Repent and Be Converted

Published by Stanley Pouw in 2016 · 14 February 2016

Beginning at verse 19, Peter continued his sermon, “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. 22 Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you.”

“23 And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’ 24 And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days. 25 You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ 26 God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.”

This is the conclusion of Peter's second sermon. And the Lord's unfinished work is preaching the gospel which He began to do, and not the work of redemption which He finished. So the church was equipped to preach and to teach and to go forth from the place that Christ left. In the early years they were all commissioned to preach and they all did. But Peter was especially commissioned to be the apostle to the Jews.

He had already preached a great sermon on the day of Pentecost and now in Acts 3 Peter preaches again and this time his theme is again that Jesus Christ is exalted and Israel indicted. And any man who is not responding to Christ is indicted in this sermon. Now the Holy Spirit performed a miracle to gather the crowd again. Here is the miracle of the healing of the lame man to confirm the Word so that men would believe the message.

And as Peter starts to preach, in Solomon's portico, he has John on the other side and in the middle is the lame man who was made whole. Now Peter's theme in verse 13-18 was the same theme as all apostolic preaching--exalt Christ and indict those who reject Him. And in his exaltation of Christ he presents Christ by six different names. Each one of those names were names in the Jewish mind would relate to Messianic prophecy and Peter is saying, this is your Messiah.

Peter says you denied Him, delivered Him, you desired Him not, you destroyed Him. So in just that brief section, he with great power presents Christ in His majesty as the Messiah and indicts Israel for what they did to Him. And this is a classic example of the right apostolic application of the gospel compared to the need of man.

But Peter doesn't stop there, gently he says in verse 17, “And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.” They were not ignorant in crucifying Christ, they did that openly but they didn't know that Jesus was their Messiah. As long as they were in rebellion towards God they would never understand Christ as their Messiah. So because they were ignorant, God holds them only guilty of manslaughter, not premeditated murder and He extends grace to them.

And then Peter moves fast to his conclusion in verse 19, "Repent therefore and turn back". Repent on the basis of what? First, on the basis that you killed your Messiah, you have got to repent. Secondly, on the basis that God will be gracious, accept it. So repentance is based on two things: their deed and attitude toward Christ and God's attitude toward them in offering forgiveness.

And this brings us to two important biblical doctrines: the doctrine of repentance and the doctrine of conversion. First of all, what is repentance? The Greek word has to do with changing your mind. It means turning around, a one hundred-and-eighty degree turn, all the way around to the opposite direction. To repent then, is to change your mind.

Let us look at an illustration in Matthew 21:28-31, “A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ 29 And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. 30 And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.”

Now pull the word repentance right out of the verse 29 and you have got the meaning of repentance, “He said I will not but afterward he changed his mind and went.” That is repenting. Peter is saying to Israel, reverse your conclusion regarding Jesus Christ because you are wrong and we have all the evidence to prove it.

Now there was much involved in reversing their decision. The nation Israel had decided that God's will for them was a self‑generated righteousness. They tried to live the best way possible to please God. And that whole system of legalism was manipulated and maintained by the Pharisees. And if the Jew kept the three hundred and sixty‑five negative commands and the two hundred and fifty positive commands, he was safe and he was righteous. They thought that's what God wanted.

The apostles came along and said, you have got to change your attitude about what God wants, because that is not what God wants. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, if you have even thought of sin in your heart, you have already sinned. You cannot keep God's laws. Romans 3:20 says, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight.”

And Paul told them to repent and receive free righteousness through faith in Jesus. All you need to do is turn away from your system of legalism and turn to Jesus Christ, receive Him by faith and God imputes His righteousness to you. We will see more about this later. You see it is only Jesus who can make you righteous. That is Acts 20:21.

And the same gospel message we give to anybody today. Whatever it is in your life to please God if it doesn't involve faith in Jesus Christ, then turn around because you are going to a dead end. Now God's design for men is that they repent, but it isn't that simple. God knows that there needs to be some prodding along the way of life. And God certainly uses things to prod us into repentance.

There are at least five things that God uses to bring men to repentance. Number one is knowledge. God wants that they change their minds about being self-righteous, and change their mind about Jesus just being a good teacher. God demands total righteousness; and God says you can have that only by faith in Jesus Christ. God has revealed certain things that if they know them, they should respond.

