Repent
Recently I talked to a family
member about the word repent. I, as well as many other people, think that the word repent means to
confess. Let’s start at the beginning, by talking about sin. At the very front
of your Bible, you’ll find the book of Genesis.
Genesis 2-3
“Thus the heavens and the earth
were completed in all their vast array…Now the Lord God had planted a garden in
the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed…In the middle of the
garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…And
the Lord commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from
it you will certainly die…He (the serpent A.K.A Satan) said to the
woman, ‘Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’ The woman (Eve) said to the serpent, ‘We may eat fruit from the
trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree
that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will
die.’ ‘You
will not certainly die.’ The serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened,
and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ ‘When the woman
saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and
also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some of it and ate it. She also
gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”
That was a huge whoopsie. It’s like
missing the game-winning field goal. The difference is that this “whoopsie”
changed the world. God’s perfect paradise was gone because of SIN. Sin is
basically the bad stuff we do. Underlined in red is God’s warning. There are
lots of these warnings in the Bible, which is a good reason to start reading
that giant, dusty old Bible that has been sitting on the same shelf collecting
dust for years. Anyway, look at the yellow underlined section. This is the part
that Eve corrected the serpent. She knows what the right thing to do is. But in
the green section, Satan just pushes that aside, and tells her that what she heard
from God isn’t true. He goes on in the blue section, still denying that what
God said was true. And she buys into it! But for the cherry on top, she then
gives it to her husband, and he falls into the same exact trap, and eats it
too!
So, where does repentance (plural
of repent) have to do with this? After you sin, the next step is to repent.
Like I said before, many people believe that to repent means to confess or
apologize for your sins. NOPE. Wait. What? Repent goes along with this meaning,
but that isn’t the full truth. While apologizing for your sins is something God
wants you to do, do you think that if someone apologizes, they won’t do it
again? No! Just apologizing isn’t going to fix the problem. To completely fix
the problem you need TO TURN AWAY FROM SIN. Ta-da! That is the definition.
To repent means to turn away from sin.
So
really, after you sin (which every person is bound to do more than once in
their lifetime), you need to apologize for your sin. Then you need to turn away
from sin. REPENT!
I hope this
encouraged and inspired you as well as many others!
LOVE GRACE
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