Is conversion and repentance the same thing?
English: Illumination of Christ before Pilate Deutsch: Jesus vor Pilatus (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Intentionally or not, embarrassment over the term repentance creates in some presentations of the Gospel the image of a Christ who simply gives a pass to heaven upon a person repenting. “The sinner’s prayer” (“ Lord Jesus , I receive you into my heart right now …”) has the sound of a mantra that will reserve a place in heaven and secure the present services of a heavenly handyman who will fix the mess we have made of our lives—but leave the structure in essentially the same form in which He finds it. The theologian Louis Berkhof rightly points out that in Scripture, epistrophe (conversion, or turning) is a broader term than metanoia (repentance). Conversion is about change of life. Repentance is about change of mind. Accordingly, it is generally helpful to think of conversion as a larger phenomenon of which repentance is a part. Metanoia, in its turn, is a larger term t