In Matthew, it is the first recorded word from the mouth of John the Baptist, and is the first spoken word of Christ’s public ministry. In Mark, the first mention of John includes the fact that he preached “a baptism of repentance,” and the first words of Christ’s proclamation include the imperative to repent. Likewise, Luke’s presentation of John the Baptist is nearly verbatim the same as Mark's, and Jesus describes His ministry as calling people “to repentance” (cf. Matthew 3:2, 4:17; Mark 1:4, 1:15; Luke 3:3, 5:32).
Oddly, the word does not appear in John’s gospel at all.
In the synoptics, the word seems to act as a trigger which ignites Christ’s ministry and the power of the Gospel.
The New Testament’s use of the word carries forward the important role which it had also in the Old Testament. Behind the English word “repent” lie several Hebrew vocabulary items. One of them is nacham, which refers to an emotional or psychological process of being sorry or regretting. Hebrew words tend to have large semantic fields, and nacham is no exception. It can also refer to sighing, pitying, or comforting. This requires not only that the translator be sensitive to context, but rather also that the reader reflect on what is shared in all of these divergent meanings. If nacham is “repent” and yet is also “sigh, pity, comfort,” then what is the common thread? “Pitying” and “comforting” are both transitive verbs which take direct objects; to “repent” may be to “pity” or “comfort” one’s self, the reflexive pronoun becoming the direct object. It may be useful to posit that there is more than one type of repentance, and that nacham may refer to one type rather than to all types. The notion of “sighing” may coincide with pivotal moments, of which repentance can sometimes be one.
So nacham might be a moment, a turning point, in which one sighs, considering one’s own sins, pitying one’s self, and yet also comforting one’s self, inasmuch as this insight into one’s nature, though painful, is also however a step toward clarity, toward confessing one’s sins, receiving forgiveness, and receiving from the Holy Spirit an impetus to amend one’s patterns of living.
There is another Hebrew word which is used more often in the Scriptures, and which has an even broader semantic field. The word shuv denotes “turning” and in its root is a literal and physical word: it refers to a change in direction. It can be used to give directions (II Kings 20:5, 9:18; Ruth 1:11, 1:12, Exodus 14:2), telling someone where to go and how to get there: to turn, to turn back, to turn around. In daily life in ancient times, shuv was used primarily as a physical verb of motion.
In the Scriptures, however, shuv is also, and more often, in a spiritual sense: a “turning” of the heart or mind which leads to a physical turning, or more pointedly, which is a physical turning. A repentance, ideally, does not remain a psychological or emotional event, but rather is also a physical change. If one repents of eating too much, then one takes the action of eating less — admittedly imperfectly, because humans of necessity relapse again into those sins of which they repent; yet a detectable physical action was still part of an authentic and sincere repentance.
Ancient Hebrew anthropology did not sharply distinguish between the physical and spiritual aspects of human beings. A Platonic distinction between the material body and the metaphysical soul was foreign Semitic thought. While the Greeks might have reasoned that a human being is composed of a body and a soul, the Hebrew would have argued that a human being is a body and a human being is a soul, inseparably intertwined. Indeed, a Hebrew might not have argued for this view, because this Semitic notion was so foundational to a Hebraic worldview that a Hebrew might not even have considered it as something for which one must construct arguments.
The use of the verb shuv to refer to repentance, then, a “turning” on both a physical and a spiritual level.
Shuv is broader in meaning than “repent” because it can mean a good turning — to turn toward God and away from evil — or a bad turning — away from God and toward evil. This word can also denote God’s turning: He can turn his favor toward people, or His wrath. All of these turnings will manifest themselves both on a spiritual level and on a physical level — and to the Hebrew, those would have been one unitary manifestation, not two linked manifestations.
So it is, then, that Moses asks God to “turn” from His wrath toward the Israelites (Exodus 32:12), warns the people about the consequences of “turning” away from God, and encourages them to “turn” toward God (Deuteronomy 4:30, 30:10). In one event, some Israelites twice use the verb to accuse their fellow Israelites of “turning” away from following the Lord, and the accused use the verb twice in defending themselves (Joshua 22: 16, 18, 23, 29). Solomon speaks of the people “turning to” God and “turning away” from their sins (I Kings 8:33, 35).
Malachi concludes his prophecies by foretelling a great day when God “will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:6). Nebuchadnezzar, however, prevented his “heart from turning” toward the Lord (II Chronicles 36:13).
A noun form of shuv is teshuvah which is used rarely in Scripture, but frequently in post-Biblical rabbinic Hebrew, to indicate repentance.
In the New Testament, the Greek word metanoia and associated verbal and noun forms refers to repentance. This word refers to a change of mind, or a new mind, or a higher-level mind.
All of this is packed into a single utterance: “Repent!” in the mouths of Jesus and of John the Baptist. This semantic richness requires a great deal of unpacking, but is all compressed into a single word.
So it was that Martin Luther made the very first of his famous 95 Theses: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” Luther was reflecting on pride of place given to this word in the three synoptics.
Luther points to repentance not as a one-time action, nor as a repeated action, but rather as a way of being. This can be quite foreign to many modern Christians, who have been taught that repentance is a pivotal action. But the “turning” of repentance is a continuous process.
When driving a car, one continuously makes very small adjustments with the steering wheel, to the right or two the left, even when traveling on a straight road. Many sophisticated aircraft are continuously adjusting their control surfaces in order to maintain a correct course.
One’s spiritual life is one of constant adjustment — constant repentance — seeking God’s guidance and surrendering to it, day by day, even moment to moment.
This type of repentance is not the image of a cataclysmic heart-rending moment of a tearful sinner on her or his knees. That type of repentance is meaningful and has its proper place. But there is a different type of repentance, which is living-in-the presence-of and a being-led-by, which has been called “joyful” by theologians like Basilea Schlink.
The words “joyful” and “repentance” are not often conjoined. But there is a type of repentance which is indeed joyful: to go through life, turning again and again away from one’s self, turning again and again to God — turning in a way which is both an adjustment of the heart and a tangible redirection of one’s physical life, the daily actions which one takes.
Repentance is neither an emotion, nor is it a human decision to act differently, although repentance can be accompanied by either or both of those. Repentance is an initial phase in the process of regeneration, and that process is started, powered, and performed by the Holy Spirit.
