With all the talk of revival recently it is easy to be swept away in the emotional excitement of it all and miss the importance of knowing and meeting God’s mark for repentance. In this blog we will be covering what it means to repent unto life and why most believers misunderstand what repentance is all about. It might surprise you to know that most do not repent unto life. Their repentance stops short of gaining the life of Christ.

With so many calls to repentance being made today, it’s crucial that your repentance is not half-way. Let’s start by defining repentance from God’s perspective by drawing from the EVA Terms Glossary (available within our IDCCST Course online):

True repentance leads to the salvation of the soul, as we turn TO God FROM idols, with the intent to serve the living and true God according to the new covenant terms and conditions.

The false repentance that is encouraged in the false religious system is a half repentance, as it is a repentance from the idols of the heart, from a lifestyle that is void of faith, from the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. The false repentance is not a repentance that is unto Christ, whereby a person is joined to the things of Christ to be joined to the life of Christ.

In the mind of God, repentance means accepting that Jesus Christ is the new covenant and conforming to the terms of the new covenant; beginning with the baptism of the Holy Spirit, evidenced by tongues, by which God seals your faith with the living token of Himself. This is repentance unto life because now you have a token to serve Him (the 1st of 9 spiritual tools); the believer is not only repenting of sin, but turning to God’s provision for redemption in Christ by taking on the yoke of His new covenant priesthood.

Apostle Peter, when he heard the Gentiles had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, referred to their conversion as “repentance unto life” saying in Acts 11:18, “…Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.”

Many people accept that Jesus died for their sins and accept that Jesus’ blood saves them from the wrath of God, but without the proper instruction God assigned to living apostles, their faith doesn’t progress as He intended. They don’t acknowledge the terms of the new covenant and so, even though they believe they are reconciled to God by the death of His Son, they are not being saved by His life. And that’s the teaching I want to get into to make sure this does not happen to you. The life is in the blood, and the sanctification of Jesus’ blood is sprinkled upon the things of His holy covenant.

Romans 5:9-10
⁹ Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

¹⁰ For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

In today’s spiritual climate, many do believe in tongues and in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but their repentance is still not unto life (they are not saved by Jesus’ life) because they never built the foundation of truth in their heart. As a result, as they hear the call to repent again if they want to jump start their faith again, they are once more convicted of sin, and step forward to repent, but their repentance stops short of gaining the life of Christ.

It’s hard for most Christians to spot this problem, but mercifully, God is challenging this bad habit to neglect to repent unto life, by empowering believers as He sets the record straight through restored apostolic instruction.

If there’s one take away point I want to leave with you it is that not every call to repentance is a call to covenant. And as repentance is sealed to Christ through the terms of His covenant, for many the defiled conscience continues to mar their walk of faith. Ministers errantly put forward calls for revival and calls for repentance only to stop short of rightly directing the faith of believers to the environment Jesus sanctified for our true liberation and continual spiritual increase. God is reproving this folly as He gathers His flock back to the covenant through the sanctified stewardship of His restored government today.

When God talks about repentance, He means a complete change in your belief system according to the way He has established His new covenant terms for your redemption and sanctified contact with Him. True repentance includes true discipleship where the foundation of truth is set in the heart as a means for you to gauge your faith according to God’s expectations.

Don’t underestimate how important the foundation of truth is and how important it is to get that instruction, as you will not gain that insight through the Bible alone (even as Jesus had to teach His disciples even though they had access to the scriptures).

The natural mind believes that you need to focus on fixing things in your life that you deem are not pleasing to God. You can understand why there is a big pull to want to change those things and to allow God to change you, and to believe that repentance (from doing those things) would logically be the first step in that direction. This is an example of the way the mind prioritizes and defines repentance from a carnal or natural point of view and not from a covenant perspective.

Jesus gave us His foundation of truth as a starting point for our reasoning with Him. Sin is not our starting point; Christ is through the sound doctrine He entrusted to living apostles as His master builders. Through their instruction in the foundation of truth, a believer is equipped with all of Jesus’ 9 spiritual tools, His new priesthood, and the works He sanctified to make faith living.

When the foundation of truth is not laid in your heart (or the natural pull of the carnal mind is not overcome), then you will respond to a call for repentance by going back to something else other than the foundation of truth to free yourself of guilt. False repentance means to go back to the Law to establish your guilt in order to set things right with God. This is repentance unto death; wrong covenant, wrong works. The sorrow of the heart works death, not the increase of God’s abundance that we experience when we are in covenant with Him. The life is in His blood, and the blood is sprinkled upon the articles of Jesus’ covenant.

Let’s take a moment to get your bearings. The path of true repentance is initiated by God, and follows this pattern: grace, faith, righteousness, the seal of the Spirit, and discipleship (the foundation of truth is built in the heart). Repentance means conversion – not to the idea of Jesus, but to His reality experienced within His covenant.

Acts 3:19
Repent therefore, and be converted that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.

Because sin separates man from God it is necessary to repent unto the things Christ provided for us to be joined to God in faith; the pillars of covenant faith being His elect stewardship and spiritual priesthood. Apostles lay His one true foundation within a believer’s heart, and by that instruction, faith is given the mobility of a functioning priesthood for daily living contact with God. For faith to be made living it must be joined to the sanctified altar of grace for remission of sins and repentance unto life.

To continue to repent of sins after receiving the foundation of truth and after functioning in your priesthood would defile the altar of our salvation, seeing that Jesus established the new covenant priesthood for our faith to be made perfect to reflect His image and likeness and not the defilement of the fallen nature of man.

When in covenant with God, Jesus mediates the terms of His covenant for us to experience His propitiation, the power of His fullness to join us to God. The righteous have our repentance sealed through the remission of sins, and by faith’s obedience to grace, we remain joined to Christ, and covered in the robes of His righteousness; meeting God’s standard in perfect holiness.