to get on him, and he’ll try to throw you. You can’t do a thing with him. You’ve got to break him. He’s got to be conquered; and then you do have a still spirited horse, but he becomes of great value. But he has to be broken. Do you know God has to break our wills and break us? And we have to be brought to the place of surrender to Him.” God must conquer our self-will and our human nature!
The whole question comes down to this: At our very core, our thoughts, focus and affections center entirely around ourselves and those closest to us, our interests, or things that we associate ourselves with. All of this is self-love.
This self-love is the vain, carnal, natural enemy of God. It is self-reliant and always knows best, always wants to go its own way. It resists God, opposes God and wars against God.
God wants to create in us instead the selfless mind of Jesus Christ (Philippians 2:5): a humble, submissive attitude that desires to submit to God, obey God, to serve Him and serve others before ourselves.
Genesis 1:26 tells us it is God’s purpose to create man in His image, which means God’s own character. Therefore our human nature must be eradicated and replaced with godly character. Once “broken in,” we are now ready to receive the Spirit of God and to allow the spiritual creation process to take place.
What if you were baptized many years ago and this process has been unfolding for quite some time. Does a surrendered attitude still play a role in the life of a longtime Christian? Absolutely. Remaining surrendered and conquered is an ongoing way of life for all Christians. “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit” (Psalm 34:18).
Consider: Most of God’s people have fallen away in this end time; the Laodicean condition is the dominant characteristic of this age (Revelation 3:14-22). Over time, as we grow accustomed to God’s way of life, complacency can cause us to slip back into former habits of self-reliance. New Testament history, especially in this final Church era, shows the danger in God’s people choosing to return to the world like a dog returning to its vomit (2 Peter 2:20-22).
Many have fallen into the trap of believing once they’ve acquired a certain amount of knowledge, or been in God’s Church for some time, that all that knowledge will save them. All the knowledge in the world will not save a single person! We need knowledge, but it’s God who saves, through repentance! In fact, knowledge has a tendency to puff us up, which is sin (1 Corinthians 8:1). When it is not applied, it makes us vulnerable to self-deception (James 1:22).
Being conquered and surrendered happens before baptism, but we must be careful that, once surrendered, we remain surrendered. This requires constant effort through the course of our life.
Real repentance requires a humble, surrendered spirit—but it also inspires a real zeal in someone wanting to make changes and move forward. The lukewarmness has gone. The attributes Paul discusses in 2 Corinthians 7:11 are clear to see. That newfound zeal is a good sign of real repentance.
Two We must repent of what we are
For some who have grown up in the Church or spent most of their lives in it, real repentance can prove more elusive. Most of our young people have avoided the kind of destructive life choices that have hurt and scarred many others. They are what we might call “good kids”: They pray, read the Bible, go to services each week, and desire to lead wholesome lives.
However, during baptismal counseling, they sometimes struggle to clearly see their human nature. Ministers point out that they are sinners like everyone else and that Christ was crucified for them too. They know intellectually that they have sins; at times those are clear on the outside. But they sometimes struggle to see the inner nature behind those sins.
In explaining real repentance, we often explain that sin isn’t just a random act; it starts in the mind. It begins with attitudes the Bible calls “works of the flesh” (Galatians 5:19-21). We must distinguish between the attitude of sin and the act of sin. It’s the attitudes these verses describe that lead us to sin, and these attitudes must be repented of as well as the acts of sin. We cannot overcome the sin until we overcome the attitude.
This is why Mr. Armstrong wrote, “Repentance results not only from real godly sorrow for what you have done, but for what you are, as well” (Plain Truth, August 1962).
Well, what are we? Even if we have led relatively “good lives” as some would see it, we are still filled with attitudes of self-love and vanity that cut us off from God and cause us problems. We must come to see ourselves for what we really are. We will always struggle to repent until we truly see our human nature. That is the basis for understanding biblical repentance: recognizing our human nature that is at war against the great God!
