Repentance is Turning to Something Greater

We often think [repentance is] the religious equivalent of saying, "Eat your vegetables." In truth, repentance is turning from a lesser good to a greater one. It's saying "stop eating out of the trash and taste this feast the Lord has made for you."

--Daniel Montgomery & Mike Cosper, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 189.

My Real Problem is Me, Not My Circumstances

Real repentance means that you see that your biggest problem is you, not your circumstances.

--Timothy S. Lane & Paul David Tripp, How People Change (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2006), 165.

The Christian Life is a Life of Constant Repentance

God has blessed you with his grace, gifted you with his presence, strengthened you with his power, and made you the object of his eternal love. Because we belong to him, we live for his agenda. And if change is his agenda, then repentance and faith is the lifestyle to which we have been called.

--Timothy S. Lane & Paul David Tripp, How People Change (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2006), 16.

God's Unwavering Agenda: To Make Us Holy

[God] calls us to a life of constant work, constant growth, and constant confession and repentance. Making us holy is God's unwavering agenda until we are taken home to be with him. He will do whatever he needs to produce holiness in us. He wants us to be a community of joy, but he is willing to compromise our temporal happiness in order to increase our Christlikeness.

--Timothy S. Lane & Paul David Tripp, How People Change (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2006), 6.

Obedience: The Joyful Result of a Changed Heart

Offensive discipleship understands the power of the gospel, trusts the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, and knows that if Jesus brings His transformation, obedience will be the joyful result. Certainly offensive discipleship includes some protecting as the apostle Paul warned about wolves threatening to hurt sheep, but protection is not the end goal--heart change is the goal.

--Eric Geiger, Michael Kelley, and Philip Nation, Transformational Discipleship: How People Really Grow (Nashville: B&H, 2012), 33.

Discipleship is about Repentance

Leading a ministry that approaches discipleship as merely information and not repentance devalues discipleship and denies the power of the gospel.

--Eric Geiger, Michael Kelley, and Philip Nation, Transformational Discipleship: How People Really Grow (Nashville: B&H, 2012), 25.

Christianity is a Family Religion

When sin or faults ensnare us, we need adjustment, a course correction. Notice that such a restoration comes from outside ourselves. Others must restore us when we are caught in a fault. Our privatized ideas about the Christian faith do not square with biblical Christianity. Christianity is a family religion. We live the faith dependent upon brothers and sisters.

--Thabiti Anyabwile, The Life of God in the Soul of the Church: The Root and Fruit of Spiritual Fellowship (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2012), 112.

Repentance Doesn't Obligate God

Although Nineveh had repented, God was in no way obliged to deliver the city because they 'turned from their evil way', but spared them out of pure grace. God acts with grace toward both Nineveh and Jonah, underlining once again the compassionate character so forcefully presented at the beginning of Jonah 4.

--Daniel C. Timmer, A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah (New Studies in Biblical Theology; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2011), 133.

God's Gracious Threats

When we hear God threaten Nineveh with judgment, therefore, we should not see this as one of his eternal decrees (to which we are not privy in any case) that he is modifying 'on the fly.' His relenting, though not forced by human repentance, is nonetheless a gracious response to it. I have described Jonah's message to Nineveh as a 'threat' to highlight the conditional nature of Jonah's message and thus the possibility of such a divine response. Threats by their very nature are intended to change behaviour.

--Daniel C. Timmer, A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah (New Studies in Biblical Theology; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2011), 113.

Nineveh's Partial Repentance

From violence before Jonah, to repentance from violence under Jonah's preaching, and back to violence a few decades later--this is an unconvincing portrait of thoroughgoing repentance.

Where does all this leave us? Nineveh believed in God, turned from her sin in some degree, but did not fully turn to God. In other words, her repentance was partial and incomplete.

--Daniel C. Timmer, A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah (New Studies in Biblical Theology; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2011), 104.

God's Universal Kingship Calls for Repentance from All

Even though Israel was almost constantly threatened by Assyria, and would fall to its armies barely thirty years after the end of Jeroboam's reign, the book of Jonah views Israel and Assyria through the largest possible lens, that of humanity under the threat of divine judgment but presented with the possibility of repentance. In doing so it pushes to the side the imperialist motives of Jeroboam II and Assyria alike and reasserts Yahweh's universal kingship and grace, paradoxically pointing to the only way of escape for both Israel and Nineveh.

--Daniel C. Timmer, A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah (New Studies in Biblical Theology; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2011), 74-75.