Repentance Will Be Recognizable

Last week's article concerned the necessity of repentance on the part of everyone who desires Christ and His salvation. The Lord Jesus accomplished full reconciliation with God for people alienated from God and condemned to everlasting punishment on account of their sin. This, sinful humanity could never accomplish for itself - it is the work of Christ alone by His death and resurrection. Christ in turn offers Himself and His reconciling work to all men freely as they come to Him in their hearts. This coming involves faith and it requires repentance. The requirement for repentance has been largely dismissed from modern preaching, probably because people are so in love with sin that preachers found preaching repentance reduced the size of their congregations. However, scripture requires repentance and no one is authorized to alter what God requires. The omission of repentance from Gospel preaching has resulted in the alarming weakening of the church as sinners yet in love with their sins have been added to church rolls through an emaciated Gospel.

Where repentance has been retained in some form as part of the Gospel message, it has often been redefined and weakened so as virtually to lose its meaning. For example, people are told that repentance simply involves being sorry for one's misdeeds. Passages such as 2 Cor. 7:10 make plain, however, that repentance is more than being sorry. Godly sorrow over sin produces repentance, but repentance is more than sorrow. The eleventh verse of that chapter identifies repentance in terms of attitude and actions whereby sin is cast off. Sinful behavior is conspicuously replaced by righteous behavior. John the Baptist required repentance of all whom he baptized. He required that sinners not only profess to be repentant but that they also bring forward definable evidence proving their repentance. Luke, chapter 3, records some of the fruit which John demanded. For instance, he required that soldiers professing repentance prove that repentance by not intimidating anyone or accusing falsely and by being content with their wages.

The point is that repentance over sin involves a change of mind and heart toward specific sin which results in a change of conduct. Repentant sinners are those who in sorrow over their sin purpose to put sin away and go to Christ in faith seeking grace to make that purpose work. The fruit of repentance is not the result of sheer will power, but rather comes from Christ as He empowers the repentant sinner to change his course of life.

Biblical religion has fallen into public disrepute because so many of its adherents live in open sin. Everyone instinctively recognizes this to be a contradiction of what ought to be. This is part of the fall-out of removing repentance from the Gospel.

For the sake of precious souls and for the testimony of the Gospel, let repentance be preached again in its Biblical purity. Let the world understand that Christ really does deliver people from the ruinous power of their sins, as well as from its everlasting punishment. There is hope for lives ravished by iniquity!