3
Nephi 12:19
And behold, I have given you the law
and the commandments of my Father, that ye shall believe in me, and that ye
shall repent of your sins, and come unto me with a broken heart and a contrite
spirit.
Repentance
is key to discipleship but there is often confusion about it. There is a verse in the Doctrine and
Covenants that describes how to tell if someone else has repented ("By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his
sins—behold, he will confess them and forsake them.") But there are often questions about how to
live repentance, or do repentance, or tell whether or not we have really done
so ourselves.
Take these four ficticious case studies of members of the church
who have those questions: Bob, Bertha,
Phil and Phyllis
Bob: Bob says:
I looked at inappropriate materials on the internet a lot. I stopped.
Have I repented?
Bertha: Bertha
says: I'm 19 years old. I stole chips and salsa every day for lunch from
Walmart. One day I realized that what I
was doing was wrong. I felt intensely
sorry. I looked at myself and thought,
“You're a thief!” I went to the store
manager and confessed everything. I even
went to the bishop and confessed everything.
I'm working late nights now at Walmart to pay off and make restitution
for what I stole. I have resolved never
to do it again, and in fact to this day I have never again stolen anything from
any store anywhere. I still enjoy
drinking with my boyfriend every weekend, but I have never stolen anything
again. Have I repented?
Phil: Phil says: I'm 20 years old and I love the
Lord with all my heart. However, I am sure I did some wrong things that I
can't remember when I was much younger.
And so there are some sins in my life that I have never confessed. And I've never made restitution for them
because I can't remember them. Have I
repented?
Phyllis: Phyllis says: I am trying with everything I
have to live the gospel of Jesus Christ and align my daily life with His
will. But every single day I slip up and
do something wrong somewhere. I just
hate that. Have I repented? [1]
What
do you think?
F.
Burton Howard wrote: “Repentance means
work. It is not just stopping doing
something. It is not just recognizing
the wrong or knowing what should be done.
It is not only remorse.”[2]
Theodore
Burton, trying to describe what repentance is NOT said:
“...suffering
is not repentance. ...
punishment
is not repentance. Punishment follows disobedience
and precedes repentance....
“confession
is not repentance. Confession is an admission of guilt that occurs as
repentance begins.
...remorse is not repentance.
Suffering,
punishment, confession, remorse, and sorrow may sometimes accompany repentance,
but they are not repentance. What, then, is repentance?”[3]
To
try to answer that question it is instructive to watch the meanings and origins
of that word, “repent” as it is used in the Old and the New Testament.
The
Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, and one of the most common
words translated as “repent” is “shuv”. It means to turn, return, turn around or turn
back from. For example, in Ezekiel
33:8-11 it is translated as “turn from”.
“When
I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not
speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his
iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.
“Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn
from it [shube it-turn back from it]; if he do not turn from his way [shuv his
way-return back from his way], he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast
delivered thy soul.
…
“Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no
pleasure in the death of the wicked; but [He has pleasure when]... the wicked
turn from his way [shuv his way-turn back from his way] and live.”
The
Lord has pleasure in our turning back from our wickedness, turning back to
Him.. …
That is the message of the Old Testament. Prophet after
prophet writes of shuv—that turning
back to the Lord, where we can be received with joy and rejoicing.
The concept of shuv is
also found in the New Testament, which was written in Greek. When Jesus and his
apostles said “repent,” His disciples recorded that command in the Greek
language with the verb metanoeo. This
powerful word has great significance. In this word, the prefix meta means “change.” The
suffix relates to four important Greek terms: nous, meaning “the mind”;
gnosis, meaning “knowledge”; pneuma, meaning
“spirit”; and pnoe, meaning
“breath.”
Thus,
when Jesus said “repent,” in the New Testament He was saying “change” In the
context in which meta- and -neoeo are used in the New
Testament, the word metaneoeo means
a change of mind, spirit, and thought, a turning back to the Lord that changes
our understanding, focus and priorities.
Confusion
came, however, when the New Testament was translated from Greek into Latin.
Here an unfortunate choice was made in translation; the Greek word metaneoeo was translated into the
Latin word poenitere. The
Latin root poen in that
word is the same root found in our English words punish, penance, penitent, and repentance. The beautiful meaning of the Hebrew and Greek
words was thus changed in Latin to a meaning that involved suffering, and
punishing. It is no small wonder, then,
that many people anticipate that repentance, is, by its very nature, painful,
rather unsettling and scary
But
the original meaning of repentance is not that we be punished and suffer
(though suffering does, eventually, always naturally accompany sin whether we
repent or not), but rather repentance means turning back, towards God, and
changing who we are.
