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A Practical Guide to Repentance

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The necessity of repentance for the forgiveness of sins is central to the message of the gospel.  It’s one of the elementary doctrines of Christ, and leads to salvation and eternal life. [1]   But what exactly is it, and how does one go about doing it? The term in Greek ( metanoia ) literally means a change of mind.  As used in the New Testament it can refer to either the initial conversion event, involving a change in one’s entire course of life from disregard for God to reverence for him, or the subsequent, ongoing repentance that characterizes the daily, Spirit-led work of sanctification. It’s the latter that I want to address, and more specifically, repentance for sins committed against a neighbor.  What does this sort of repentance look like?  The first thing to be said is that it has a look, which is to say that it can be seen .  It’s not merely an unobservable matter of the heart.  Genuine repentance originates in the heart, to be sure, but it’s not confined to t