Friends: We had just a little more to say on repentance, our doorway to hope. See the column below. Blessings, Bob

--- --- ---

Spirituality Column #978

August 12, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Doorway to Hope

By Bob Walters

“Repent, and be baptized.” – Peter to distraught Jews, Acts 2:38

(This is the communion meditation I delivered at church Aug. 3, which includes some thoughts and words from last week’s column. – Bob)

Let’s do everyone’s favorite thing and talk about a Greek word in the Bible. To help add context, I brought along an artifact: an actual, printed 1983 American Heritage English dictionary. This is a nostalgia copy I keep on my desk, though I rarely use it.

The Greek word is “metanoia:” which in English we translate as “repent.” And while the Greek meaning of metanoia is “new and renewed thinking” or “to change one’s mind,” the dictionary – almost any modern dictionary, online or print – has a different, and I submit, a biblically misleading definition.  For example, in my dictionary:

“1. To feel regret for (what one has done or failed to do).  2. To feel contrition for one’s sins and to abjure sinful ways.” Ofr, repentir.” (i.e., Old French, orig. Latin, etc.)

That is accurate for Latin and old French – guilt, regret, shame – and fits our modern culture and understanding.  But it misses the mark of the New Testament’s Greek metanoia, “thinking anew,” and the Old Testament’s teshuva, “turn toward God.”

In church we generally think of repent as meaning “to turn around and go back” and to reject our sin. That’s good; that’s helpful.  But I love the Old Testament Hebrew for “repent,” teshuva, and New Testament Greek metanoia. Both line up better with leveling focus on God and Jesus, not ourselves.

On that night Jesus was betrayed by Judas – the night of the last supper, and what we call the first communion – Jesus didn’t lecture the disciples about their behavior or their sins or call for their repentance.  Jesus washed their feet.  He broke bread and shared wine and told them to remember who He truly is. He promised to send the Holy Spirit.  He told them to remember who they were to each other. 

Why? Because the world would be cruel to them as it was cruel to Him. They would need each other: in communion fellowship remembering His body and blood.

In the bread, we are to remember the body of Jesus’s divine sonship, human fellowship, and sacrificial, redeeming death.  In the cup, we remember the blood of not just the end of one life – the crucifixion – but the beginning of our new life and a new covenant in faith, not law. 

When Peter in Acts 2:38 tells the distraught Jews how to atone for killing Jesus, he says, “Repent, and be baptized.” Repent here isn’t a behavioral direction, it is telling them to stop thinking like Jews, and start thinking like Christians: to recognize Jesus as the Messiah Son of God, the Christ savior of all mankind who fulfills the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17).

Metanoia: renew your thinking. Be baptized: join the Spirit.

The Bible becomes a very different book when we understand “repent” to mean more than addressing our sins and rejecting negative behavior; it means to positively turn toward God, wherever we are.  With this new and renewed and eternal thinking, we are accepting Christ as our Lord and Savior with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Repentance is our doorway to hope, and to new life in Christ.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes the word “internet” is not in his 1983 dictionary.