Turn Back

TURN BACK

When we hear the word “repent,” most of us probably think we already know what it means. We have heard it preached, we have heard people say it, and we have probably said it ourselves. Usually, we think of being sorry for something we did wrong. There is nothing wrong with being sorry, of course, but the Bible gives us a much bigger picture than simply feeling bad and saying, “I'm sorry.” Repentance has to do with what happens after you realize you are wrong. It has to do with what you do with that realization.

Let's say you are following your GPS to get somewhere and suddenly realize you have been going the wrong way for the last twenty minutes. You look at the screen and say, “Ohhhh. I was supposed to turn back there.” You can be as sorry as you want about missing the turn, but if you keep driving in the same direction, you are still going the wrong way. You can apologize to your passengers, apologize to the GPS, and probably apologize to yourself, but none of that changes where the car is going. At some point, you have to turn the car or bike around. That is a simple way to begin understanding what the Bible means when it calls us to repent.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, one of the important words connected with this idea is שׁוּב, transliterated shuv. It means “to turn back” or “to return.” It is used in many different situations in the Hebrew Scriptures, including ordinary physical returning, but when it is used in relation to God, it gives us a beautiful picture of someone returning to Him. The person has gone away, or has been going in the wrong direction, and now there is a turning back.

We can see this in Isaiah 55:6-7, where we are told, “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.” There is quite a bit going on in those two verses. The wicked are told to forsake their ways, and the unrighteous are told to forsake their thoughts. Then they are told to turn to the LORD. God is not simply telling them to sit around feeling terrible about themselves. He is telling them to leave the wrong way and return to Him.

That is important because feeling bad and repenting are not necessarily the same thing. A person can feel guilty and still keep doing the same thing. A person can cry because they got caught and still have no intention of changing. A person can be embarrassed by what they did and wish the whole thing would disappear, but that does not mean they have turned away from what they were doing. Sometimes people are sorry about the consequences without being sorry about the behavior that caused them. There is a difference.

The prophet Joel helps us see that God has always been interested in what is happening inside a person, not merely in the outward display. God says, “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your heart and not your garments.” Joel 2:12-13. In that culture, tearing one's clothing could be an outward sign of grief. God was saying, in effect, “Don't just put on an outward display. Let this be real in your heart.” You can make yourself look sorry, but God knows whether your heart has actually turned.

Now when we come into the New Testament, we find another word that helps us understand repentance. The Greek word is μετανοέω, transliterated metanoeō, and it is translated “to repent.” Its basic meaning is “to change the way you think or what you have decided to do.” The related noun is μετάνοια, metanoia, meaning “repentance.” So now we have another piece of the picture. Repentance involves a change in the way we think and in what we have decided to do.

That does not mean that metanoeō is simply about changing your opinion. If I decide that I like chocolate ice cream better than vanilla, I have changed my mind. Nobody needs to repent over that, although I am sure there are people who would disagree with my excellent choice. 😂 The biblical use of repentance is dealing with something much more serious. It involves recognizing that the way we have been thinking or living is wrong, changing our thinking about it, and responding to God accordingly.

This is exactly what we see when John the Baptist begins preaching. His message is recorded in Matthew 3:2: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” When Yeshua begins His ministry, He gives the same basic call in Matthew 4:17: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Mark records Yeshua saying, “Repent and believe the good news!” in Mark 1:15.

That should make us stop and think about what repentance meant in the message of Yeshua. He was not telling people to feel guilty for a few minutes and then go back to life as usual. He was announcing that the kingdom of God had come near and calling people to respond. Their thinking had to change because their response to God had to change.

John made this even clearer when he said, “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” Matthew 3:8. Now we have something very practical. If repentance is real, something eventually shows up in the way a person lives. John did not say that people earn forgiveness by doing enough good things. He was saying that genuine repentance produces evidence. If you have really changed your mind about the direction you were going, eventually your life is going to start showing that change.

This is where we need to be honest, especially when we are talking about repentance. It is easy to say the right thing when we want somebody to get off our backs. A young person gets caught doing something wrong and says, “I'm sorry!” because Mom is standing there waiting for an explanation. The apology may be completely sincere, or it may mean, “Please stop being mad at me.” Those are two very different things. Adults do this too, by the way. We don't get to blame the youth for something human beings have been doing since Adam and Eve. We just get better at coming up with more sophisticated excuses. 😂

Paul explains the difference between sorrow and repentance in 2 Corinthians 7:10, saying, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” Sorrow can lead us to repentance, but sorrow itself is not repentance. Godly sorrow moves us toward God. Worldly sorrow can leave us sitting in guilt, embarrassment, anger, or self-pity without actually changing anything.

There is a difference between, “I can't believe I got caught,” and, “I know what I did was wrong.” There is a difference between, “I don't want to get punished,” and, “I don't want to keep doing this.” One is mostly concerned with getting rid of the problem. The other recognizes the problem and wants the direction changed.

Yeshua gave us one of the clearest pictures of this in the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. The young man wanted his inheritance, left his father's house, wasted what he had, and eventually ended up in a situation so bad that he was longing to eat the food given to the pigs. Then Luke 15:17 says, “When he came to his senses.” That was the beginning of the change. He finally saw the truth about what he had done and where his choices had brought him.

But he did not simply sit there feeling sorry for himself. He decided to return to his father, and then he got up and went home. That is what makes this such a wonderful picture of repentance. His thinking changed, and then his direction changed. He did not stay in the pigpen saying, “I really should have made better choices.” He got out of the pigpen.

