Charles H. Spurgeon

Repent ye, and believe the gospel —Mark 1:15.

Our Lord Jesus Christ commences His ministry by announcing its leading commands. He cometh up from the wilderness newly anointed, like the bridegroom from his chamber. His love notes are repentance and faith. He cometh forth fully prepared for His office, having been in the desert, “tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15)…Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for Messiah speaketh in the greatness of His strength. He crieth unto the sons of men, “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” Let us give our ears to these words, which, like their Author, are full of grace and truth. Before us, we have the sum and substance of Jesus Christ’s whole teaching, the Alpha and Omega of His entire ministry. Coming from the lips of such a One, at such a time, with such peculiar power, let us give the most earnest heed. May God help us to obey them from our inmost hearts.

I shall commence by remarking that the gospel that Christ preached was very plainly a command:

“Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” Our Lord does condescend to reason. Often His ministry graciously acted out the old text, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isa 1:18). He does persuade men by telling and forcible arguments, which should lead them to seek the salvation of their souls. He does [call] men, and oh, how lovingly He woos them to be wise. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mat 11:28). He does entreat men: He condescendeth to become, as it were, a beggar to His own sinful creatures, beseeching them to come to Him. Indeed, He maketh this to be the duty of His ministers, “as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2Co 5:20). Yet, remember: though He condescendeth to reason, to persuade, to [call], and to beseech, still His gospel hath in it all the dignity and force of a command. If we would preach it in these days as Christ did, we must proclaim it as a command from God—attended with a divine sanction and not to be neglected, save at the infinite peril of the soul…“Repent ye” is as much a command of God as “Thou shalt not steal” (Exo 20:15). “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” has as fully a divine authority as “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength” (Luk 10:27).

Think not, O men, that the gospel is a thing left to your option to choose it or not! Dream not, O sinners, that ye may despise the Word from heaven and incur no guilt! Think not that ye may neglect it and no ill consequences shall follow! It is just this neglect and despising of yours that shall fill up the measure of your iniquity. It is this concerning which we cry aloud, “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation!” (Heb 2:3). God commands you to repent! The same God before Whom Sinai was moved and was altogether on a smoke—that same God Who proclaimed the Law with sound of trumpet, with lightnings and thunders, speaketh to us more gently, but still as divinely, through His only begotten Son, when He saith to us, “Repent ye, and believe the gospel”…

To all the nations of the earth, then, let us sound forth this decree from God. O men, Jehovah that made you, He Who gives you the breath of your nostrils, He against Whom you have offended, commands you this day to repent and believe the gospel…

I know some brethren will not like this, but that I cannot help. The slave of systems I will never be, for the Lord has loosed this iron bondage from my neck. Now I am the joyful servant of the truth that maketh free. Offend or please, as God shall help me, I will preach every truth as I learn it from the Word. I know if there be anything written in the Bible at all, it is written as with a sunbeam: God in Christ commandeth men to repent and believe the gospel. It is one of the saddest proofs of man’s utter depravity that he will not obey this command, but that he will despise Christ and so make his doom worse than the doom of Sodom and Gomorrah…

While the gospel is a command, it is a two-fold command explaining itself.

“Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” I know some very excellent brethren—would God there were more like them in zeal and love—who, in their zeal to preach up simple faith in Christ, have felt a little difficulty about the matter of repentance. I have known some of them who have tried to get over the difficulty by softening down the apparent hardness of the word repentance by expounding it according to its more usual Greek equivalent, a word that occurs in the original of my text and signifies “to change one’s mind.” Apparently, they interpret repentance to be a somewhat slighter thing than we usually conceive it to be, a mere change of mind, in fact. Now, allow me to suggest to those dear brethren that the Holy Ghost never preaches repentance as a trifle.¹ The change of mind or understanding of which the gospel speaks is a very deep and solemn work and must not on any account be depreciated.

Moreover, there is another word that is also used in the original Greek for repentance, not so often, I admit. Still, it is used. [It] signifies “an after-care,” a word that has in it something more of sorrow and anxiety than that which signifies changing one’s mind. There must be sorrow for sin and hatred of it in true repentance, or else I have read my Bible to little purpose…To repent does mean a change of mind. But it is a thorough change of the understanding and all that is in the mind, so that it includes an illumination—an illumination of the Holy Spirit. I think it includes a discovery of iniquity and a hatred of it, without which there can hardly be a genuine repentance. We must not, I think, undervalue repentance. It is a blessed grace of God the Holy Spirit, and it is absolutely necessary unto salvation.

