The biblical doctrine of conversion, or repentance, is the big issue of the day. It is the big issue of the day within our mother church, which maliciously lies against the truth of the gospel of repentance. Let us be very clear from the outset that repentance, or conversion, is itself a very comforting truth of the gospel. It is nothing to be turned away from or cast aside. For there have been those in church history who have shied away from preaching the call to repentance for fear that they may appear to teach Arminianism. Such avoidance of the doctrine of repentance is unjustifiable and may never have any place in the Reformed Protestant Churches.

It is part of our freedom as churches that we may rightly issue forth the call to repent without that call becoming a contingency upon which some blessing of our salvation depends. For that is what was declared concerning repentance in the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) and what is yet being declared from her pulpits. Time would fail me to list off all the speeches and sermons, letters and blog posts that have been published in the PRC since the separation of 2021. In those churches the doctrine of repentance is used as nothing more than a byword for conditions and conditional experience. It belongs to our reformation as churches that God has restored again to us the biblical and creedal doctrine of repentance. This is no new doctrine. It is not foreign to the Reformed fathers or to the Reformed creeds. And it is not foreign to them because it is not at all foreign to scripture.

The biblical and creedal doctrine of repentance is the old paths, wherein is the good way. It is the sound doctrine that reveals to us Jesus Christ and his salvation. Revealing to us Jesus Christ, the doctrine of repentance reveals to us God himself in all the glory and loveliness of his triune being.

The lie militates against those old paths. The lie is a new path, laid down not by God but by man and his wisdom. Man and his wisdom teach that in order for man to be forgiven man must first repent. Man and his wisdom teach that in man’s repentance there is a certain sense in which man’s act of turning precedes God’s act. There is the lie. There is a new path. There is man and his wisdom. And while it may seem that this has become redundant, it can never be overstated that this lie displaces Christ. For there is nothing more serious in all the world than to displace Christ. Because there is no Christ in that doctrine, there is no rest. There is no rest in that doctrine because Christ is utterly absent.

Therefore, it is a cruel deception and a mockery of Jesus Christ when the minister mounts the pulpit on Sunday and starts his sermon with many glowing words and phrases about Christ, the cross, and salvation and then proceeds to hinge that salvation, at least in its experience, on man’s activity of repenting. Repentance as man’s act is the main thing and not Christ, to whom belongs salvation, forgiveness, and all the blessings of salvation, which he accomplished. There Christ is displaced. There is no room for Christ in that doctrine.

The gospel does not hinge the forgiveness of the elect sinner on his repentance. Instead, the gospel declares unto the one who repents that his sins are already forgiven in Jesus Christ. God turns to us in forgiveness because God turned not away from Christ but poured out upon Christ all his just wrath and holy indignation against our sins. And while Christ personally never had any sin of which to repent, at the cross he accomplished for us perfect righteousness. Because of that righteousness, it is as if Jesus Christ had said, “Forgive, Father, their sins and impute not their trespasses against them. Turn to them in thy grace and mercy and impute unto them my perfect righteousness on account of which I accomplished for them all the repenting, believing, and good works necessary to be righteous in thy sight and worthy of eternal life.” Christ is the thing in man’s repentance. Therefore, it is because of Christ that I not only am able to repent but that I also have the right to repent. And that repentance is not aimless or without good reason. Since the elect sinner is forgiven in Jesus Christ, he repents.

In our treatment of conversion, we will be studying what is sometimes called regeneration in the broader sense. As in regeneration, there is a narrower sense in which we may speak of conversion. When God regenerates the elect but in himself totally depraved sinner, God renews the elect sinner after God’s own image and likeness unto true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness according to the implanting of the new life of Jesus Christ. By the operation of the Holy Spirit, the elect sinner is given a new heart that is broken out of love for God and that sorrows over sin. This love for God and sorrow over sin are fruits of the wonderwork of regeneration, so that it can rightly be said that the elect sinner is, in principle, converted unto God. God turns the elect sinner away from his sin and changes his mind about sin, so that, whereas the sinner formerly loved sin and lived as a willing servant under its dominion, the sinner now is set at enmity against his sin and his heart is full of zeal and love toward God.

However, of primary interest in this series of articles will be conversion as the wonderwork of God’s grace, whereby he efficaciously and irresistibly turns the elect, regenerated sinner away from the way of sin unto the way of righteousness, from bondage to sin and the devil to the service of God. This conversion is also referred to in scripture as repentance. In the sense that conversion is a spiritual turning of man from his sins to God in Jesus Christ, conversion is the same thing as repentance. The two are virtually synonymous, so that when we speak of the one, we are also speaking of the other.

