Growing up in rural, Baptist, revivalistic culture in South Louisiana, I heard quite a few “turn or burn” sermons. People were warned of the horrors of hell and called to turn to Christ. I preached several of those sermons myself. Those types of sermons are appropriate on occasion. As I preached them on the street and in churches, what I found is that people wanted to turn from hell but not from sin. However, following Christ just doesn’t work that way.
When John the Baptizer bursts on the scene in the wilderness at the Jordan River, he proclaims a baptism of repentance. When people come to be baptized, instead of immediately welcoming and baptizing them, he calls them “a brood of vipers,” children of the serpent himself, and calls them to repentance. They ask, “What then shall we do?” He doesn’t tell them to seal the deal with a “sinner’s prayer.” Neither does he tell them that there is nothing they can do because salvation is a gift that doesn’t require one doing anything. He tells the ungenerous to be generous, the tax collecting thieves to stop stealing, and the bullying, extorting soldiers to be content with their wages (Lk 3.10-14). These are the fruits in keeping with repentance. This is what repentance looks like.
John is not calling them to a one-time act but to a new way of life. Generosity, honesty, and contentment are to become the pattern of life. These are the fruits that are to be seen from this time forward.
Repentance is a change of disposition and direction in relation to God. I would say that repentance is a change of mind, but it might be mistaken for rearranging a few intellectual thoughts in your mind. Repentance involves that, but it is much deeper than that.
Repentance involves the total disposition of a person, the way I am oriented in the way that I think, feel, and desire. Repentance involves what I love and what I hate. Repentance is as much visceral as it is intellectual. Repentance affects the heart, changing our deepest longings and loyalties. Because of all of these truths, repentance is a way of life, a direction that moves us toward the goal of holiness.
Repentance is a way of life for the Christian. We are sinners in constant need of renovation. Our longings and loyalties tend to be drawn toward the creation and not the Creator, idolizing ourselves or the world around us, believing that life can be found in something other than submission to God and his commandments.
This is why we sin. We believe that God is a liar, that sin really isn’t destructive. We believe that sin really does give us true life. Repentance is a change in the way of thinking toward sin in this regard. It is believing God—faith—that sin is what God says it is, and we are, therefore, continually turning from it. The gospel requires repentance because the gospel requires us to believe God for what he says and commit ourselves to his way; that is, pledging our allegiance to him.
This is why the church requires repentance from people coming in who are living lifestyles of sin. Accepting people or keeping people in the church who are impenitently sexually immoral, drunkards, thieves, and such the like tells a lie about God and their relationship to him. It is not gracious to “accept people as they are” in such a way that allows them to continue to destroy themselves and trot down the road to hell. They must be warned to flee from the wrath to come, to repent of that which is destroying them.
Repentance continues to be a discipline in the lives of Christians. We don’t stop at the font. It is a daily renewing of the mind that wants to be dragged back into that old way of thinking and living. Your mind is renewed in this way by hearing, reading, and meditating on God’s Word, through the encouragement of the saints, and coming to Christ’s Table. Along with these disciplines, you incorporate disciplines of pursuing good things and avoiding things that would tempt you to think and act in ways contrary to loyalty to Christ.
This way of life is the way of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
