Joel Lindsey is lead pastor of Grace Church in Racine, Wisconsin. He has written the following article, “How to Repent: 5 Steps” (original source here)

The importance of repentance is hard to overstate. After all, Jesus’s first public exhortation was “Repent!” (Mark 1:15)—and if it was that high on Jesus’s list, we probably should pay attention too.

But how do we repent well? Psalm 32 is a wonderful place to explore the nature and process of deep repentance. Here are five vital steps.

1. BE HONEST ABOUT YOUR NEED FOR REPENTANCE.

How happy is the man the LORD does not charge with sin, and in whose spirit is no deceit! (v. 2)

Repentance requires honesty. No one comes to God with true repentance in their heart unless they’ve first acknowledged their need for forgiveness and reconciliation with him. Only those who have ceased trying to cover up their sin with self-righteousness and deceit can experience the deep and lasting change that comes only through repentance.

2. ACKNOWLEDGE THE DANGER OF SIN AND DAMAGE OF GUILT.

When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was drained as in the summer’s heat. (vv. 3–4)

Let’s face it: you are seeking repentance because God’s Spirit has convicted you. We often blame others for our stress and general moodiness, but many times we simply feel bad because we’ve done bad things. David describes physical and emotional symptoms associated with a guilty conscience. We must honestly assess the consequences of our sin, which means assessing both personal consequences and the impact it has had—and will continue to have—on others.

3. CONFESS FULLY.

I acknowledged my sin to you and did not conceal my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD.” (v. 5a)

Deep repentance demands full confession. Though it seems counterintuitive, the only way to be truly covered by Christ is to fully expose your sin. In the process of repentance, we must fight to be utterly transparent before God about the depth and breadth of our sin. Only ruthless honesty will suffice—and lead to freedom and joy.

4. HIDE IN GOD.

You took away the guilt of my sin. Therefore let everyone who is faithful pray to you at a time when you may be found. When the great floodwaters come, they will not reach him. You are my hiding place; You protect me from trouble. You surround me with joyful shouts of deliverance. (vv. 5b–7)

Adam and Eve hid behind inadequate, self-made coverings to mask their sin and shame. We too often hide behind self-made righteousness in order to make ourselves appear more acceptable than we really are. If you want to change, to really change—which, by the way, is the mark of true repentance—then you must hide in God alone.

It’s not enough just to repent of overt sins. It’s not enough to say, “I admit to my wrong behaviors.” All kinds of people repent that way, especially religious people with an image to maintain.

A Christian doesn’t just repent of their outward sins, but also of their attempts to hide behind shoddy self-made righteousness. Stop hiding in your effort. Hide in God.

5. SEIZE THE HOPE.

Many pains come to the wicked, but the one who trusts in the LORD will have faithful love surrounding him. (v. 11)

How can you be sure God will forgive you? His unfailing love. Recall and find assurance in the great promises he has made throughout history, and how they have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ:

His promise to Adam and Eve to crush the enemy
His promise to Abraham to claim and protect a people
His promise to Moses to provide a way for sinful humans to meaningfully relate to a holy God
His promise to David to provide a once-and-for-all eternal King for his people
All throughout history—right on up to the moment when you’re repenting—God has been saying, and continues to say, “I love you. I will not fail you. I am enough.”

Look to the promises of God, seize the hope, and “be glad in the LORD and rejoice, you righteous ones; shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” (Psalm 32:11).

“The no-lordship teachers commit the word-concept fallacy, assuming that, because a particular word is not used, then the concept denoted by that word must be absent.” – Keith Throop

From the Grace to you website (original source here)

One argument against repentance that is invariably found in no-lordship books goes like this: The Gospel of John, perhaps the one book in Scripture whose purpose is most explicitly evangelistic (John 20:31), never once mentions repentance. If repentance were so crucial to the gospel message, don’t you suppose John would have included a call to repent?

Lewis Sperry Chafer wrote,

“The Gospel by John, which is written to present Christ as the object of faith unto eternal life, does not once employ the word repentance” (Systematic Theology, 3:376). Chafer suggested that the Fourth Gospel would be “incomplete and misleading if repentance must be accorded a place separate from, and independent of, believing. No thoughtful person would attempt to defend [repentance as a condition of salvation] against such odds, and those who have thus undertaken doubtless have done so without weighing the evidence or considering the untenable position which they assume” (3:376-77).

