"Sorry, I won't do it again." Whether it is the small boy who has just kicked his ball through your window, the passenger who has used her mobile phone without realizing she is in a Ruheabteil, the husband who forgets his wife's birthday, or the motorist caught driving at 125 kilometres an hour on the motorway, the phrase is one that fits many circumstances. You have made a mistake, you realize you have caused offence, and you promise to do better in future.
This is not quite the same as, "Oh dear, I won't do that again" - the words of the cook who has roasted the chicken at 350° instead of 220°, of the sleeper who forgets to set the alarm and oversleeps, of the tea-drinker who mistakes the salt for the sugar. Here it is only you who have suffered - your mistake hasn't involved anyone else.
Repentance is something deeper, yet it shares characteristics with the two kinds of situation I have described. It is something deeper, because it is not something said to oneself, it is not something spoken to another person - it involves our relation with God. But there is still the "Oh dear" - the realization that we have made a mistake. There is still the "Sorry" - the sadness at having repaid God's love so miserably. And there is still the intention to do better in future.
In the Old Testament, repentance can simply mean changing one's mind. Indeed, the older versions of the English Bible are full of references to God repenting ("It repented the Lord that he had made man" (Gen.6:6), "The Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people" (Exod.32:14)). (Modern translations have avoided the word in this context!) More relevantly, repentance is what happens when we stop disobeying God, and change our ways. The Chronicler, looking back from the time of the Exile, tells us that Solomon foresaw God's punishment for disobedience and prayed "if they repent with all their heart and soul in the land of their captivity (that you will) maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you." (2 Chr. 6:38).
It is not just our ways that we need to change, but our attitude. Consider Job. The whole point of the story of Job is that he was not a wrongdoer - he was upright and righteous. Yet he questions God's sense of fair play, and at the end, he realizes his mistake: "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:5-6)
The Old Testament calls this "returning to God". The New Testament calls it "changing our mind". The Greek word metanoia is a bit deeper than that: it implies that we have to transform our way of looking at things. Both John the Baptist and Jesus began their ministry by calling people to change from one way of thinking to another, from a wrong one to a right one. "Think again!"
To think again, we need a new insight, and the New Testament is clear that this is a gift from God (Acts 5:31, 11:18), sometimes by putting us in a situation where we realize that we are walking the wrong way - the parable of the Prodigal Son is an excellent illustration of this. The son "comes to himself" and then gets up and goes back to his father (Luke 15:17-18). Or sometimes through the message of others - look at 2 Cor 7, where Paul writes: "Even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it ... I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance."
In the Western world, our thoughts on repentance have been shaped by the Latin Bible, which translated metanoia by pœnitentia. But the root behind the Latin word is a word connected with punishment: and this has given us in the west an unhealthy view of the negative side of repentance. The Roman Catholic church has stressed the idea of penance - doing something to express our sorrow in the form of a token "punishment". Calvin stressed the need to be "excited by the knowledge of Divine judgment" and to "mortify our flesh."
But repentance is not a penance. It is not about punishment, but about accepting the good news of God's salvation. In Old Testament times, a sign of repentance was to tear one's garments, to put on sackcloth and ashes. But as the prophets reminded people, this could lead to a mistaken view of repentance - a mechanical reliance on outward actions. "Rend your hearts, not your clothes," was their repeated call - true repentance involves sorrow, but not punishment.
So repentance is something positive. We turn to God, and we share with joy in God's goodness. In Jesus, God has taken away the sorrow, the punishment, the weight of our wilful separation which we call "sin". When we repent, we turn to God and "sin no more". May God grant us this for all time - the repentance that brings us to walk along with God, the repentance that endures!
HD