What is repentance and what are the implications of that definition?

Sam Waldron explains in this video that we must go back to the biblical words used to describe repentance to understand what it is. Repentance is described in Scripture as: "turn," "regret," and most importantly, "a change of mind." A proper understanding of repentance is crucial. 

"Change of mind" is not the mere changing of one's mind like one would do when deciding what to eat or what to do. This "changing of mind" is not superficial or trivial. Rather, it is a renewing of mind at a fundamental level. This is a radical change of mind about important topics like God, man, sin, and Christ. It is more than a change of mind, but it involves a change of behavior. 

Revelations 3:19 (NKJV) – “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent.”

The best way to define repentance is to go right back to the main biblical word. There are several biblical words, of course, that are used to describe repentance. There's a word that basically means turn. There's a word that means regret. There are other words that one has to take into account when you do a thorough study of repentance in the Bible.

But the, I think by common understanding and by common admission, the main word is the Greek word metanoia or the verb is metano-o-o-o and that word means a change of mind. And that terminology, that repentance is a change of mind, is crucial. It's crucial because properly understood, it delivers the Christian church and the one who wants to be a genuine Christian from two very different but very deadly errors with regard to repentance. Repentance is a change of mind. Now, mind in Scripture is not something that's superficial or trivial to human nature.

Mind is fundamental. The way we are changed into the image of God more and more is according to Paul in Romans 12, by the renewing of our minds. And so when a person's mind is changed in the Bible, they are changed at a fundamental and root part of their being. So a change of mind is revolutionary. It's radical and it's a change of mind about the most important things.

God, sin, man, Christ. So it's important to emphasize that this change of mind is not something trivial. It's not like changing your mind for having steak to fish at dinner. It's a radical, important foundational change of mind about the most important things about life. So it's not a trivial thing.

We change our minds and that's maybe associated with trivialities and superficialities in our common parlance, but that is not the meaning or the implication of change of mind in the Bible. However, that same definition and meaning of the Greek word also delivers us not just from easy believism, which I've been talking about, the notion that a person can be saved by a kind of superficial assent to certain truths. Repentance as a change of mind is much more, much deeper, much more radical than that. It's the change of something that controls human behavior. You