Repentance 1

True repentance abates God’s anger.

Jeremiah 3:11-14

This is a shocking request in these verses. The husband who has been cheated on is asking his faithless one to return! Three times in this chapter the cheating wife is asked to return (vv. 12, 14, 22) (Wright, Message of Jeremiah, 81). This invitation is powerful and simple: turn and acknowledge guilt. The expectation is that they love him so much that they will return and acknowledge what has been done. This is the first part of repentance.

The acknowledgment of sin is not the end of repentance; it is the beginning. Over and over we are told to acknowledge our guilt. It is part of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:12). It is the foundational part of David’s path to repentance: “For I am conscious of my rebellion, and my sin is always before me” (Ps 51:3). It is a part of the fellowship of believers (Jas 5:16). There is no healing without repentance, and there is no repentance without acknowledging sin. Confession of sin is essential to maintaining fellowship with God (1 John 1:9).

Yet admitting sin and changing are not the same thing. Confession is not synonymous with repentance; it is simply the entry point. When people began to publicly confess through the act of baptism, John the Baptist rebuked them and told them to “produce fruit consistent with repentance” (Luke 3:8). Once someone has acknowledged sin, there is heart work to be done. Heart work is always hard work. The heart of true repentance is laid out in 4:1-4, where Jeremiah spells out what repentance looks like.

Jeremiah 4:1-4

The returning was not an emotional reattachment to God as much as it was a plan to demolish the idols and restore the relationship. While the “plan” laid out here is not intended to be exhaustive, it helps us understand some important aspects of the whole.

This is simple enough. If Judah is going to restore things with God, they must destroy the other objects of their worship.

This was not a metaphor. God was telling them to literally take a hammer to the idols. Bust them up. Destroy them. The physical act of destruction was showing how much they loved God alone. In the same way, we clean up our lives. What is it that I love more than God? We have to acknowledge what it is, then root it out. Be done with it. Is there an idol we need to remove?

Then God asks them to commit, to swear, that is, take an oath, a pledge. Oftentimes it had a public component. In ancient times there was no legal or recording system like we would understand it. Still, to swear a verbal oath came with significant legal ramifications. It was binding. God describes his covenant with Abraham as something he swore (Ps 105:4). The idea is verbal, yes, but more than that it is an assertion of the position of the heart.

Now he switches from these direct features to two physical metaphors for repentance.

The first metaphor is cultivation of the heart. No field is ready to receive seed unless it is first cultivated. The soil must be broken up. This broken soil is a metaphor for a heart that has the idols rooted out and is now humble before God and ready to receive his word.

The seed is wasted unless the soil is cultivated. The heart as prepared soil was a principal metaphor for Jesus (Matt 13:1-23). Once the idols are removed and we have made our declaration, we now need to keep hearts that are sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. These are hearts that are ready to receive the “implanted word” (Jas 1:21). The word is God’s means of communication with us. We will never know what God intended us to know about himself if we do not expose ourselves to the word. Yet that word is kept from us if we do not have hearts to receive it.

The history of Israel turned on how they responded to the word. Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and Saul all faced problems when they did not receive the word. The consequences were devastating. The word in us is our hope. Yet this word is not available to us unless we cultivate our hearts and are receptive to God.

Circumcision was an external sign of an internal covenant.

In the New Testament, Christian baptism serves as external sign of an internal relationship. The baptism does not save, but the water is a picture of what Christ has done for us in his death and resurrection. The picture is real. The symbol has a reality to it; it is tied to a real historical event and my willingness to publicly identify with the Jesus of the gospel.

Jeremiah’s audience had been circumcised. That was not the problem. The problem was that their circumcision was only skin deep. They had the symbol; they did not have the reality. Jeremiah would say to us, “OK, you’ve been washed in the water. Now baptize your heart.”

Zacchaeus was a tax collector who, upon seeing Jesus, repented. He came up with a plan to restore what had been lost. When Jesus heard his plan, he responded, “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:1-9). It seems that the evidence of the residing salvation was the plan to repent.

There is often confusion about the nature of true repentance. Let’s be clear. Repentance is not a feeling. It is not an emotion. It is an action. Repentance is the working out of our salvation. Regret and remorse are merely the runway lights; only repentance can land you safely. If you have a sin you are dealing with, the immediate question and the ultimate question are the same: What’s the plan?

As a pastor I would often have someone come to my office to confess a sin and want help. My question, after comforting and encouraging, was simply this: What’s the plan? Of course there is more to this. But with the immediacy of the question, I was trying to communicate lovingly that feeling bad about a situation is not enough. It must change. And change will only be worked out over time.

But there is a bigger motivation for repentance. Repentance is not only God’s plan for me, but my repentance fits into the plan that God has for all things, including bringing the nations to himself. Repentance is part of God’s plan, so plan your repentance.

Jeremiah 3:12-18; 4:2, 4

Consider the sentence construction here. While repentance is a plan, the purpose of the sentence is not to get the people to follow a plan. The purpose of the sentence is to get them to see a consequence. Look at 4:2:

Then the nations will be blessed by him

and will pride themselves in him.

The idea is that in their obedience, many nations will be blessed. We will address this theme in the next chapter. Look at 3:17-18:

At that time Jerusalem will be called The Lord’s Throne, and all the nations will be gathered to it, to the name of the Lord in Jerusalem. They will cease to follow the stubbornness of their evil hearts.

Their repentance was not really about themselves; it was about the nations.

So much hangs on their decision to repent and on ours as well. No sin ever takes place in a void of consequence. Each sin has consequences beyond ourselves. But that is to say it in the negative. The glorious, positive truth is to say that when we repent, when we return, when we come back to Christ, there are effects to this. Repentance is part of God’s plan, so plan your repentance.

Jeremiah closes this section with a stark warning in 4:4, so let’s not play games. In what area of your life do you need to repent? Is it the lingering thought that while you are efficient in every other area of your life you are a spiritual hoarder? You are hanging on to God’s money, God’s time, or God’s forgiveness, unwilling to share any of it with others? If God’s goodness, dammed up in your heart, were to be breached, there would be a lot of grace.

Perhaps there is a secret sin of lust. It’s imbedded. You feel remorse. And you are partly confusing remorse with repentance. No life was ever changed over a bad feeling. Regret and remorse should lead to repentance. They are not the evidence of it. Remorse is only your friend until it leads you to repentance. After that it is no friend at all.

Repentance is part of God’s plan, so plan your repentance.