Conversion logically comes after regeneration in the order of salvation. This placing of conversion after regeneration may not be conceived of in a strictly temporal sense but in a logical understanding. For one must first be made alive before he can repent. However, this is not to be understood as if God in regeneration gives to man everything that he needs to repent and then leaves man on his own. For without the continued operation of the Holy Spirit, there can be no conversion.

Rather, it is important for us to acknowledge at the outset that the Spirit is the first cause of man’s repentance as he is the first cause of regeneration, calling, and justification. The indwelling of the Spirit of Christ indicates that all of man’s repenting, all of his believing, all of his acts of obedience to the law of God are wrought in him in communion with and by the operation of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the worker in man’s repentance. The Spirit is the author and the finisher of our faith. He also works our repentance, which is the fruit or the evidence of faith (Acts 2:37–38).

As with every other blessing of salvation, our entire salvation can be comprehended within this one word: conversion. In conversion God gives to the elect sinner Jesus Christ and all his benefits. It is in light of this understanding of repentance that we understand that conversion simply cannot be a prerequisite to any other blessing of salvation, whether that be justification, sanctification, or glorification. God does not give grace to me to be converted or even to convert myself in order that he might reward me with forgiveness or any other blessing of salvation. For the root of conversion can be traced to God in his eternal counsel. The origin of conversion is election, so that election appointed conversion to the elect sinner in Jesus Christ. That conversion Christ really merited for the elect sinner at the cross. And it is by the Spirit of Jesus Christ that God really converts the elect sinner, so that by virtue of the grace received, he is rightly said to repent.

The root of the word translated as repentance or conversion literally means a change of mind. That conversion involves a change of mind can be understood by even a precursory glance at the Greek word for conversion in the New Testament: μετάνοια (metanoia). The common prefix meta is also used in the English word metamorphosis to refer to a change of being or substance. Like a caterpillar undergoes a drastic change of substance and a certain putting to death of that which belonged to its former substance before it can emerge as a beautiful butterfly, so also, when we speak of repentance or conversion, we refer to such a profound turning around that it can be referred to as a real change of mind. Whereas formerly sin was good, and God was evil, after conversion there is the opposite.

Belonging to repentance is a true, deep sorrow that results in a breaking of one’s heart over his sins and a fleeing to God in Jesus Christ for forgiveness (Isa. 55:7). Conversion for the elect, regenerated sinner involves his ego, so that he can know and understand spiritual things spiritually and have thoughts and feelings concerning his sin. In other words, the elect sinner who is converted does not merely have an external motivation but an internal motivation. The converted sinner knows what he must do, and his motivation to do what is right is internal. The converted sinner does not need to be told how to live. Rather, the converted sinner knows his sins and hates them, so that he turns from his sins unto God for forgiveness.

And it is this repentance as a deep, profound change of mind, which is characterized by a heartfelt sorrow over sin, that evidences itself with various fruits. These fruits work to distinguish true repentance from false repentance. For when we speak of true or genuine repentance, the opposite must also be true that there is a false or hypocritical repentance. It is that hypocritical and false repentance that is demonstrated repeatedly in sacred scripture. It is the sorrow of the world, which can be summarized as mere remorse or regret.

After Cain had slain his brother, Abel, in cold blood, he complained to God that he would be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth, which was the sorrow of the world (Gen. 4:14). After Esau had forsaken his birthright for a mess of worldly pottage, he sorrowed but was ultimately rejected because he found no room for repentance (Heb. 12:17). When Saul pleaded with Samuel to receive honor before the elders of Israel after he had transgressed the commandment of the Lord by sparing Agag and all that was good out of the land of the Amalekites, Saul concerned himself only with the people and his own name and honor (1 Sam. 15:30).

In Joel 2:13 God condemned all Israel’s rending of their garments, by which they were making a fair show of repentance, all the while passing over their fences to commit adultery with their neighbors’ wives. When Judas Iscariot went into the temple and confessed that he had betrayed innocent blood, he refused to confess his sins to God and instead continued on in unbelief and despair until he ultimately committed suicide.

Contrary to the sorrow of the world, which works death, the godly sorrow of repentance is the sure fruit of the one in whose heart God has worked faith. It is that repentance, therefore, which possesses certain identifiable fruits or outward evidences by which that repentance can be tested. Some of those fruits are given in 2 Corinthians 7:10–11. There the apostle Paul addressed his joy in God that God worked conversion in the hearts of the members of the church in Corinth by means of the word and Spirit of Jesus Christ, which word had been declared unto them by means of Paul’s first letter. In this expression of gratitude, the apostle by a single word, “carefulness,” laid his finger on the Corinthians’ drastic change of mind and heart.

