When Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door at Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, his first thesis focused on repentance: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said ‘Repent,’ he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.” Scripture is clear that repentance should be ongoing for the believer.

1. Repentance is an occasion of joy.

Scripture repeatedly emphasizes that repentance is a time of celebration. Jesus taught that repentance leads to the sort of celebration that takes place when a lost son comes home and his father rushes out to receive him and then throws his son a party (Luke 15:11–32). Levi the tax collector repented and hosted a great feast (Luke 5:27–32). So did Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10). Psalm 32, one of the penitential psalms (or psalms of repentance), concludes, “Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart! (Ps. 32:11). If you long for a place of joy, gladness, and rejoicing, then repentance is for you. 

2. Jesus began his ministry with a call for repentance.

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matt. 4:17) 

This alone, that Jesus began his preaching of the good news of the kingdom with a call for repentance, should motivate us to meditate on repentance. Jesus’s emphasis on repentance was not confined to his introduction. Robert Reymond wrote this rich summary of Jesus’s emphasis on repentance:

The glorified Christ placed beyond all doubt that repentance is to be a part of gospel proclamation, when he declared on the evening of his resurrection from the dead: “This is what is written: that the Messiah should suffer and rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance for . . . forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed . . . in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:46–47) . . . Jesus himself preached repentance [as a command] (Matt. 4:17; Mark 1:15), characterized the very purpose behind his coming to people in terms of calling sinners to repentance (Luke 5:32), warned that unless sinners repented they would perish (Luke 13:3, 5) and unless they were converted . . . and became as little children, they would never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 18:3), denounced whole cities that would not repent while commending Nineveh for repenting at the preaching of Jonah (Matt. 11:20–21; 12:41; Luke 10:13; 11:32), and declared that heaven rejoices over one sinner who repents (Luke 15:7, 10).

3. Repentance references a spiritual 180—an about-face.

Paul’s speech before King Agrippa reflects this definition. He summarized that wherever he travelled, he challenged his audiences “that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance” (Acts 26:20). This, then, is biblical repentance: an about-face of mind, heart, and will that bears fruit.

Question 87 of The Westminster Shorter Catechism, gives a rich and beautiful definition of repentance. “Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience.”

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