For instance in Matthew 11:21 God was going to judge two cities in Galilee, He says, “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.” God did certain things in the midst of certain people to cause repentance.

God has done many miracles and they have been designed to bring men to Him. Jesus was doing miracles to bring men to Himself. And the apostles also were doing miracles in the early years of the church to bring men to Jesus Christ. Miracles were signs to bring men to Christ and the knowledge of these signs was to cause men to repent.

The second thing designed by God, is sorrow for sin. Have you ever done something wrong and then you felt bad? Why does God want to make us feel guilty all the time? It's because it's a good thing to remember our mistakes because hopefully we will not do them again. This is God's gentle reminder. You sin and your conscience leads you to being sorry for sin.

Don't ever equate sorrow with repentance. There are a lot of people sorry for sin. You know a lot of people think that being sorry for your sin is repentance. But that is not repentance at all. There are a lot of people sorry for sin who are not saved because they do not turn from sin. That is what's important. Look at 2 Corinthians 7:9, “As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting.”

The third thing that God has devised to bring men to repentance is goodness. Romans 2:4 says, “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” God has made a world where man can know goodness and yet men despise God's goodness. Matthew 5:45 says, “For He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

Fourthly, Revelation 3:19 says, “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.” Do you know why God is rebuking you and chastening you by various trials? He wants to turn you around. God sometimes puts us through really serious crises to bring us to change. That happened in my own life.

And it was chastisement that God had to use in my life. And so I want to always warn people, if you see the goodness of God and you have the knowledge of the truth and you have a sense of guilt about your sin, don't wait until God has to chastise you. If God wants you He will get you and the pain is real.

God uses a fifth thing to bring men to repentance and that is final judgment. Acts 17:30-31 says this, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.” Don’t always talk about the positive things. The message of judgment is all over the Scripture and it must be preached because it is designed by God to lead men to repentance.

Remember how Israel reacted to judgment preaching in Matthew 21:32, “For John (the Baptist) came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.” So Jesus says in verse 43, “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.”

That's a strong message. Verses 45-46 say, “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that He was speaking about them. 46 And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because they held him to be a prophet.” They tried to kill Him. God did everything and yet they never did repent.

The second doctrine, in verse 19 is conversion, which means to turn back. And it's used in the New Testament of a sinner who turns back to God. Now let us look to a definition of repentance in relation to conversion. Let's imagine conversion as a total circle and split the circle in half. Half of it is repentance and half of it is faith, the whole circle is conversion. Repentance is turning toward God and faith is receiving Christ.

But notice, it is passive, repent and be converted. You cannot convert yourself. Have you ever heard people say, “Well I used to be a Catholic but I converted. You can't convert yourself, you can only be converted. That is an act of God. To begin with you turn around from sin, but faith in Jesus Christ is an act where God places faith in you to change you into His child. So both repentance and faith both make up the total which is conversion.

Peter then gives five reasons why men ought to repent. Five reasons why Israel ought to repent. Let's just look at the first one in verse 19, “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.” Now next week we will consider the other four but let's look at this one for a moment. Under the Old Covenant, sin just didn't get blotted out, it only got covered up for a while.

And until Jesus Christ came nobody's sins were blotted out, they remained right there on the list and God covered them for those who believed in Him, offered the sacrifices that expressed their faith. Only Christ could blot them out. God said in Isaiah 43:25, “I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” The word 'to blot out' literally means to wipe the writing of the papyrus.

God keeps a record of every time an individual broke one of God's ordinances. It's as if God in heaven has a list of every sin that every man ever commits. Did you know that the dead when they rise at the great white throne will be judged out of the books? Can you imagine how long your list and mine must be?

How do we pay it off? Death. But you know the wonderful thing about that list? We don't have to die the death that is the wages of sin. Who did it for us? God blotted it out, how? "By nailing Jesus who took our sins to the cross." What is the wages of sin? Death. And Jesus did it all for all time.

Well, I'm still sinning every once in a while. That doesn't matter, your sins were all in the future when He died and every one of them was already there and He erased them all. Remember 1 John 1:9? "He keeps on cleansing us from all sin." God does not see one single sin because you are in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Let us pray.