What is the relationship between faith and repentance?

John Snyder explains in this video that faith and repentance are two sides of one coin. No one would turn to God from their sin apart from a saving faith. After conversion, we believe what God has said about us and the world and sin. We want to make room for God and to turn away from all other substitutes.

Repentance is not a one-time event. Similarly, faith has a beginning and it continues throughout the life of a believer. There is a life of believing God and responding to God. In the same way, in regards to repentance, there is an ongoing turning. We turn away from all, that we may turn afresh to God.

Acts 20:20-21 (NKJV) – “I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you, and taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying to Jews, and also to Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

When we speak of faith and repentance, they really are two sides of one coin. No one would return from that to a God that's invisible apart from faith. It is because we believe what God says about Himself. It's because we believe what God says about us. It's because we believe what he says about sin and the world and the cross of Christ that makes us want to make room for God, to turn away from all other fillers or substitutes.

Like faith, repentance is not a one-time thing. It's not once done and forever accomplished. In the life of a Christian, faith has a beginning. We call it conversion. So does repentance.

But faith also continues. There's a life of believing God, of listening to God, responding to God. And repentance is like that. There's an ongoing turning. Each morning the Christian wakes up, we decide to turn away from the whispers of the world.

We even turn away from ourselves. We turn from all that we might turn afresh to God.