Greek Spot 6: Acts 26:20 Repent And Turn To God

"First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their
repentance by their deeds". Acts 26:20.

This weeks entry is a little 'deeper' than most, but I hope you stay with it as we will be mining gold in the Word of God and that is always rewarding. Lets examine Acts 26:20.

The background to this verse sees Paul before King Agrippa and the Governor Festus. You should take the time to read it, perhaps from Chapter 21 as there is so much going on in an historical sense that it is better than any drama you might see presented on your television. Anyway, Paul is giving his defense and this involves his description of his activities leading up to his arrest. So we come to the verse we are examining today; Acts 26:20.

In a sense, this verse encapsulates Paul's ministry since his 'Damascus Road' encounter and is summed up in these few words "I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prover their repentance by their deeds". Many of us would do well to emulate this; to both repent and preach repentance (See our earlier entry on repentance here).

So lets dig a little deeper into this...

The word used for preached in the Greek is 'apagello" (pronounced apangello). Here it is used in the imperfect sense so it could legitimately be translated "I kept declaring", which is how it is translated in the NASB version. Next we have the word repent, which in the Koine is 'metanoeo' which means to change one's mind, feel remorseful, repent (BDAG p. 640). In this instance it is an infinitive verb, present active, so it means to repent, therefore as most translations have it "they should repent" is accurate within the context of the sentence.

Next we have turn, which is from the Greek word 'epistrepho' which means to change one's mind or course of action, for better or worse, turn, return (BDAG p. 382). I personally like the idea that perhaps (this is indeed a 'perhaps') we could use the word 'return' here since it reminds me of Paul's discussion regarding the "Ministry of Reconciliation' "All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:  that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God" 2 Corinthians 5:18-20. Nevertheless, the majority of English Bibles use the word turn and I certainly agree with the translation. (the Bible In Basic English [BBE] version has it as 'being turned' which is a possibility since one resource I examined has the word as an aorist verb [Analytical Greek New Testament, UBS3, p. 460]). So we have "I preached that they should repent and turn to God".

For the sake of simplicity we will examine the last part of the sentence as a whole; this is because of the way the last part of the sentence is constructed in the Koine.

Here are just a few examples of well known translations:

• NASB: "performing deeds appropriate to repentance".
• NIV: "prove their repentance by their deeds".
• NLT: "prove they have changed by the good things they do".

This part of the sentence uses these main words. They are not used in this order in the text but for the sake of English translation I have presented them in the following manner:

• Prasso: Practice, exercise, do
• Ergon: Deeds, works
• Axios: Worthy, deserving
• Metanoia: Repentance (noun)

 So for the second part of this verse (and the part we are concentrating on here), my 'raw' translation from the Greek goes something like "repent and turn to God, practicing works worthy of repentance".

So what have learned here? Well we can agree that the major translations have got this verse right, with a shade of nuance here or there. Another thing we have learned is that this simple verse encapsulates Paul's ministry up to his meeting with Agrippa. We can also see that Paul's preaching involved a recommendation (repent and turn to God) and a required response if accepted (prove your repentance by what you do). I think this verse also raises two important questions for us;

1/ What does it mean for us?

2/ What does it mean for the people we want to reach with the Gospel?

Please leave a comment in the comments section and use the archive to the right to see our earlier entries. God bless!