What does the Bible say about repentance?

Sam Waldron explains in this video that repentance is an initial turning from sin and a subsequent turning to God. Some of the key passages that discuss repentance include John the Baptist’s call to repent in Matthew 3, Peter’s call for his countrymen to repent in Acts 2, Paul’s message on repentance in 2 Corinthians 7, and the Lord’s Prayer.

The Bible is clear that though there is an initial repentance and change of mind, repentance has another dimension. There is an ongoing lifestyle of repentance and the asking of God for forgiveness in Scripture.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NKJV) – “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

I think repentance is looked at both ways in the Bible. There are clear passages where Repentance is associated with the initial turning to God that brings a man to a sense of his sins and his need of Christ and causes him to turn into revulsion from his sins and from his idols to God. Some of the key passages that speak of this one-time initial repentance are Matthew chapter 3 and the parallel passages with John the Baptist preaching a baptism of repentance. Also Acts chapter 2 and Peter's call for his countrymen to repent. Luke 13 3 and 5 which speaks of the necessity except we repent we will all likewise perish.

But at the same time, the Bible's clear that though there is this initial repentance, this initial change of mind, which is the condition of forgiveness of sins, that repentance has another idea or another dimension that we have to talk about as well. And that dimension is the ongoing dimension of repentance. Repentance involves confession of sin and receiving the forgiveness of sin. Well, this is what the Apostle John requires in 1 John 1. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And so there's this, and it's present tense there. And John is addressing Christians there. He's not talking to people who've never been saved and telling them to confess their sins and get their sins forgiven. He's talking to Christians there. So there is, in John's perspective, what it means to walk in the light, to walk with God, to have fellowship with God.

One of the dimensions of that experience is an ongoing confession of sin and an ongoing forgiveness of sins. Similarly, in 2 Corinthians 7, the church at Corinth, as a church, is said to have experienced a godly sorrow and turning from a particular dimension of sin that had troubled their church life. And so you have that in 2 Corinthians 7. And indeed the Lord's Prayer itself teaches us to confess our sins and teaches us to ask God for ongoing forgiveness of sin.