“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. Indeed, at the judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you” (Luke 10-13-14).
It should not be a surprise in our emotivist culture that repentance is defined as a feeling. I grew up with hearing in the church that repentance is remorse, feeling sorry for one’s sins. And it may be the case that such an understanding of repentance might be a rudimentary and very partial understanding of repentance offered to five-year-olds, but when one looks more closely at the New Testament, repentance is much different animal indeed. Matthew Bates in his must-read book, Salvation By Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King writes, “Our own cultural experiences might lead us to think that ‘repent’ means to turn away from private sins such as adultery, greed, and exploitation.”
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