Turn-Around Specialist

but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.  Acts 26:20  ESV

Performing deeds – It takes more than simply changing your mind.  That’s the Greek word for “to repent” – metanoeo.  Literally, “to notice afterward, to change one’s feelings, purpose or opinion.”  As you will notice, the Greek verb locates this action in the nous, the mind.  Perhaps that’s where we first got off track.  We began to believe that Christianity was first a mental change and only afterward a change in behavior.  We forgot that the basis of the New Testament metanoeo is the Hebrew verb shuv (to return, to turn back, to repent).  And in Hebrew, there is no turning unless it is accompanied by the required behavior.  That’s why this verse immediately adds “performing deeds” that fit the change in direction.

Even the Greek text pushes us in this direction.  “Performing deeds” is erga prossontas.  You’ll recognize the first word from our English words like “ergonomics” and “ergometer.”  Work!  It’s not just deeds, but rather all effort, all purposes, all actions, whether religious or secular (is there a difference in Hebraic thought?).  Erga is what you do.

Prasso is how you do it.  Prasso is the sheer activity of human beings.  It does not stress the outcome so much as it stresses the effort.  One of the derivatives is pragma.  You’ll recognize this in the English word “pragmatic.”  Prasso is about what we attempt, perform, complete, take as a task or concern ourselves with.  Notice that Paul connects repentance directly with all subsequent action.  In other words, if repentance is true, everything changes.  It is simply impossible for a man to repent and then continue to act in the old ways.  Repentance demands change.

Let’s get practical about all this.  Far too many believers have been told that repentance and forgiveness are states of the mind or the soul.  The Greek separation of human beings into body, mind and soul lends itself to this false understanding of repentance.  We come to believe that repentance is a spiritual activity.  We think that once we experience confession and the warm feeling of forgiveness, we have arrived at a new state called “saved.”  But this is utterly foreign to Hebrew thought.  No man is rescued who continues to side with the enemy.  A servant of the Lord is a traitor to the world.  Where there is no change in behavior, there is no reconciliation with the King.

Of course, this is usually not an instantaneous transformation.  Consider Israel in the wilderness.  Forty years of failure.  Hopefully we won’t have to learn that lesson.  But the demand of Yeshua is just as harsh.  If you side with the world, you are an enemy of the Messiah.  Change must occur.  You must begin to experience confrontational nausea when those old behaviors present themselves.  You must learn to be sick of sin.

Turn around.  Stumble if you must.  Back peddle.  Wrench your side.  But get going in the other direction.  Things won’t look familiar because you are seeing them from a different perspective.  But that’s what’s supposed to happen.  If it’s not, then something else is wrong.

Topical Index: repent, metanoeo, shuv, perform, prasso, work, erga, Acts 26:20