“I said that before one can be converted, he must repent of what he is, as well as what he has done,” Mr. Armstrong continued. “And now I wonder if you see what man is! I wonder if you, now reading this, begin to see what you really are! Man is vanity. Man is lust. Man is hostile to God, loyal to what is opposed to and warring against God and God’s way! Man cannot find peace with his Maker on any terms but unconditional surrender. That means forsaking this world and its ways and hostilities.”
Jeremiah 17:9 describes our evil heart and concludes: “Who can know it?” The answer is, only God! “Even Death and Destruction hold no secrets from the Lord. How much more does he know the human heart!” (Proverbs 15:11, New Living Translation). Truly we need His help to recognize the evil in our own thinking and motives. David prayed, “Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults” (Psalm 19:12).
God wants us to go deeper than the act of sin; He wants to show us what we are—and have us repent of both. If we work on the sin alone without changing the attitude, we are like a record going around and around in circles. That is what Mr. Armstrong meant by repenting of what we are. We all must do this and focus on the attitudes that shape our thinking.
Human nature, with all its evil attitudes, is a cancer that must be cut out. But we cannot do it on our own. It is through the power of the Holy Spirit that God supplies the help we need. With God’s power, we can overcome any sin! It may take time, but we will gain the victory.
Three Repentance produces fruit
In a 1979 sermon titled
“The Administration of the Spirit of Forgiveness,” Herman Hoeh said, “For years, this work operated at Mr. Armstrong’s level, by his own admission, on accepting words as evidence of repentance rather than deeds. And that was the great mistake that was made through the ’60s into the ’70s. Then Mr. Armstrong realized that sometimes people say but cannot do without the power of the Spirit. And the power of the Spirit of God enables one to both repent and to illustrate the works of repentance,” or to produce fruit.
That is a profound insight. After the rebellions in the Church during the 1970s, Mr. Armstrong saw that it was a great mistake to accept words only as evidence of repentance because sometimes people say things they don’t mean or can’t back up. He realized that if people do experience real repentance, they will produce tangible works. Through the Holy Spirit, God enables a person both to repent and to produce evidence of that repentance, which is change. So Mr. Armstrong determined to look for fruit in addition to words as evidence of repentance.
John the Baptist admonished the hypocritical religious leaders, “O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance” (Matthew 3:7-8). Here he expressed an important principle concerning real repentance. If it is genuine, there is evidence, or fruits to see. Repentance brings about a spiritual change of direction that in turn leads to physical changes.
This is similar to Paul’s statement in Acts 26:20. Everywhere he traveled, Paul told people “that they should repent and turn to God and do works meet for repentance.”
The words fruits and works in these verses mean the same thing: God wants evidence of our change of attitude: proof by performance. Producing fruit means making permanent changes. It is turning to God and obeying His laws.
Romans 6:4 says our former self must be symbolically buried through baptism into death, and then we are raised up from the water to walk in newness of life—a permanent change.
God and Christ stand always ready and willing to forgive—but they will not forgive until real repentance has taken place. That is His way, and it is the way of His Church and His ministry. Being invited into the Church, or back to the Church, comes on the condition of real repentance taking place first.
Christ said, “Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:17-20). If God gives us His Spirit, we must put it to work. Every tree that doesn’t bring forth good fruit is chopped down and cast in the fire. It may not be today or tomorrow or next year, but at Christ’s return, we will all know who produced and who didn’t.
Christ also said, “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples” (John 15:8). We are only Christ’s disciples if we are bearing fruit—and that is true even if we have been in the Church for 10, 20 or 50 years. We are not saved by works—we are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8)—but there are conditions. We qualify for the Kingdom of God by producing fruit.
The parable of the seed and the sower (Matthew 13) shows that of the people God calls, only a portion respond and produce the necessary change to qualify for the Kingdom of God. This parable is a warning to all Christians that there must be increase. When God gives someone His Holy Spirit, fruit must be produced (Luke 19:12-26). Those who understand and are mastering repentance bring forth fruit—some thirty, some sixty and some a hundred-fold.
These three pillars of repentance will help us understand the difference between a false repentance and real repentance. This is one of the most important subjects a Christian can come to learn. Through this process, mankind will experience the beautiful life God wants us to enjoy, and at the end of it, we will be given eternal salvation! Now that is worth repenting for!