Repentance and Faith

Two men wept after betraying Jesus. Peter went out and wept bitterly (Matthew 26:75). Judas was seized with remorse and threw the money back (Matthew 27:3). Both were undone by what they had done. Only one came back. The difference between them was not how much grief each felt. It was the direction that grief moved them.

Not what regret alone can do

Paul draws a sharp line in 2 Corinthians 7:10: "Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death." Judas had worldly grief. It fixed on the consequences. Peter had something that turned him back toward Christ. Regret and remorse point inward and stay there. Repentance turns.

Paul described his own preaching as calling people to "repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance" (Acts 26:20). Two movements, not one: turn from, turn to. Genuine repentance is not just feeling bad about sin. It reorients the whole person away from sin and toward God.

The whole person turns

Jesus opened his ministry with a compound command: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). The grammar is not sequential. Repent and believe are not two steps you accomplish one after the other on a checklist. They are simultaneous movements in opposite directions, away from sin and toward Christ.

The prodigal son in Luke 15 is the clearest illustration. He "came to himself" in the far country (Luke 15:17). That moment of clarity is the beginning of repentance. Then he got up and walked toward his father. That walk is what genuine repentance looks like: not a feeling that stays in the chair, but a movement that changes your location.

Faith is not agreement with facts

James makes a brutal observation: "You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe, and shudder!" (James 2:19). The demons hold accurate theology. They know who Jesus is. They are not saved. Intellectual agreement with true propositions is not faith. What it lacks is trust.

Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Paul tells the Ephesians that salvation is "through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8). John reduces it to a single sentence: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). Believes. Not admires, not respects, not approves. Trusts. Active reliance on what Christ has done.

Two sides of one coin

Repentance and faith cannot be separated without distorting both. Genuine repentance turns from sin and turns toward Christ, which is already the beginning of faith. Genuine faith trusts Christ, which requires turning from confidence in everything else, which is already the beginning of repentance. Calvin was right to say that both are contained in the other.

You can try to separate them in theory. In practice, no one ever has. The person who says they believe in Christ but has no intention of turning from sin is not repenting. The person who turns from sin but refuses to trust Christ for their standing before God is doing penance, not repenting. The turn is always toward someone. The trust is always in someone who requires a turn.

This week, read Luke 15:11-24 with your group and ask: where do you see both repentance and faith in the prodigal's journey, and how do the two move together?