Whereas before the Corinthians had taken sin lightly, so that sin of even the most egregious sort had been tolerated in the church, later, by the operation of the Spirit of Christ, sin became exceedingly sinful and offensive unto them; and consequently, sin was put out of the church through the means of church discipline. Whereas before hatred, enmity, and strife had reigned, later there was love for God and for one another in the truth and unity in the Spirit. And it is concerning that church, in which God had worked repentance, that Paul expressed the reality that there were several indelible marks of their repentance, that it was not a sorrow after the world but after a godly sort.

The first mark of saving conversion given is that there was a clearing of themselves. We may understand that phrase “clearing of yourselves” to mean an apology. There is an apology given to those against whom the sin had been committed, by which the converted sinner “clears himself” of his sins. The converted person confesses his remorse over his sins to those whom he has offended by those sins and seeks forgiveness. An impenitent man is full of guile and will not clear himself of his sins. Instead, that man abuses the apology and uses it as a way to thinly cover his sins and continue on in them. That man has no real intention of changing his course but is willing to pull down the shades over his sinful life in order to continue in his sins. That man might work to correct a few vices in his life and may even find himself speaking an outward apology from time to time, but he will never make a full apology for those sins so as to clear himself of them.

Following the first mark of saving conversion are several other marks, including an indignation or fiery hatred toward the sins of the past and the sin of one’s nature, by which the converted person hates and flees from sin in all its forms and condemns himself as nothing before God and worthy only of condemnation in himself. This realization does not lead to despair but rightly acknowledges the danger of damnation and humbles the sinner underneath the mighty hand of God. There is a longing for the perfection of heaven, a renewed zeal for righteousness and good works, and a revenge that is a serious desire or effort to right all wrongs inflicted by one’s sins and to make restoration or reparations wherever possible.

The godly sorrow of repentance is not the sorrow of disappointment, loss, sympathy, getting caught, shame, or regret. The heart of the repentant sinner is truly broken over sin, not first because damage has been done to self but because sin is an offense to God. The source or explanation for godly sorrow is not in the world but in God himself, operating by his Word and Spirit in the heart of the converted person.

According to the Heidelberg Catechism, conversion is not merely a one-time event, but it characterizes the entire life of the elect sinner as that life is the continual mortification of the old man and the quickening of the new man.

Q. 88 Of how many parts doth the true conversion of man consist?

A. Of two parts: of the mortification of the old, and the quickening of the new man. (Confessions and Church Order, 121)

In every moment of every day, the elect sinner stands in need of the grace of God in conversion. Conversion is not a mechanical doctrine, which acts as a ladder or a bridge that gets the converted person from regeneration to justification or to any other blessing of salvation. Conversion is not a transaction in which the elect sinner does something for God and then God repays him with some blessing such as the forgiveness of his sins. Rather, conversion is the living reality of the elect sinner who knows himself and his sins; and growing in that knowledge more and more, he hates and flees from sin and seeks more and more earnestly for the remission of his sins in Jesus Christ.

We ought rightly to understand that when the Catechism treats the conversion of man, it does not give us a formal definition of conversion but informs us of what conversion consists. In other words, we are not given in the Catechism a definition of conversion as to its essence, as a deep, profound change of mind and heart. Rather, we are given a summary of what conversion looks like in the life of the elect sinner, that which John the Baptist calls bearing fruits “worthy of repentance.” Conversion is the concrete expression that repentance takes in the heart and life of the believer. There is an outward fruit of that inward turning of man from his sins unto the living God.

Furthermore, it would be helpful to notice the close connection in the Catechism between conversion and the preceding article on saving faith, which assures the heart and necessarily bears fruit in the form of good works (Lord’s Day 32). Faith alone whereby I am justified and faith alone whereby I receive as a gracious gift of God that forgiveness which is mine in Jesus Christ. Faith that joins me to Jesus Christ as to the true vine and makes me bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. And it is the elect sinner as he has been joined to Christ and receives all his salvation, including the forgiveness of his sins, by faith alone who also is rightly said to repent.

And it is this repentance or conversion that God commands of man. Whenever the gospel is preached, that gospel comes and issues forth a call or a command. God commands all men everywhere to repent. There is an urgency to that calling, so that the one who repents is saved. And the one who does not repent is not saved but is at least unbelieving, if not reprobate.

It is especially within the sphere of the call to repent that the Reformed Protestant Churches have been slanderously charged with making man a stock and a block. Lord willing, in the next installment of this series, we will come to see this as a welcome charge, and we will consider how we ought rightly to understand repentance in connection with the call of the gospel.