Tag: Believers Need Repentance Too - Revelation 1-5

Revelation 2:5

Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

Tag:  Even Believers Need Repentance

In the beginning chapters of The Revelation Christ, through John, is speaking to the “seven” churches.  The message varies and the churches are both, at the same time, real churches and metaphorical churches throughout the ages.  Each church receives a message and several are told to “repent.”  Most believers, today, seem to believe that repentance is an act to “receive” Christ, but not necessarily an act to “walk” with Christ.   The word, repent, is as follows:

VIINES:  metanoeo (μετανοέω, 3340), lit., “to perceive afterwards” (meta, “after,” implying “change,” noeo, “to perceive”; nous, “the mind, the seat of moral reflection”), in contrast to pronoeo, “to perceive beforehand,” hence signifies “to change one’s mind or purpose,” always, in the NT, involving a change for the better, an amendment, and always, except in Luke 17:3, 4, of “repentance” from sin. The word is found in the Synoptic Gospels (in Luke, nine times), in Acts five times, in the Apocalypse twelve times, eight in the messages to the churches, 2:5 (twice), 16, 21 (twice), rv, “she willeth not to repent” (2nd part); 3:3, 19 (the only churches in those chapters which contain no exhortation in this respect are those at Smyrna and Philadelphia); elsewhere only in 2 Cor. 12:21. 

When we see the word we know that God is serious about something in our lives.  This “change of mind” is how we look at the sin in our lives.  We can get where we believe the sin is not too harmful.  Yet, God is holy, so any sin, any type of sin, can separate us from His Holiness.  We, as human beings, tend to categorized sin.  Lying is bad, but not as bad as anger.  Anger is bad but not as bad as murder.  Lust is bad but not as bad as adultery.   Note, however, what Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 5:21-22

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

Matthew 5:27-28

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Christians need to practice Repentance as they would reading God’s Word.  In fact, the more we read God’s Word, the more we would see our need to repent!