Mark 1:15; Luke 24:47; Acts 2:38; Acts 3:19; Acts 20:21; Rom 10:9–10; Eph 2:8–9; Heb 6:1; Acts 11:18; 2 Tim 2:25; 2 Cor 7:10
Repentance (metanoia — a change of mind issuing in a turning of life) and faith (pistis — entrusting oneself to Christ) are the twin human responses to the gospel: inseparable, both commanded, and both granted by God.
## Core Position
Repentance (metanoia — a change of mind issuing in a turning of life) and faith (pistis — entrusting oneself to Christ) are the twin human responses to the gospel: inseparable, both commanded, and both granted by God. They are not works that merit salvation; they are the turning and the trusting by which the empty hand receives it. Scripture presents them as one movement seen from two sides — turning from sin and dead works, turning to God in Christ — and both continue through the whole Christian life rather than ending at conversion.
Mark 1:15; Luke 24:47; Acts 2:38; Acts 3:19; Acts 20:21 ("repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ"); Rom 10:9–10; Eph 2:8–9; Heb 6:1; Acts 11:18 and 2 Tim 2:25 (repentance granted by God); 2 Cor 7:10 (godly grief produces repentance).
The New Testament never rigidly sequences repentance and faith; they name one turning. Saving faith therefore necessarily includes repentance — "faith" without turning is the dead faith of James 2:14–26. Because both are granted, no one boasts in their own turning.
Decisionism — the assumption that repeating a prayer constitutes conversion — is a modern evangelistic tradition, not the biblical pattern. The Roman Catholic sacrament of penance is a later development distinct from biblical metanoia. The 20th-century "Lordship salvation" controversy argues in categories the text does not use; Scripture simply refuses to separate what the debate splits apart.