Repentance

Dear Victorious,

I saw in your blog today that we should work on our repentance for sin. How exactly should we do that? I mean, what exactly is repentance in common terms?

Laura N. - Columbus, OH

Dear Laura,

Repentance is really just two things.

First, it is agreement with God that sin is sin. God defines right and wrong. We simply need to agree with Him that what we've done is wrong. (That means we stop justifying, rationalizing or excusing it.)

Second, it is turning from the sin. True repentance results in changed behavior. So even though I may struggle with a particular sin pattern, I would expect the repentant sinner to sin less than he or she did before. So if I'm repenting of gossip, for example, we would expect to see the incidents of my gossiping become fewer and farther between as time goes on. (This is what turning from sin usually looks like.)