Think Again

The Greek word metanoia is usually translated as "repentance" in English Bibles. metanoia literally means "change of mind" (and so does "repentance" - it comes from the Latin: re means "again" and pent means "think"). Many pastors and teachers do not emphasise this, because people need to change their actions as well as their minds, and so they correctly teach that to repent is to live differently, not just to think differently.

But there is something important to gain by considering the literal translation, because:

Living differently starts with thinking differently

Remember these words:

Romans 12v2a
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

We are transformed by changing our thinking.

In our culture the phrase "change your mind" is usually used about trivial things, like what you're going to eat, or what you're going to wear or which movie you're going to watch. But the Bible is talking about a fundamental change in our thinking about the important things of life.

To become a Christian, a person must repent and believe:

• Repent: make a definitive decision that God, not I, will take the decisions in my life, that I will live under His leadership and obey His rules
• Believe: Take it to heart that Jesus Christ has paid for my sins through His death, to enable me to live as a child of God

We will not live differently unless we think differently. We will not live God's way until we understand that we should. This definitive repentance is the start of the reforming of our minds and so enables us to make a start on reforming our actions. We can tell if this repentance is genuine, because it will bear fruit. That is, we will begin to live differently, because our minds work differently.

As we walk the Christian walk, we slowly move towards maturity. But we find that we need to keep on repenting. As we read and meditate on Scripture, we find that our attitudes are still wrong. We're still selfish, our priorities are still different from God's priorities, our understanding of right and wrong are still different from God's teaching in the Bible. And we repent again. And, as before, we can tell if this repentance is genuine, because it will start to bear fruit. We will live differently, because our minds work differently.

Of course, we also repent because we find ourselves doing something that we know to be wrong. Then, we might think that our minds are right but our actions are wrong. But this is not so. In fact, our minds have not been changed enough. We've only given theoretical assent to a Biblical teaching. We've learned something and given mental assent to its truth, but we haven't changed our minds enough to apply it to our lives. Or, more often, we're in the process of doing so, but that process is not complete. That's why we can need to repent more than once over the same thing - our minds are not completely reformed, and so our actions are not completely reformed.

There is an important message for pastors and other caring Christians here. We can pressurise others into acting differently. That might make them (and the church, and therefore us) seem more mature or successful in the short term. But if someone acts differently because of pressure from others, rather than from a genuine change of their thinking, than that change will be only temporary. And living one way while thinking another cannot be healthy.

Are you troubled by persistent sin? Could it be that you've never thought through how much God hates the sin, why He hates it so much, how much damage it does, how much you owe to God? Go back to Him and ask Him to reveal to you the fulness of the evil that the sin truly is, the depth of His love for you, and the power of the Holy Spirit to help you. And ask Him to help you to think differently from your heart, so that you might act differently.