If you run the generic google search on the definition of repent we are told: "feel or express sincere regret or remorse about one's wrongdoing or sin." This is not what repent means. Repent means to turn away from your sin.
I think turning away from sin is the
consequence of repentance, not repentance itself. God "repents" in the Old Testament more than anyone else. Was He turning away from sin when He repented? Obviously not. But He did
change His mind about things. And this, I believe, is the essence of repentance: changing one's thinking. If I turn away from my sin, there has been a chain of thinking that has prompted me to do so. I don't just turn away from sin (or turn to holy living) for no reason. Generally, I have some sort of rationale for making changes in how I behave. This is certainly what is evident in those instances in Scripture where God "repents" or changes His mind. He never acts capriciously, or arbitrarily, when He does so. There is always a reason for His deciding to make changes to the things He did or intended to do.
I've observed believers attempting to make changes to their sinful behaviour without having actually repented, that is, changed their thinking about it. They aren't clear, for example, about what lies they adopted that were integral to bringing them into sin and so they have not rooted out those lies from their thinking. All they know is that they ought to be more holy, more righteous, and so they determine to forsake their sin. The lies remain, however, influencing their thinking, and in time produce more sinful fruit. In such a case, I don't think repentance has actually occurred. There has been no true, comprehensive change of the thinking that has brought the person into sin.
Sometimes, too, a believer has an association between a sinful practice and an activity, or place, or person that they have not consciously recognized. And so, when they resolve to forsake the sinful practice and set about to do so, they find their efforts sabotaged by this association about which they are not consciously aware. The believer has not spent any time analyzing the thinking and attendant influences that have produced his sin and so when he attempts to forsake his sin, he is unable to do so consistently over time. Proper repentance requires the sort of prayerful analysis of the thinking and influences that have produced one's sin so that they may be torn down and/or avoided. (
2 Corinthians 10:4-5)
For example, a man struggling with correcting his foul mouth, hangs around people who are using foul language constantly. They are his friends and he has grown so used to their coarse talk that he doesn't notice it. It never occurs to him that they contribute to his inability to curb his own use of profanity and to halt his foolish and sinful jesting. He has not spent any time thinking through why he has such a foul mouth and so he is not able to properly repent of the sin he's trying to eradicate. His thinking about his foul talking, about its wrongness, may have changed, but if he has not changed in his thinking toward directly-related influences, he is not likely to succeed in forsaking his sin.
In light of these things, I am always careful in discipling men to distinguish the effects of repentance from repentance itself. It is very easy, since there is significant overlap of these things, to conflate them.
There are two Hebrew letters, one represents fire or to devour. A more ancient meaning of the letter is teeth or to devour. The other letter represents tent, or house or dwelling. During the civil war it was not uncommon to burn the plantation homes down. So the the people could not go back to slavery, because their home no longer existed. When Jerusalem was conquered they burned the city down so the people could not return to their homes. They had to go and find a new home in a new country. It was not until after the Holocaust that they were given their land back and able to return to the ancient city.
Going back to the root meaning of a word is not always helpful since language is always in a state of evolution, of change. Living languages are dynamic, absorbing new concepts, shifting in word-meaning, expanding and contracting in the number of words commonly in use. It is a mistake, then, to expect that how a word is used in Scripture is
always related to the word's root or original meaning.
I am sure what is going to follow this post is a lot of people trying to promote their opinion of what repent means. So this post should soon become an example of the diversity we can expect.
You don't seem to have any problem with promoting your own opinion of what the word "repentance" means...
