Repentance is the act of changing
– changing thoughts, words, and behaviors into better ones. Christians are
commanded to repent, and there are many calls for repentance in the scriptures.
There are also numerous stories in the scriptures that teach the importance of
repentance. Two of these stories clearly illustrate the possibility of
repentance for even the vilest of sinners. These stories are the experience of
Alma the Younger in the Book of Mormon – Another Testament of Jesus Christ (Mosiah
27) and the experience of Saul of Tarsus in the New Testament (Acts 9).
As I am currently studying the book
of Acts, this post will be about Saul. He was a devout Jew who thought that the
Christian movement was wrong and wanted to stamp it out. He went about
persecuting the Christians and “breathing out threatenings and slaughter
against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1). He obtained “letters” from the
high priest allowing him to hunt Christians and to bring them bound to
Jerusalem.
As Saul journeyed near Damascus, he
suddenly saw a bright light from heaven about him, and he fell to the earth.
Then he heard a voice speaking to him.
Saul, Saul, why
persecutes thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am
Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
And he trembling
and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto
him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do
(Acts 9:4-6).
I have heard and/or read this story
many times in my life. I always considered Saul to be quite wicked because he
was persecuting the Christians, and I do not believe that I am the only one to
think this way. When I studied these verses this time, I had some different
thoughts about Saul. Maybe he was not as wicked as I assumed. Maybe he was just
focused on the wrong thing. Maybe something happened to make him more
teachable. My thoughts were similar to the following words by President David
O. McKay.
Perhaps during
those few days of comparative leisure, [Saul] began to wonder whether what he
was doing was right or not. Perhaps the shining face of the dying Stephen and
the martyr’s last prayer began to sink more deeply into his soul than it had
done before. Little children’s cries for their parents whom Saul had bound
began to pierce his soul more keenly, and make him feel miserably unhappy as he
looked forward to more experiences of that kind in Damascus. Perhaps he
wondered whether the work of the Lord, if he were really engaged in it, would
make him feel so restless and bitter. He was soon to learn that only the work
of the evil one produces those feelings, and that true service for the Lord,
always brings peace and contentment (Ancient
Apostles, 2nd ed. [1921], 148, as quoted in New Testament Student Manual, Religion 211-212, 295)
This statement by President McKay helped
me to understand Saul and his story a little better. Saul’s conversion story is
more dramatic than most of us will ever experience. Most of us do not go around
persecuting the covenant people of God like Saul (his name in Hebrew), nor will
we become Special Witnesses of Jesus Christ as Paul (his name in Greek) did.
However, we all have the need to change and to become more like the Savior.
I always thought that repentance took
time, but I am thinking in a different way since I read a statement shared by a
classmate. The following statement is from a devotional address given by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland on March 18, 1980, at Brigham Young University.
You can change anything you want to
change and you can do it very fast. It is another Satanic falsehood to believe
that it takes years and years and eons of eternity to repent. It takes exactly
as long to repent as it takes you to say, “I’ll change” – and mean it. Of
course there will be problems to work out and restitutions to make. You may
well spend – indeed, you had better spend – the rest of your life proving your
repentance by its permanence. But change, growth, renewal, and repentance can
come for you as instantaneously as it did for Alma and the sons of Mosiah.
Reason tells us that we can repent
of our sins and mistakes just as Saul and Alma the Younger did. They were among
the vilest of sinners because they tried to destroy the Church of Christ. For
Saul it took a visit from Christ, and for Alma it took a visit from an angel.
Both of these men went forward and did great work for God. Paul became an
Apostle, and Alma became a Prophet. For whatever reason, God decided that they
needed special teaching methods.
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