Right About Face

And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent. ACTS 17:30

Moody believed that repentance was one of the most misunderstood words in the Christian vocabulary. People had heard it from childhood, he said, and if you asked them for a definition you would get a strange one. So in the chapter of The Way to God called Repentance and Restitution he does what he did with the new birth: he clears away the mistakes first.

What repentance is not

“Repentance is not fear.” Men at sea in a storm, he says, will cry to God for mercy and go back to their swearing when the weather clears. Pharaoh seemed to repent each time a plague fell, and hardened his heart each time it lifted.

Nor is repentance feeling. Moody preached for a time every Sunday to hundreds of convicts in the penitentiary at Baltimore. Nearly all of them felt miserable, especially in their first weeks inside. Most went back to their old ways when they were released. They were sorry they had been caught.

Nor is it remorse. Judas had remorse enough to hang himself, and it was not repentance. Moody believed that if Judas had gone to his Lord and confessed, he would have been forgiven. Nor is it fasting, or penance, or even deep conviction of sin, which a man may carry for months without turning. Nor, finally, is it giving up one particular sin. A drunkard may sign the pledge and stop drinking, and still not have repented. Breaking off one sin, Moody says, is like breaking one limb off a tree when the whole tree must come down, or stopping one leak in a ship that is holed in four places.

What it is

Having cleared the ground, Moody gives his definition, and it is a soldier’s word of command: right about face. A man walking one way turns round and walks the other. He notes that repentance has also been described as a change of mind, and he takes his example from the parable of the two sons.

But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went. MATTHEW 21:28–29

The son changed his mind, but Moody’s point is that he also went. He was not only convinced he had been wrong; he picked up his tools and walked into the field. That, says Moody, is Christ’s definition of repentance. It is a turning of the will that shows itself in the feet.

Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel? EZEKIEL 33:11

And because it is a turning, it need not take long. “It does not take a man six months to change his mind.” Moody tells of a vessel that went down off Newfoundland. There was a moment when the captain could have reversed the engines, and a moment after which it was too late. So there is a moment in every life, he says, when a person can halt and say, by the grace of God, I will go no further this way.

The goodness that leads to it

It would be easy to read all this as though repentance were a feat of will that sinners must perform before God will look at them. Moody did not mean that, and he quotes a friend, Dr Brooks of St Louis, to guard against it. Some people, Brooks says, are not sure they have repented enough. If they mean they must repent in order to make God merciful, the sooner they give up that kind of repentance the better. God is already merciful, as the cross shows.

Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? ROMANS 2:4

It is not our badness but His goodness that leads us to turn. Saving repentance and saving faith, Moody’s friend says, always go together. We turn from sin because we have turned to Christ.

Restitution

Here Moody becomes very practical, and many readers will find him uncomfortable. If repentance is real, he says, it will bear fruit, and one of its first fruits is restitution. “If we have done wrong to any one we should never ask God to forgive us, until we are willing to make restitution.”

He tells stories he had lived through. A well-dressed man came to him after a meeting and confessed that he had stolen about fifteen hundred dollars from his employers. He still had some of it and wondered whether he might invest it and pay them back from the profits. Moody told him that was a delusion of Satan. The man brought him what he had left, and Moody met the two employers in a side room of the church and asked them for mercy, not justice. They wept and forgave him, and the four of them knelt and prayed together. Another friend, newly converted, remembered that he had once taken advantage of the government in his business dealings, and sent a cheque to the Treasury. A man of thirty-two, grey before his time, confessed that at twenty he had set fire to his widowed mother’s failing newspaper office for the insurance money, and had been tormented for twelve years. Moody told him to calculate the sum with interest and pay it back.

And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. LUKE 19:8

“I believe a great many men are crying to God for light; and they are not getting it because they are not honest.”

A necessary balance

Moody is right that repentance which keeps the stolen money is not repentance. He is right that many Christians are in darkness because there is something they know they should put right and will not. The reader should take him seriously.

But the reader should also notice that his language can be pressed too far. Forgiveness is not earned by restitution; it is received through Christ. Moody himself did not teach otherwise, but his wording can be heard as a condition that must be fulfilled before grace will act. The better way to say it is that a person who has truly turned to Christ will want to put things right, and will not be at peace until he has done what he can. Some wrongs cannot be undone: the person is dead, the harm is past repair. Moody’s counsel in Prevailing Prayer is to do what lies in our power, and the gospel covers the rest.

He added one more solemn note. Now, he said, is the only day of mercy you will ever have. He had searched his Bible carefully, and could find no second chance after death.

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

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Go through Moody’s list: fear, feeling, remorse, penance, conviction, giving up one sin. Which have you mistaken for repentance?

2. Is there a direction in your life in which you need to turn right about face? Name it, and turn today.

3. Ask God whether there is anything you have taken, damaged or misrepresented that you need to put right. Write it down.

4. Take one concrete step of restitution this week — a letter, a repayment, an apology — and do it before you lose your nerve.

5. Read Repentance and Restitution in The Way to God, in the Ochorus library.

A PRAYER

Lord, I have been sorry many times, and gone on the same way. I do not want remorse; I want to turn.

Thank You that it is Your goodness, not my badness, that draws me back.

Show me anything I have wronged and not put right, and give me the honesty and the courage to deal with it.

I turn from my sin and toward You now, not in six months’ time, but today. Keep me walking the other way. Amen.