The command explains itself. We will take, first of all, repentance. It is quite certain that whatever the repentance here mentioned may be, it is a repentance perfectly consistent with faith. Therefore, we get the explanation of what repentance must be, from its being connected with the next command: “believe the gospel”…Do remember that no repentance is worth the having that is not perfectly consistent with faith in Christ. An old saint on his sickbed once used this remarkable expression: “Lord, sink me low as hell in repentance; but”—and here is the beauty of i —“lift me high as heaven in faith.” Now, the repentance that sinks a man low as hell is of no use except there is the faith also that lifts him as high as heaven! The two are perfectly consistent, the one with the other. A man may loathe and detest himself; and all the while, he may know that Christ is able to save and has saved him. In fact, this is how true Christians live. They repent as bitterly for sin as if they knew they should be damned for it; but they rejoice as much in Christ as if sin were nothing at all.

Oh, how blessed it is to know where these two lines meet, the stripping of repentance and the clothing of faith! The repentance that ejects sin as an evil tenant and the faith that admits Christ to be the sole Master of the heart; the repentance that purges the soul from dead works and the faith that fills the soul with living works; the repentance that pulls down and the faith that builds up; the repentance that scatters stones and the faith that puts stones together; the repentance that ordains a time to weep and the faith that gives a time to dance—these two things together make up the work of grace within whereby men’s souls are saved. Be it then laid down as a great truth, most plainly written in our text, that the repentance we ought to preach is one connected with faith. Thus, we may preach repentance and faith together without any difficulty whatever…

This brings me to the second half of the command, which is, “Believe the gospel.”

Faith means trust in Christ. Now, I must again remark that some have preached this trust in Christ so well and so fully that I can but admire their faithfulness and bless God for them. Yet there is a difficulty and a danger. It may be that in preaching simple trust in Christ as being the way of salvation, they may omit to remind the sinner that no faith can be genuine but such as is perfectly consistent with repentance for past sin. My text seems to me to put it thus: No repentance is true but that which consorts with faith; no faith is true but that which is linked with a hearty and sincere repentance on account of past sin. So then, dear friends, those people who have a faith that allows them to think lightly of past sin have the faith of devils, not the faith of God’s elect…Such men as have a faith that allows them to live carelessly in the present, who say, “Well, I am saved by a simple faith,” and then sit on the ale-bench with the drunkard, or stand at the bar with the spirit-drinker, or go into worldly company and enjoy the carnal pleasures and the lusts of the flesh—such men are liars. They have not the faith that will save the soul. They have a deceitful hypocrisy; they have not the faith that will bring them to heaven.

And then, there be some other people who have a faith that leads them to no hatred of sin. They do not look upon sin in others with any kind of shame. It is true they would not do as others do, but then they can laugh at what others commit. They take pleasure in the vices of others, laugh at their profane jests, and smile at their loose speeches. They do not flee from sin as from a serpent, nor detest it as the murderer of their best friend. No, they dally² with it. They make excuses for it. They commit in private what in public they condemn. They call grave offenses slight faults and little defalcations.³ In business, they wink at departures from uprightness and consider them to be mere matters of trade, the fact being that they have a faith that will sit down arm-in-arm with sin and eat and drink at the same table with unrighteousness. Oh! If any of you have such a faith as this, I pray God to turn it out bag and baggage. It is of no good to you! The sooner you are cleaned out of it, the better for you; for when this sandy foundation shall all be washed away, perhaps you may then begin to build upon the Rock (Mat 7:24-27).

My dear friends, I would be very faithful with your souls and would lay the lancet⁴ at each man’s heart.

What is your repentance? Have you a repentance that leads you to look out of self to Christ and to Christ only? On the other hand, have you that faith which leads you to true repentance? To hate the very thought of sin? So that the dearest idol you have known, whatever it may be, you desire to tear from its throne that you may worship Christ and Christ only? Be assured of this: nothing short of this will be of any use to you at the last. A repentance and a faith of any other sort may do to please you now, as children are pleased with fancies. But when you get on a deathbed and see the reality of things, you will be compelled to say that they are a falsehood and a refuge of lies. You will find that you have been daubed with untempered⁵ mortar (Eze 15:10-11), that you have said, “Peace, peace,” to yourselves, when there was no peace (Jer 6:14). Again, I say, in the words of Christ, “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” Trust Christ to save you, lament that you need to be saved, and mourn because this need of yours has put the Savior to open shame, to frightful sufferings, and to a terrible death.

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1 trifle – something of little value.
2 dally – play or toy with; flirt.
3 defalcations – shortcomings; failures.
4 lancet – surgical knife with a pointed double-edged blade.
5 daubed…untempered – coated with whitewash.
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From a sermon delivered on Sunday morning, July 13, 1862, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
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Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892): influential English Baptist preacher; born at Kelvedon,
Essex, England, UK.

Courtesy of Chapel Library