What Shall We Do?

What Shall We Do?

—Acts 2:37

Often in the Christian experience, it is not that we don’t want to do the right thing, we simply don’t know what the right thing is to do.

This Acts 2:37 question came in response to Peter’s proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ on the day when Pentecost marked the coming of the Holy Spirit. Upon hearing of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, people felt convicted of their sins, their “hearts were cut,” and they cried out, “What shall we do?” Peter’s pointed yet poignant one-word response was “Repent” (v. 38). Now if there was ever a lost word in our twenty-first-century Christian vocabulary and the modern era of positive preaching, repentance is the forgotten word!

Although too often relegated to a dusty shelf today, repentance was the central theme of our Lord’s message. Jesus commenced His ministry with this theme: “From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’ ” (Matthew 4:17). Jesus continued to share this message in his ministry: “I tell you . . . unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). And Jesus concluded His ministry with that same truth: “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:46–47).

Repentance is among the most misunderstood and, I daresay, most ignored disciplines of the Christian life. Ask multiple people to define it, and you will get multiple answers.

REPENTANCE IS NOT REMORSE

Repentance is not simply being sorry that we have sinned—or that we’ve been caught in our sin. Remorse—which is sorrow for one’s sin—often leads to repentance, but repentance is much more than that. Remember the rich young ruler? He went to Jesus, but when he heard of the demands of discipleship, he “went away sorrowful” (Matthew 19:22). This young man was remorseful, but he wasn’t willing to repent. One of the reasons so many people flounder in their faith is due to the fact that they have tried to substitute remorse for repentance. It is not enough simply to be sorry for our sin or troubled by our transgressions.

REPENTANCE IS NOT REGRET

Repentance is also not merely wishing the deed had never happened and regretting it. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who betrayed our Lord, took the basin of water and attempted to wash his hands of his evil deed: he regretted that it had happened, but he didn’t repent. Many people today substitute regret for repentance and, by doing so, tragically fool themselves about where they stand with the Lord.

REPENTANCE IS NOT RESOLVE

All of us have made New Year’s resolutions. Most of us have resolved at one time or another to, for instance, strive to live by a new set of moral standards. We want to live life on a higher plane, but we often fail to do so. One reason is because we are attempting to substitute our own resolve for genuine repentance.

REPENTANCE IS NOT REFORM

Repentance is not simply my turning over a new leaf and trying hard to reform my ways. Judas Iscariot betrayed our Lord for thirty pieces of silver, but he later took the money back to the temple and threw it at those who had paid the bribe. Judas reformed his ways to the degree that he returned the blood money, but unfortunately he didn’t repent.

No remorse, resolve, regret, nor reformation will substitute for repentance. So, “What shall we do?” What, then, is repentance? Is it possible to repent without even knowing how to define it? My life was radically transformed when, as a teenager, I invited Christ to come into my heart, but it was months afterwards before I ever heard the word repentance. Still, I know that I repented—and that I did so instantaneously. The clear evidence was that I began to hate what I used to love and love what I used to hate. I experienced a change of mind . . . which changed my will or volition . . . which ultimately changed my actions.

The Greek word translated “repent” simply means to change one’s mind. This genuine change of mind is always evidenced in three ways. First comes the new attitude. That is, repentance begins intellectually with a change of mind. After this occurs, we experience a change of heart, a change of affections. A change in our will, our volition, will follow, and that is evident in a change of action. As naturally as water running downhill, my will changes, and that change will result in a change in my actions.

If you need a perfect biblical illustration of genuine repentance, look no further than the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. Here is a rebellious young man who had left home for the bright lights of the big city and ended up in a pig pen feeding hogs. There, he had a change of attitude. The gospel writer put it this way: “he came to himself” (v. 17). He changed his mind. Then what happened? He had a change of affection. He said, “I will arise and go to my father and say . . . ‘I am no longer worthy to be called your son’ ” (vv. 18–19). His heart was changed. Then, his action followed. “He arose” and went home (v. 20).

I love the way Paul framed it in the Roman epistle: “The goodness of God leads you to repentance” (Romans 2:4). When our daughters were young we used to vacation in the Smoky Mountains. On one occasion we rented an old farmhouse on the side of a mountain. It was a beautiful spot but a bit scary for two little city girls. The first night happened to be one of those pitch-dark nights. As James Weldon Johnson put it in God’s Trombones, it was “blacker than a hundred midnights down in a cypress swamp.” I was awakened in the middle of the night by the cries of our little seven-year-old. I bounded up the stairs to find her standing there in the darkness, disoriented and scared. Taking her by the hand, I led her safely down the stairs into our own bed where she soundly slept the rest of the night away.

And so our dear heavenly Father finds us in the dark, disoriented, and takes us by the hand, and by His own goodness and kindness, “leads us to repentance.”

Jesus said it best: “Unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). What difference does it make if you drive the most luxurious car money can buy, eat vitamin-enriched foods, sleep on a name-brand mattress, live in a mansion behind iron gates, are placed in a multi-thousand dollar mahogany casket, and buried in a cemetery as beautiful as a botanical garden—and rise up in judgment to meet a God you do not know? What shall we do? Change your mind and your heart will follow, and then your actions will also.

Q & A: “What shall we do?” It is not enough to simply know “about” Christ without knowing Him personally in the free pardoning of our sins. And this is only possible by personal repentance. What shall we do? The instructions are straightforward and direct: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!