26/08/2025
Repentance
By Felix Hesingut
It’s important that we clearly understand what repentance really means. In the Old Testament, two Hebrew words help us understand repentance. The first is the word nacham, which means to turn around or to change the mind.
The second is the word sub. It is used over 600 times in the Old Testament and is translated by such words as “turn,” “return,” “seek,” “restore.” You see it very often in phrases like “to turn to the Lord with all your heart.”
When you see in New Testament there is one word you need to know the Greek word metanoia, which literally means “to change the mind.”
Repentance fundamentally means to change your mind about something. It has to do with the way you think about something. You’ve been thinking one way, but now you think the opposite way. That’s repentance the changing of the mind…
A man wants to learn how to parachute. So he goes to a parachute school and they show him how to rig up his gear, how to pull the rip cord, and how to land safely. Finally, the day comes when they take him up in an airplane. He’s scared to death but he’s afraid to back out.
The moment comes when he is to jump. He goes to the door of the airplane and sees the ground 7,000 feet below. His legs grow weak, he’s about to throw up, and somebody behind him is trying to push him out of the airplane. At the last second he says, “No. I’m not going to do it.” “Go ahead, you can do it,” his instructor shouts. “I’ve changed my mind,” he replies.
“I’m not going to jump.” And he doesn’t. That man has repented. He changed his mind in a decisive way. That story illustrates how repentance works. Repentance is a change in the way I think that leads to change in the way we live and doing things. When you really change your mind about something, it’s going to change the way you think about it, talk about it, feel about it, and act about it.
I’m suggesting that, true repentance is more than just a mental game. Repentance is a decisive change in direction. It’s a change of mind that leads to a change of thinking that leads to a change of attitude that leads to a change of feeling that leads to a change of values that leads to a change in the way you live.
