Calling people to repentance is the reason Jesus came (Luke 5:32) and the message he commissions his followers to preach (Luke 24:47). It’s the only way anyone can avoid God’s judgment (Luke 13:3). Given the supremely serious consequences of not repenting, it’s important to understand what repentance is.

Jesus said some surprising things during his ministry. One of the most surprising is in the Gospel of Luke, just after he receives a report of the massacre of some Galileans. Some concluded that the Galileans suffered because they were particularly sinful people (Luke 13:2). If the Galileans had been more holy (their thinking goes), they could have avoided a grisly end.

Jesus disagrees. He responds, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). He says the problem is that everyone is sinful before God and therefore headed toward God’s eternal judgment (that’s the meaning of “perish” in this context, see Luke 9:24–25). And according to Jesus, the solution to this massive problem of divine judgment isn’t to improve one’s behavior, but to “repent.”

Calling people to repentance is the reason Jesus came (Luke 5:32) and the message he commissions his followers to preach (Luke 24:47). It’s the only way anyone can avoid God’s judgment (Luke 13:3). Given the supremely serious consequences of not repenting, it’s important to understand what repentance is.

Heart of Repentance

To get to the heart of repentance, we need to dig deeper than sorrow for sin, apologies to God and other people, and changes in outward behavior. Repentance certainly leads to these — in fact, that’s the point of Jesus’s parable in Luke 13:6–9, which comes immediately after the teaching on repentance. The point of the parable is that true repentance necessarily results in changed attitudes and behavior. Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist calls for people to “bear fruits in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:8). Similarly, this means that acts of obedience (“fruits”) flow from (and are therefore not the same thing as) repentance.

So, what is the heart of repentance? Repentance is a change of perception and direction. As John Piper notes, the Greek word for “repent” refers to “a change of the mind’s perceptions and dispositions and purposes. . . . Repenting means experiencing a change of mind that now sees God as true and beautiful and worthy of all our praise and all our obedience.”

Read More