Moroni
7:34
34
And he hath said: Repent all ye ends of the earth and come unto me, and be baptized in my name, and have faith in
me, that ye may be saved.
Return,
turn back, change your mind and spirit to reflect the love and will of God.
“Come unto me”.
Repentance
(Shuv, Mentanoeo) is returning to God, it is changing what we love best, where
we are, what we long for, what we hope to be, what we strive to achieve, the
very nature of what we are transformed, with
a real desire that our will and understanding reflect the will and
nature of God: it is changing so that our heart comes to love
what He loves and our thoughts and actions reflect what he teaches.
As
it says in the Doctrine and Covenants section 64, verse 34, what does the Lord
require of us as we come to Him?:
34 Behold,
the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind; That's a repentant heart and mind.
It's
good to note that the verse just before that is the one that says
Wherefore,
be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work.
And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.
Thus we begin to realize that
repentance, the transformation of our heart and mind, is not a one sin at a
time series of mini and major projects but is, instead, a conscious, ongoing,
bit by bit, lifelong, daily way of living.
……..
3
Nephi 12:19
19
And behold, I have given you the law and the commandments of my Father, that ye
shall believe in me, and that ye shall repent of your sins, and come unto me with a broken heart and a
contrite spirit.
In modern usage a “broken heart” is often
understood to be a sorrowful or pain-filled heart. But there is another meaning to the word
“broken” that I believe is being used
here. It is the meaning used in the phrase “a horse that is broken”. A broken horse is a horse that you have
worked well and patiently and firmly with
over a period of time, and which eventually learns how to work WITH you,
rather than against you, often (though rarely perfectly) conforming its will to
yours.
And
that is how God works with us; well, patiently, and firmly, over time, teaching
us the good and wise ways of conforming our will to his as we turn more fully back to Him repenting,. And our hearts are, by his grace and love,
“broken” and instructed on how to work WITH Him as a “broken” horse works with
his owner.
Repentance
is often described as steps. An Elder
Critchlow came up with the seven “R”s of repentance in a General Conference
talk in 1962[4]. You may be familiar with those. The Primary manual I taught from lists four
steps. A recently published Young Women
manual lists nine. The Gospel Principles
manual lists seven principles, not steps, and then, asks this question: “How
do the principles in this section differ from the false idea that repentance is
the performance of a list of simple steps….?”
And
the fact is, repentance is not a series of steps, nor is it a process of
meticulously removing one sin at a time (though our focus on eliminating a
particular sin from our lives may be particularly on our mind), but rather it
is a mighty and ongoing change of who we are, aligning our will with God's will
and loving what He loves. It is a way of
life, a way of being, every day.
And,
I believe, as repentance becomes a way of life, forgiveness becomes a fact of
life.
We
often approach the realm of repentance with embarrassment, fear or pain, but in
essence, as we understand better the nature of the repentance we are called to
do, we begin to see, as was mentioned in last October's General Conference[5]
that God's instruction to repent is
actually
an
invitation to
“Embrace
the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the process of repentance as things that are
to be welcomed and applied daily...
[An
invitation to] Establish an attitude of ongoing...joyful, repentance by making
it our lifestyle of choice. ..
[An
invitation to] Keep [our] eyes on the Savior, care more about what He thinks of
[us than what others do] and let the consequences follow...
[and
an invitation to] Voluntarily and ultimately joyfully repent of sins, both
small and great, in real time,”[6] as we
seek to come to Him, and, with his grace, change our essence, and align our
will and love with His.
[1] Case studies adapted from a presentation,
“The Restored Doctrine of Repentance”, given by Mark Elbert Eastmond at a
Church Education System Conference
[2]
F. Burton Howard, “Repentance”, General Conference, April 1983
[3] Theodore M. Burton, “The Meaning of Repentance”, Ensign, August 1988
[4]
http://scriptures.byu.edu/gettalk.php?ID=1188
[5]
Jorg Klebingat, “Approaching the Throne of God with Confidence”, General
Conference, October 2014
[6]
ibid.
