Repentance is an important Christian doctrine for "God commands all people everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30). At some point in medieval period the biblical idea of repentance was misunderstood. As Dr. Sinclair B. Ferguson rightly observes, "The gospel called not for an act of penance but for a radical change of mind-set and an equally deep transformation of life" ("Here We Stand: A Call from Confessing Evangelicals," 132). Many scholars have observed that the word "repentance" is used many times and described using different metaphors (including plowing, circumcising, turning, and returning) in the Holy Scripture.
One of the ways repentance is used in the Old Testament has the idea of returning to "the provisions and prescriptions of God's bond." Dr. Ferguson adds that "to repent" is even "used to describe the return of God's people from geographical exile (e.g., Isa. 10:21-22), and in many ways this provides us with a helpful metaphor to understand what repentance is. Just as restoration from exile means returning geographically from the far country to the sphere where God has covenanted to fulfill his promise of blessing, so repentance from sin means returning from the far country of bondage in sin and guilt to the place where God has promised to fulfill his covenanted blessings - and all based on the promise of God's free mercy and grace (cf. Deut. 30:11)....
"Biblical repentance, then, is not merely a sense of regret that leaves us where it found us; it is a radical reversal that takes us back along the road of our sinful wanderings, creating in us a completely different mind-set: We come to our senses spiritually (cf. Luke 15:17). No longer is life characterized by the demand 'give me' (Luke 15:12) but now by the request 'make me' (Luke 15:19)" ("Here We Stand," 133).
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