The Turn Your Life Needs

"Repent, and let each one of you is baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38). This is how the apostle Peter responded to a basic human question: "What shall we do? [to be saved]? (verse 37). All of us, in the depths of our being, wish for something better. Perhaps a better social status, the best home, the best family, the best car, the best computer, or the best career. We yearn for personal fulfillment, and we strive to find those things that we believe will give us inner peace. But, just like the water from Jacob's well, none of these things can quench our thirst for fulfillment, nor our emotional and spiritual needs, only the water of life that Jesus offers us.

Those who listened to Peter were pierced through his heart, as with a sting, by the Holy Spirit in view of their need to obtain what their souls longed for from him. "What shall we do?" they asked. Perhaps as you read these lines, you are also asking yourself the same question. "That I have to do?" Peter's response is the same for us today as it is for the disciples in this story. The first step a sinner must take to experience the gift of salvation is repentance.

What is repentance?

Going back to our story, Peter was giving his inaugural sermon after he had received the Holy Spirit. After speaking of the signs that would precede the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and of Christ's ministry, death, and resurrection, Peter concludes with a direct and personal appeal to the hearts of his listeners. "Therefore let all the house of Israel know most certainly that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ" (verse 36, emphasis added). The message of salvation is always personalized. We lose a lot when we generalize it, or we think that God is addressing others and not us. "When they heard this, their hearts were pricked, and they said to Peter and the other apostles: Men, brothers, what shall we do?" (verse 37). The word "pricked" in Greek is 'katanuso' which means to pierce (as with a thorn), to pierce, to cause sharp pain. That is repentance; it is a deep pain in the heart (or mind) for sin, and that pain is based on knowing that our sins caused the death of Christ because, like them, we have also crucified the Son of God.

"For godly sadness produces repentance leading to salvation, which need not be repented of" (2 Corinthians 7:10). This sadness, or pain for sin, "produces repentance for salvation," but there is another sadness, which is called "the sadness of the world," and this "produces death." This second sadness is pain, not because of sin, nor because of what it caused Jesus, but because of its consequences. In other words, lament the consequences of sin rather than the sin itself. An example is Judas, who repented for fear of the coming judgment for having betrayed Jesus but not for the sin itself (Matthew 27:3, 4). We are told that Esau, after selling his birthright, "purchased it with tears," but "there was no opportunity for repentance" from him (Hebrews 12:16, 17) because Esau regretted the material loss of the birthright more than having despised her spiritual privileges, such as being the progenitor of the Messiah. Pharaoh repeatedly showed that he had repented after suffering the scourge of the plagues simply because he wanted to escape the punishment, but once the punishment passed, his heart hardened (see Exodus 5-12). Likewise, Balaam, who, when he was on his way to Balak moved by "the prize of wickedness" (2 Peter 2:15), showed that he had repented when the Angel of Jehovah appeared to him with a sword to kill him but his repentance was ripped out by the fear of death, than for his evil act of disobedience (see Numbers 22-24). All these people repented out of fear of the final judgment, or out of grief for material losses, or out of fear of being punished, or of death itself, but not because they recognized that their sins had caused Jesus pain.

But repentance is more than that. Paul tells us about genuine repentance that "there is no need to repent" (2 Corinthians 7:10). What does that mean? It means that true sadness for sin will lead us to move away from it so as not to repent of the same sin again. Solomon put it in the following words: "Whoever covers up his sins will not prosper;

But he who confesses them and turns away from him will obtain mercy" (Proverbs 28:13). In one of my favorite books on the life of Jesus, the author, in harmony with the Bible, explains how to experience this repentance:

"Often, we grieve because our bad deeds bring us unpleasant consequences. But this is not regrettable. True sorrow for sin is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit reveals the ingratitude of the heart that has despised and wronged the Savior and brings us contrite to the foot of the cross. Every sin hurts Jesus again, and looking at Him whom we have pierced, we weep for the sins that caused him anguish. Such sadness will induce us to renounce sin" (White, Elena. The Desire of Ages, p. 267.3, emphasis added).

A Complete Twist

There is a very interesting word that the Old Testament uses to refer to repentance, and it is the Hebrew word shub. Among the many meanings that this word has, the following one catches my attention: "turn, turn, return, return" (Strong's Concordance). It is translated 391 times as "come back, come back." In the Hebrew mentality, to repent is to turn our life around completely. It is to turn from our evil ways and walk on the straight path.

I like to use the GPS or Waze analogy. Many of us have used it and are familiar with it. When we want to go from one place to another, the application almost always chooses the fastest route for us. Let's say we're going from point A to point B, which would take us about an hour on the fastest route, depending on the application. After having driven for almost 20 minutes, we must turn right to take the exit that will take us to our final destination. But chatting with the other occupants of the car, we get distracted, and we pass by without turning. Now, the next return is 10 miles ahead going, and another ten going back, which, in the new direction that the GPS gives us, will take us 15 more minutes. Perhaps that has happened to all of us at some point, even to the point of making mistakes two or more times on the same route. So it is also in the spiritual life. God has a way for us, the ideal and the fastest; let's call it Plan A. He has given us a GPS which is His Word, to follow that route step by step and in detail, but at some point in our journey, we take a direction contrary to the path traced by God. Maybe we got into a relationship that didn't suit us, or a friendship, or a job, or we got into debt, or some other bad decision. Now, God, in his mercy, redirects the GPS of our life. What used to take us less time now takes us more, but in the end, we will reach the goal if we make a "U" turn at each failure.

The friend reads, maybe things are not going well in your life, maybe you are going through a series of successive failures that seem like they will never end, or maybe you have lost the flavor of life. God invites you to give your life a 180º turn, to give God a new opportunity so that He can take the helm of your life. But for him to do that, we must repent, and that is a gift from God. "Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the wicked man his thoughts, and return to the Lord, who will have mercy on him, and to our God, who will be ample to forgive" (Isaiah 55: 6, 7, emphasis added).