Transcript

ANNOUNCER: This is Grace in Focus. Today Bob and Ken will be answering a question about God repenting in the Old Testament. What did God turn from? Surely He didn’t sin. Can God change His mind? That is in this episode just ahead of us today. We thank you for joining us. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org. We also have a magazine by the same name as this radio program, Grace in Focus. It’s a wonderful magazine we offer it to you for free. All you have to do is sign up for it at our website faithalone.org and it is free. All except if you live outside of the 48 contiguous United States you do have to pay the postage. But we want you to have it. Grace in Focus, the magazine. Ask for it today at faithalone.org.

And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Ken Yates. 

KEN: Bob, we got a question from John that I think is a pretty good one. I think it causes the brain cells to start rolling around. 

BOB: Oh, I don’t know, it’s late in the afternoon, my brain cells won’t work. 

KEN: And I’ve never been asked this. I’ve had a number of discussions about repentance and this question is about repentance. And he points out that in the Old Testament when they translated the Old Testament into Greek, which we call the Septuagint, that it refers to God repenting. 

Now, John says it occurs 29 times. We didn’t find that many, but there are a handful of references about God repenting. And the Greek word is metanoeo, which is the Greek word and the New Testament for repent. 

And of course, and you’re the guru on this, you did your dissertation on repentance and all that, but Grace people will say that in the New Testament, repentance means to turn from your sin. And Zane Hodges, for example, wrote a chapter on repentance. And that’s his view,To turn from sin, to have fellowship restored. 

KEN: And John asked the question, well, God obviously didn’t turn from his sins. In these handful of references in the Old Testament, at least, God repented. Or I think the King James says what? 

BOB: The New King James says He relented. 

KEN: He relented, but it’s the Greek word for repent, metanoeo, so his question is, doesn’t that mean that the context determines it? He acknowledges that in the New Testament, maybe even most of the time, repentance means to turn from your sin, but couldn’t we look at the examples of God repenting and say, well, it obviously doesn’t mean that, and it means more of a change of mind. And so the context could lead one to say that repentance could simply mean a change of mind. 

BOB: Okay. So what I argued in my dissertation is that whenever it says God relented or God metanoeo, He had this change of mind. It’s a figure of speech called an anthropomorphism. It’s a figure of speech as though God were a man. Obviously, God can’t change his mind because God is omniscient. And Ken, what does it mean when we say God is omniscient? 

KEN: He knows everything. 

BOB: Does He know everything that’s ever happened? 

KEN: Yes. 

BOB: Everything that will happen? 

KEN: Absolutely. 

BOB: How about does He know everything that potentially could have happened? 

KEN: Sure. 

BOB: So how could God change his mind if He already knew everything He’s going to do forever? From a literal standpoint, God can’t change His mind. Positively or negatively, He can’t change his mind. But as an anthropomorphism, after, for example, the Ninevites repent and turn from their wicked ways, he relents concerning destroying them in 40 days. There’s multiple examples of where God, at least from a human standpoint, changed His mind. I think John’s point, if I’m understanding you correctly, is if it can be used positively of God changing his mind not to destroy people or not to do something that He had planned on doing, but it wasn’t a bad thing. I mean, destroying the Ninevites would have been a good thing, but He changed His mind. Couldn’t it be used in the New Testament to say, can a human change their mind to do something good? 

KEN: I think what he’s implying here is that what about those people who say that repentance, like in your dissertation, is equivalent to belief. I didn’t believe in Jesus. Now I repented, and now I do. 

BOB: Okay, so my answer would be, it’s always got this element of a mind change. The question is, and you’re right, it’s about context. Hypothetically, in the New Testament, it could say Paul was planning on going to Damascus, but he changed his mind and decided to go to Rome. You could use metanoeo there, but it never is like that. Not once. 

KEN: In the New Testament.

BOB: Never. There’s 55 uses of the verb and the noun, metanoeo and metanoia. None of the 55 are like that. For example, look at Revelation 9:20-21, Ken. That’s two uses of metanoia in Revelation. And then we’ll also look at Revelation 16. 

KEN: So Revelation 9:20-21. Okay, “But the rest of mankind who are not killed by these plagues did not repent of the works of their hand. They should not worship demons and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk, and they did not repent of their murders, or their sorceries, or their sexual immorality, or their thefts.” 

BOB: So they didn’t change their mind about all those things. Now look at chapter 16.

KEN: Now you don’t mean change your mind, you mean turn from those things. 

BOB: Well, I mean change the mind about those things, meaning turning from them.

KEN: Right, turning from them, okay. 

BOB: But there is a mental element to it. 

KEN: Sure. Yeah, these are wrong, and I need to turn from them. 

BOB: Right. The point is, it’s not, I was thinking of going to this city, and I changed my mind to go to this city. That would be morally neutral. These are all bad things that they didn’t turn from. And the reason they didn’t turn from them is they were not convinced that that was the wise thing to do.