And look at what happened when he came home. His father saw him while he was still a long way off, ran to him, embraced him, and welcomed him. That tells us something about the heart of God. Repentance is not God standing at the door waiting for us to prove that we are miserable enough before He will let us come back. The father in Yeshua's story was ready to receive his son when he returned.

Peter says in Acts 3:19, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.” Again, repentance and turning toward God are put together. We are not simply turning away from something and then standing there wondering what to do with ourselves. We are turning toward God.

Paul says the same kind of thing in Acts 26:20, explaining that people should “repent and turn to God and demonstrate their repentance by their deeds.” I really like that verse because it puts the whole matter together. There is the repentance, there is the turning toward God, and then there is the evidence of that repentance in the way a person lives.

Now we can bring our two language words together. The Hebrew shuv gives us the picture of turning back or returning. The Greek metanoeō gives us the idea of changing the way we think or what we have decided to do. These words are not simply two identical dictionary definitions, and we should not pretend they are. They come from different languages and have their own ranges of meaning. But when we look at how Scripture uses these ideas, they help us see the larger biblical picture of repentance. We recognize that we have been going the wrong way, we change our thinking about that way, and we turn back toward God.

And this is where the teaching stops being about “those people” and becomes about us.

It is very easy to hear a teaching about repentance and immediately think about somebody else. Maybe you think about the kid at school who is always getting into trouble. Maybe you think about somebody online who seems to have no sense at all. Maybe you think about a friend who keeps making the same bad decisions. We can spot everybody else's wrong turns with amazing accuracy. Our own can be a little harder to see.

But God's call to repent is not a message we are supposed to carry around so we can point it at everyone else. It is something we have to hear ourselves. If God shows me that something in my life is wrong, then I have a choice. I can make excuses. I can blame somebody else. I can tell myself that everybody does it. I can decide that it isn't really that serious. Or I can be honest, admit that God is right, change the way I think about it, and turn back toward Him.

That can be hard. Sometimes we know exactly what we need to change, but we don't want to give it up. We may like the thing we know is wrong. We may be afraid of what will happen if we stop. We may have been doing it for so long that we have convinced ourselves it is simply part of who we are. But “this is just who I am” is not an excuse God gave us to ignore His voice. If something is taking us away from Him, then we need to be willing to let Him change it.

And repentance does not mean that after you turn back to God you will never make another mistake. We are human beings. We stumble. We make foolish choices. We sometimes have to admit that we were wrong again. Repentance is not pretending we are now perfect. It is refusing to make peace with the wrong direction. When we realize we have wandered, we turn back again.

Yeshua even called His own people to repent when they had already been walking with Him. In Revelation 2:5, He says, “Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” So repentance is not simply something that happens once at the beginning of our walk with God. Whenever we recognize that we have moved away from His ways, we are called to return.

That is why TURN BACK is such a simple title, because that really is what the Scriptures keep telling us. The Hebrew Scriptures call people to shuv, to return. The New Testament calls people to metanoeō, to repent, to change the way they think and what they have decided to do. Scripture shows us people who turned, people who refused to turn, people who regretted their choices, and people who came back to God. It gives us plenty of examples because God knows we need to see what these things look like in real life.

Maybe you have been going the wrong way for a long time. Maybe you know it and have been trying not to think about it. Maybe you are just beginning to realize that some of your choices are taking you farther away from God than you intended to go. Whatever the situation is, you do not have to keep going in the same direction simply because you have already gone a long way.

If you realize you missed the turn, you turn around.

If you realize you have been thinking wrongly, you change your thinking.

If you realize you have been choosing something that is taking you away from God, you change what you have decided to do.

And if you have wandered away from God, you return to Him.

That is repentance.

It is more than being sorry. It is more than feeling guilty. It is more than getting caught and wishing the consequences would disappear. It begins with recognizing the truth, but it does not stop there. Your thinking changes, your direction changes, and your life begins to show that change.

God's message throughout Scripture is not simply, “Feel bad about what you have done.”

His message is:

Turn back. Come back to Me.

And when you understand what repentance really means, you realize that those words are not a threat.

They are an invitation to come home.

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Prayer:

Holy Father, You are holy, righteous, merciful, and faithful. You are the God who calls me back when I have wandered and who welcomes me when I turn toward You. Your ways are right, Your judgment is true, and Your mercy is greater than I can understand. I praise You because You do not turn away the person who truly comes back to You.

Father God, I come before You honestly. I recognize that there are times when I have gone my own way instead of following Your ways. Forgive me for the things I have done, the things I have thought, and the choices I have made that have taken me away from You. Help me see clearly what needs to change.

I do not want my repentance to be nothing more than saying, “I am sorry.” Help me change the way I think and the choices I make. Give me the courage to turn away from what is wrong and turn back toward You. When You show me something that needs to change, help me not make excuses or justify myself.

Holy Father, keep my heart turned toward You. When I wander, help me recognize it. When I stumble, help me get back up. When I realize I am walking the wrong way, give me the humility to turn around and come back to You. Let my repentance be shown not only in my words, but in the way I live.

Thank You for Your mercy and forgiveness. Thank You for calling me to return instead of leaving me lost in the wrong direction. Help me walk with You faithfully, and whenever I begin to wander, teach me to turn back quickly.

I choose Your way over my own way. I choose to turn back to You. Let my changed thinking produce changed actions, and let my life show that my heart has truly turned toward You.

In the name of Yeshua, I pray. Amen.

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Don't take my word for it. Like the Bereans in Acts 17:11, search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so. Open your Bible, study God's Word for yourself, and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you into all truth. Don't simply accept my conclusions. If what I've written agrees with Scripture, hold fast to it. If it doesn't, let God's Word be your final authority.

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If any of these people looks like you or someone you know, that is purely coincidental. They are not.

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