What is repentance?

Joel Beeke explains in this video that repentance is a 180-degree turnaround. It is a radical change of mind, soul, and will. It is the fruit of a new birth that the Holy Spirit works in our hearts. 

After salvation, we receive a new compass in our lives. Everything gravitates towards God. We are concerned about God’s will, His ways, and learning more about Him. Repentance is a turning from sin to God. Our attitude towards sin changes.

There are several facets of repentance. First, we will be genuinely sorry that we have sinned against God. Second, there is a loathing over sin and a hatred of it. There will be a pain in our soul. This produces a grief over our sin and a rejoicing and gratitude for God's forgiveness. Then, there is a forsaking of sin. This is the evidence of repentance. When you are truly grieved over sin, you stop doing it.

Acts 2:38 (NKJV) – “Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” 

When it comes to defining repentance and explaining what it is, The simplest definition is to say that repentance is a 180 degree turnaround. It's a radical change in my mind, my soul, and my will. It's the fruit of the new birth that the Holy Spirit works in our hearts so that we get a new compass in our lives. Our compass is no longer everything gravitating to me, but now everything gravitating to God, and I want to please God, and I'm concerned about God's favor, God's good pleasure, God's will, God's grace, and God himself. And so in repentance, what it looks like, what it's shaped like, is it's a turning from sin to God as my gravitational center.

And so it has a lot to do with my attitude towards sin. If God is my center, then several things are going to happen with relationship to sin, to my view of sin. First of all, I'm going to be genuinely sorry that I've sinned against such a wonderful triune God. So there's a grief over sin. Secondly, there is a loathing over sin, a hatred for sin, a real pain in my soul that I'm still sinning, like Paul in Romans 7, the good that I would, I find myself not doing, the evil that I would not do, I find myself doing.

Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Puritans used to call it loathing, and also another word that we don't use very much today compunction Compunction of sin like I can just pierces my soul. I just wish that all sin and me were dead. I wish I could serve the Lord with all my heart and mind and strength universally. It's another puritan word.

Universal obedience. When you repent, you repent universally. You want all sin cleaned up in your life. You want to obey God universally in every area of your lives. So you've got confession of sin or you've got grief over sin, loathing over sin, a compunction of sin, and that produces grief.

It grieves you. You're never, even when you're forgiven, you never lose that grief over saying, you can never joke about your past sins. You've offended the Lord of glory. Even when you're forgiven and you rejoice in your forgiveness, You're sorry that you've got such a bad record and a bad heart in yourself apart from grace. And then there is this wonderful thing the Bible calls the forsaking of sin.

That is the second part of a global view of repentance. You've got the hatred, the grief, the sorrow. Also, by the way, the accepting of sin's punishment. If God were to destroy me, I could only say he's just. But the second part of repentance is it gives evidence by forsaking sin.

So Proverbs says, whoso confesses his sin, so that includes your grief, your loathing and so on, and forsaketh his sin Shall find mercy. So when you're really sorry about something you