Repentance - Change of Heart Only or Also Turning From Sin?

Yesterday, I went out to Sinagra Park in Downtown Lakewood. Shortly after I arrived, Rob came up to me and engaged me in a discussion. Rob is King James only and was trying to convert me to be the same.

I told Rob that one must repent and trust Jesus to be saved and he asked me what "repent" meant. I told him it is a turning away from sin. Our conversation went on from here about errors in current translations of the Bible and he ended up getting me a few books- one of them a book about errors in modern translations and another a King James Bible. Just for the record, I have nothing against the King James Bible.

I was told from another King James only friend that the meaning of the word "repent" simply means a "change of heart" and does not involve a turning away from sin. I do not know if this is the majority stance of King James Only or just this particular person. The reason for this comes from the first use of the word in the Bible in Genesis 6:6 (KJV): "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at his heart." Using the second phrase of the sentence to define "repent," the definition here is that it "grieved" Him. I support using Scripture to define Scripture, and I will use this method.

Using the Strong's Concordance, the definition of the word "repent" in the Hebrew is indeed "to be sorry, rue, suffer grief." The problem is that when Jesus told people they must repent, he spoke in Greek. The Strong's Concordance defines "repent" in Greek "to change one's mind."

It is more than just a change of one's mind, though.

When I tell people to "repent," I define it as a "turning from sin." Look at what Jesus said in Matthew 12:41: "The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here."

This is what Jesus was talking about in Jonah 3:8b- where the King said, "Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands." Verse 10 adds: "When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that He had said he would do to them, and he did not do it."

What did the people do? They turned from their evil way. They repented.

Verse 9 does say, "Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish," but Jesus said in Matthew 12:41 that the men of Nineveh repented - not God.

Jesus said in Luke 13:3 that "Unless you repent, you will perish" and in Luke 24:47 "that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations."

When I started reading the Bible for the first time in 2008, I started out reading the Gospels. I want to say I read them in order, but I am not 100% sure. One passage that concerned me was reading the Sermon on the Mount- that Jesus viewed lust the same as adultery and that whoever is angry with his brother is liable to the hell of fire. Another passage that concerned me was reading Luke 13:3, that "unless you repent, you will perish." Then I read John 3:3, where Jesus said "unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

It was at this point that I asked my pastor what it meant to be born again. I did not want to be one of the people who would not see the kingdom of God.

I have been taken to task by a member in my family over the fact that I push repentance too hard. I find it ironic that I am now debating again this topic, the very one that saved me.