More recently, Charles Ryrie has written,

It is striking to remember that the Gospel of John, the Gospel of belief, never uses the word repent even once. And yet John surely had many opportunities to use it in the events of our Lord’s life which he recorded. It would have been most appropriate to use repent or repentance in the account of the Lord’s conversation with Nicodemus. But believe is the word used (John 3:12, 15). So if Nicodemus needed to repent, believe must be a synonym; else how could the Lord have failed to use the word repent when talking with him? To the Samaritan harlot, Christ did not say repent. He told her to ask (John 4:10), and when her testimony and the Lord’s spread to other Samaritans, John recorded not that they repented but that they believed (John 4:39-42). And there are about fifty more occurrences of “believe” or “faith” in the Gospel of John, but not one use of “repent.” The climax is John 20:31 : “These have been written that you may believe . . . and that believing you may have life in His name” (SGS 97-98).

But no one camps on this point more fiercely than Zane Hodges:

One of the most striking facts about the doctrine of repentance in the Bible is that this doctrine is totally absent from John’s gospel. There is not even so much as one reference to it in John’s twenty-one chapters! Yet one lordship writer states: “No evangelism that omits the message of repentance can properly be called the gospel, for sinners cannot come to Jesus Christ apart from a radical change of heart, mind, and will.”

This is an astounding statement. Since John’s Gospel does omit the message of repentance, are we to conclude that its gospel is not the biblical gospel after all?

The very idea carries its own refutation. The fourth evangelist explicitly claims to be doing evangelism (John 20:30-31). It is not the theology of the gospel of John that is deficient; it is the theology found in lordship salvation. Indeed, the desperate efforts of lordship teachers to read repentance into the fourth gospel show plainly that they have identified their own fundamental weakness. Clearly, the message of John’s gospel is complete and adequate without any reference to repentance whatsoever (AF 146-47).

Hodges suggests that the apostle John was purposely avoiding the subject of repentance (AF 149). He finds in the Gospel of John

not a word—not a syllable—about repentance. And if ever there was a perfect place for the evangelist to inject this theme into his gospel, this is the place.

But his silence is deafening!…

The silence of chapter one persists to the very end of the book. The fourth gospel says nothing at all about repentance, much less does it connect repentance in any way with eternal life.

This fact is the death knell for lordship theology. Only a resolute blindness can resist the obvious conclusion: John did not regard repentance as a condition for eternal life. If he did, he would have said so. After all, that’s what his book is all about: obtaining eternal life (AF 148).

What are we to think of this suggestion? Is the apostle John’s “silence” on repentance really a death knell for the lordship position?

Hardly. H. A. Ironside responded to this issue more than fifty years ago. He wrote:

The arrangement of the four Gospels is in perfect harmony. In the Synoptics [Matthew, Mark, and Luke] the call is to repent. In John the emphasis is laid upon believing. Some have thought that there is inconsistency or contradiction here. But we need to remember that John wrote years after the older Evangelists, and with the definite object in view of showing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, believing, we might have life through His Name. He does not simply travel over ground already well trodden. Rather, he adds to and thus supplements the earlier records, inciting to confidence in the testimony God as given concerning His Son. He does not ignore the ministry of repentance because he stresses the importance of faith. On the contrary, he shows to repentant souls the simplicity of salvation, of receiving eternal life, through a trusting in Him who, as the true light, casts light on every man, thus making manifest humanity’s fallen condition and the need of an entire change of attitude toward self and toward God (Except Ye Repent, 37-38).

Zane Hodges’ assertion that “the fourth gospel says nothing at all about repentance” (AF 148) is demonstrably false. It is true that John does not use the word repentance, but as we have observed elsewhere, our Lord also did not use the word grace. One suspects no-lordship theologians would recoil from any suggestion that the doctrine of grace was missing from Jesus’ teaching.

Repentance is woven into the very fabric of the Gospel of John, though the word itself is never employed. In the account of Nicodemus, for example, repentance was clearly suggested in Jesus’ command to be “born again” (John 3:3-7). Repentance was the point of the Old Testament illustration our Lord gave Nicodemus (John 3:14-15). In John 4 , the woman at the well did repent, as we see from her actions in verses 28-29.

Isn’t repentance included by implication in the following Johannine descriptions of saving faith?

John 3:19-21: And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.

John 10:26-28: But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them (emphasis added).

John 12:24-26: Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it; and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall My servant also be; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.

To say that John called for a faith that excluded repentance is to grossly misconstrue the apostle’s concept of what it means to be a believer. Although John never uses repent as a verb, the verbs he does employ are even stronger. He teaches that all true believers love the light (John 3:19), come to the light (John 3:20-21), obey the Son (John 3:36), practice the truth (John 3:21), worship in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24), honor God (John 5:22-24), do good deeds (John 5:29), eat Jesus’ flesh and drink His blood (John 6:48-66), love God (John 8:42 , cf. 1 John 2:15), follow Jesus (John 10:26-28), and keep Jesus’ commandments (John 14:15). Those ideas hardly concur with no-lordship salvation! All of them presuppose repentance, commitment, and a desire to obey.

