Meta-Noia

What is true repentance? Is it just one of those words in the christian pool of jargon that is commonly attached to 'salvation' or 'forgiveness'? When we accept Jesus as our God and Saviour, and we're told to repent, do we actually know what that means? I didn't.

The hebrew word for repentance is "metanoia". More literally, metanoia means "to change/alter thought or to have another mind. This was really new to me because I assumed that repentance was just an act of saying sorry for our wrong doings. So when Romans 12:2 talks about "renewing our mind" this is the straight up deal.

Okay, let's rewind just a little bit. Before I dive into what repentance means - and i'll try my best to explain it and what this means for us (I've really only learnt all of this since Monday!), let's take it back to why we're led to repentance...

So, I accepted Jesus into my heart as Lord and Saviour because I acknowledged that He was the Son of God and I wanted to have a relationship with Him. This was because since the beginning of time, when God created us and everything, he made everything good (Genesis 1) and He made man so that we could enjoy our Creator (God) and the creation around us. Since day one, we were made to love God, to have a relationship with him - i.e. to be holy. I remember someone saying in class that "holiness should be normal, and anything else is abnormal." This is what we were created for.

Everyone was made in God's image therefore, we don't realise this but we reflect a lot of God's nature. For example, we love, we get angry, we feel, we think, we imagine, we create, we remember, etc. This is how we can relate to God. God is not remote. He did not just place us on this earth and leave us be. He wants to be a part of our lives, He wants us to realise that there is more to life than just living for ourselves.

What comes to your mind when you think of God? I grew up in a family knowing that God defines love and He is our Father. However, though I knew these things, I did not take it to heart as whenever I felt bitter, selfish, alone, or just plain ashamed I sometimes would imagine that God just wanted to punish me, and could not stand to see me in a state of mess. This is completely wrong. I did not realise how much I distorted my view of God.

God is love. It says in 1John4:7-8, "Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God and anyone who loves God is born of God and knows God. He that does not love, does not know God for God is love." (1John4:7-8 Do we actually know in our hearts that He is as He says He is? If we really believed it and knew who God was - His nature and His character, we should be compelled to not feel ashamed to just come to Him just as we are.

In the letter written to the Romans, Paul says that it is God's lovingkindness that leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4). Nothing else but the understanding of God's love and what He did for us on the cross should compel us to repent- to change our mindset. It is not an inward focused action for having a selfish attitude towards asking for forgiveness and wanting to change is not repentance at all. In fact, sin is self.

Going back to who God is...because God is love, He does things out of love and for love, not anger. It is not God's intention for us to think that He has set us up to fail, to be embarassed, or to feel ashamed. We are His children. He wants to see us do well. It breaks His heart when we make the wrong choices, but He loves us the same even though we may not love Him. Life is like a love story: God created us to have a relationship with us - a two-way love bond. God could have programmed us to love Him but He gave us freewill to make our own choices because He loves us. Think of it this way, you would not want the person you loved to be like a robot who is made to love you because that just is not true love. That love has no emotion, no personality, no commitment, no depth. So God loves us but He took a risk- giving us the choice to love Him back. Think about how much rejection God gets everyday...

A lot of people understand that if God is God. He is powerful but they don't understand that He is about Love and Relationship. We often think that God controls and governs the universe with sheer power. If this was the case, if God's justice was brought on this earth, we'll be wiped out in a second. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) So thank God that we are saved by sheer grace through love! God uses His power to bring love and relationship, not complete domination - after all, we do have free will.

But with free will comes responsibility (haha, that sounded like something that came from Spiderman). When Paul talked about the "renewing of our mind", he was talking about the basis of repentance. Whatever we choose to be starts from our thoughts. Whatever good or bad thoughts we have will manifest into a specific attitude if we don't stop these thoughts. However, if this attitude develops, we act on it and if we do it often, it becomes a habit. It then evolves as part of our character over time and instances, it then leads to our destiny.

to be continued...