ANNOUNCER: We will rejoin in just a moment. But years ago, Zane Hodges wrote the Gospel Under Siege. Sadly, this is still true. And GES president Bob Wilkin has recently written its sequel. Bob’s new book, The Gospel is Still Under Siege, is a book about theological clarity on the Biblical teaching about eternal salvation. It is available now. Secure yours today at the Grace Evangelical Society’s bookstore. Find it at faithalone.org/store. That’s faithalone.org/store. Now back to today’s content.

KEN: And what’s the next one? 

BOB: 16:9 and 11. 

KEN: Okay, Revelation 16:9, “And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues, and they did not repent and give Him glory.” That’s 9. And then 11 is, “They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and they did not repent of their deeds.” 

BOB: So they didn’t repent of their deeds. Now, I would agree that the sense is, they didn’t repent of their deeds. They didn’t turn from their deeds. But there has to be some sort of mental decision to turn from my deeds, right? There’s something that motivates me to turn from my deeds. And a lot of people say, well, metanoeo has the meta, “after”, and the noeo relates to the mind. The nous is the mind or metanoia, the “after mind”. And so they say, see, it’s a change of mind. 

KEN: That’s very common. Very common to run into. 

BOB: Of course, that’s a root fallacy. You can’t just take the roots of a word and say, that’s what it means. But there is a mental component to repentance, and it is a decision to turn from sins that is followed up by actually turning from sins. So it’s not just the decision, but it’s the actual turning. And so if these people had said, yeah, you know what? We’re going to turn from our sins in Revelation chapter 9 and Revelation 16, but they didn’t actually turn from them, they wouldn’t have repented. In order to repent, there is a mental component to it, but the repentance itself is turning. 

KEN: So the argument here is that in the New Testament, repentance always means to turn from your sin and what you’re saying is, but that obviously involves a mental aspect where I have a change of mind. For example, I see these evil things and I realize, you know what? I’m looking at these evil things differently now. I need to turn from them.

BOB: Well, and I realize that I’ve got these diseases because of the evil things I’ve been doing. Or I realized the reason I lost my job and my marriage is because I’ve been drunk all the time. And so I decide to stop drinking. I decide to stop the immorality because I realize this is not good for me and it’s not good for my family. And so I actually turn from it. If a person just says, you know what? I’ve changed my mind, but I haven’t done anything about it. That’s not repentance. 

KEN: You just changed your mind. 

BOB: You may just have had a notion that never was followed up on. 

KEN: Okay, how about this? And I don’t know if you covered this in your dissertation, but I’m going to do this for John as well. And I’m going to throw it out there and I may be absolutely crazy. But I remember years ago when we would do word studies that one of the things we would do is look at diachronic, you know—

BOB: Means through time.

KEN: through time, dia is through and chronos is time. Okay. In English, what that means is a word changes its meaning over time. For example, even in English, the word gay. If you use the word gay, you know, 100 years ago, it would have absolutely no connotation of a homosexual, none whatsoever. And so a word changes time. 

So I’m just I’m just asking. When you look at the LXX, we’re talking 250 years before Christ. Could we say, and I don’t know the answer this, you know, I don’t know if you discuss this in your dissertation, that even if we look at God relenting, God repenting in the Old Testament, and there it’s talking about 100% change of mind. It’s not talking about God turning from His sin in any way. 

BOB: Well, he actually did change his behavior. Okay. He didn’t destroy the Ninevites, but he didn’t turn from sin. No, but he did turn from something. He turned from a course of action that he had announced to a different course of action. 

KEN: Okay. But let’s say, you know, when John’s talking about that, here’s my question, could metanoia originally, 500 years before the New Testament have meant a change of mind. 

BOB: It could have.

KEN: But then over time, when we get to the New Testament, it has changed its meaning. I mean, it happens to all kinds of words. 

BOB: Exactly. Like a cupboard. Originally a cupboard was a board that had pegs on it, and you hung your cups on it. Today, a cupboard is something where you have drawers, and you have glass front, and you have shelves, and you put your knickknacks on the shelves. There’s no pegs, there’s nothing to hang your cups on. 

KEN: Or if you hear a word and you go, why do we call it that? And then you, you look it up and you find that 200 years ago, it meant this. 

BOB: Right. But in this case, I would love John, if you want, send me some examples of actual verses. He doesn’t do that. Where it says God relented. And where it uses metanoeo, I only found a handful where it’s used of God. And none of them are obviously Him changing His mind about or turning from a sinful action. But it is turning from an action that He had planned to a different action. And as I said, I believe it’s a figure of speech, because God doesn’t literally change His mind. It’s a good question. And the only possible exemption with metanoia is where it says, Esau found no place for repentance with his father. 

KEN: Wow, John, we appreciate that question. We hope this discussion helped. And we hope it helped for everyone who was listening to this. So remember, keep grace in focus. 

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So happy that you’ve joined us each day this week. Now it’s time for a weekend and we wish you a pleasant one. Let’s come back and meet again on Monday and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.