As those terms suggest, the apostle was careful to describe conversion as a complete turnabout. To John, becoming a believer meant resurrection from death to life, a coming out of darkness and into light, abandoning lies for the truth, exchanging hatred for love, and forsaking the world for God. What are those but images of radical conversion?

Loving God is the expression John uses most frequently to describe the believer’s demeanor. How can sinners begin to love God apart from genuine repentance? What does love imply, anyway?

Finally, remember that it is the Gospel of John that outlines the Holy Spirit’s ministry of conviction toward the unbelieving world (John 16:8-11). Of what does the Holy Spirit convict unbelievers? Of “sin, righteousness, and judgment” (John 16:8). Wouldn’t it seem that the Holy Spirit’s ministry of convicting people of sin and its consequences has the specific purpose of laying the groundwork for repentance?

Repentance underlies all John’s writings. It is understood, not necessarily explicit. His readers were so familiar with the apostolic message that he didn’t need to dwell on the issue of repentance. John was emphasizing different facets of the gospel message than those highlighted by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But he most assuredly was not writing to contradict them! His aim certainly was not to devise a no-lordship doctrine of salvation.

In fact, John’s purpose was exactly the opposite. He was showing that Jesus is God (e.g., John 1:1-18 ; 5:18 ; 12:37-41). John’s readers clearly understood the implication of that: If Jesus is God and we must receive Him as God (John 1:12), our first duty in coming to Him is to repent (cf. Luke 5:8).

Article: An Illustration of Repentance by Benjamin Shawn, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience.”

In the heat of the Christian life, however, that definition may seem more theoretical than practical, not particularly helpful when seeking to live a life of repentance (See the first of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses: When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” (Mt 4:17), He willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.) We recognize that repentance is a grace. That is, it is a gift from God. It is not something we work up for ourselves. It is not turning over a new leaf. It is a turning away from sin and a turning to God that is fueled, as it were, by the Spirit of God at work within us.

We all recognize that the first act of repentance is only the beginning. We recognize that sins must be mortified. We recognize that there is the problem of indwelling sin in the life of the believer. But I suspect that we don’t often attach repentance to these things. In part, this may be because we do not have a sense of what repentance look like when God is working repentance in us.

Perhaps an illustration will help. Imagine repentance as a man walking in one direction who suddenly realizes that he is walking in the opposite direction from which he should be walking. He stops. He turns around. Then he begins walking in the new direction. It is a quick and simple process. He realizes. He stops. He turns. But imagine someone on a bicycle realizing he is going the wrong direction. In one sense, it is still obvious. He stops. He turns around. He begins bicycling in the new direction. But it is a longer process. He has to come to a stop. Depending on his speed, that may take some time. The turning around also takes longer. And it takes longer to get up to full speed in the new direction. The process is the same for a man in a car. But it takes longer than for the man on the bike, and it may require going somewhat out of his way before he gets back on the right track. The process is the same for a man in a speed boat. He has to slow down, enter the turn, and come back. But the time and distance required to do so is much longer than what was required for the man walking. Now imagine that the man is piloting a supertanker. It takes him miles to slow the ship down enough to even begin to make the turn. The turn itself is immense, taking him quite a distance from his intended course. Then again it also takes a large amount of time to get up to full speed in the new direction.

Now apply the images to repentance. Some sins are small and easy. We stop and walk the other way. Some sins, like the bicycle, are a little more difficult. In God’s work in the believer, He takes a little time to bring the believer to an awareness that his course is actually a sinful one. Then there is the process of coming to a stop, the process of the turn itself, and the process of getting up to speed in faithfulness. But some sins are enormous. We may not be aware that they really are sins. Or they may be so deeply ingrained in us that we are not willing, at first, to recognize them as sins. God works patiently with us, carefully slowing us down, as the captain does with the ship, so that He can bring us through the turn and into the new direction, where He can bring us up to full speed.

There are two things that I find helpful about this illustration. First is the fact that God does not work repentance in us instantaneously, but over time. So the awareness of sin and the desire to change come gradually. God brings us, as it were, to a full stop slowly and carefully. So there are going to be many slips and falls on the way to that stopping point. The second thing has to do with the turning itself. In the image of the ship turning, there is a long time when the ship is neither on the old course, nor on the new course but, as it were, dead in the water. So it may well be in the life of the Christian. The sin has been admitted. The slips and falls have gotten fewer. But there seems to be little progress. We seem to be dead in the water. At that point, we are in the turn. Speed will pick up. Godliness will grow. But it will do so slowly, as God patiently works with us.

So if you have prayed for repentance for some particular sin, and there has been no instantaneous change, keep praying. God has promised to work, and He will. And you will be glad in the end that He did it slowly and carefully.