Jeremy Walker
Chapter 15: Of Repentance Unto Life and Salvation
The place of this chapter in the sequence of the confession (after the chapter on saving faith) should be noted. Professor John Murray says that “repentance is the twin sister of faith – we cannot think of one without the other, and so repentance would be conjoined with faith [in the order of salvation]. Conversion is simply another name for repentance and faith conjoined and would therefore be inclosed in repentance and faith.” Faith and repentance cannot be disentangled or divided, and no one should attempt to do so; true faith is always bathed in – suffused with – true repentance. Christ saves through faith, and we should not give that place to repentance; nevertheless, a faith that knows nothing of sorrow for sin, with a yearning for holiness and increasingly complete obedience to the will of God in Christ, is not a saving faith.
It is worth noting as we begin that, although we often like to divide up sins into categories or degrees, the repentance dealt with here is repentance for all and any sin. While it is true that there are some particularly vile, scandalous, distasteful or great sins (1 Corinthians 5.1), and that some people can be accounted great sinners, no sin in itself is small (Romans 3.23), and each requires to be covered with the blood of Jesus Christ. Every sin is grievous, an offence against God’s holy law, and to stumble in one point is to be guilty of all (James 2.10). The repentance required of sinners is repentance for sin generally and particularly, and we will continue with that in mind. Every sin is damnable: a single sin not dealt with would be sufficient to take us to hell. (See comments on paragraph five for more on these issues.)
As we consider this topic, we should be clear that repentance is not virtuous in and of itself. Repentance does not merit God’s favour, or oblige him to pardon: it is not the effective cause of God pardoning our sins. Repentance is not itself a satisfaction for sin: that is the work of Christ alone. While this might seem to be splitting hairs, it is vital that we do not fall into the error of attributing to sinful man what belongs to God and his Messiah. To rely upon our repentance as in any way entitling us to, or meriting, God’s favour would be to take the glory from Christ, and to make our salvation depend upon a good work. It is true to say that even our repentance is sinful! Not one of us truly realises the gravity and awfulness of our sin. If we saw our iniquity the way that the all-holy God perceives it, we would be utterly crushed. Though the Holy Spirit might be pleased to make a man “sensible of the manifold evils of his sin,” we fall short of the glory of God even in realising what an offence sin is in itself when compared with his holiness and majesty.
Early in the life of the church of Christ, not long after the time of the apostles, some began to make a mistake whereby the concept of ‘repenting’ in the Biblical sense was gradually replaced by the idea of ‘doing penance’: these concepts are not the same. To ‘do penance’ implies that we can somehow atone for our own sins, that there are works that we can do to counterbalance our sinfulness and sins. But true repentance is not a system of weights and balances, whereby we can somehow atone, by ourselves and in our own right, for an equal and opposite weight of sin. Our repentance is not the ground upon which we rest for the satisfaction of divine justice. Some – the Roman Catholic church, for example, as well as others – make penance a virtue by means of which God’s favour is merited by man, and this is not Biblical. Salvation is not of works – not even of works that are good in themselves – lest any man should have grounds for boasting (Ephesians 2.8-9). Such an attitude would make repentance an enemy of faith, rather than its twin grace. Repentance is a grace given by God.
Having said that, as we shall see, no man is saved unless he repents. True repentance is necessary before God will pardon our sins, because such sorrow for sin and turning from sin is the response of regenerate heart. When God, in sovereign mercy, creates the heart of man new, the Spirit of God invariably works both faith and repentance in the heart of that man. So, although we are saved through faith in Christ’s glorious person and finished work and not because of repentance as the effective cause of our salvation, we are not saved without faith in Christ and repentance unto life.
The two opening paragraphs of this chapter deal with two “special cases”, and contain counsels and exhortations of warning and encouragement concerning repentance, before the authors go on to deal with repentance itself.
We must avoid possible misinterpretations of these two paragraphs, making sure that we understand repentance in the light of the whole counsel of God, and the summary here in the Confession of Faith. The first paragraph does not mean that only old sinners who have lived for many years in gross or scandalous sins (such as those indicated in Titus 3.3) need to repent, nor that you need to be a gross sinner in order to be sorry for sin; all people are sinners by nature and by deed, and all need to repent of their sins. Neither should we imagine that it is a pleasant, good or helpful thing to have lived a life full of sin before repenting, considering that it was our sin that took Christ to the cross. The second paragraph is not a warrant or licence for the people of God to sin, or go on sinning, because God has provided a remedy; Paul thought that the idea of continuing in sin that grace might abound to be repulsive, and spoke against it in the strongest terms in Romans 6.1-14. Neither does it mean that a Christian no longer needs to bother repenting of sin, as is made quite clear.
Rather, these paragraphs should be read as counsels of warning, instruction and encouragement to particular types or kinds of people. The first deals with men and women who have spent many years of their life dead in trespasses and sins (sometimes terrible and vile sins) before being converted. Examples include: Manasseh, the king of Judah who even went so far as to sacrifice his children to idols, but who repented and believed after God took him into exile (2 Chronicles 33.1-20); the apostle Paul, the violently arrogant blasphemer who persecuted the church of Jesus Christ until the risen Lord confronted him on the road to Damascus, saving him as a pattern of divine patience and mercy (Acts 9.1-9; 1 Timothy 1.12-16); and, the Philippian jailer, who was about to commit suicide at the prospect of his prisoners having escaped, but was prevented from doing so by Paul, who preached to him salvation in Christ, after which he believed, rejoicing (Acts 16.25-34).
The encouragement of this paragraph lies in the fact that men and women who have been spiritually dead in trespasses and sins for many years – including the most heinous and appalling iniquity – are not beyond the saving power of God in Christ. Paul was saved as a very pattern of divine longsuffering: old sinners, seemingly set in their sinful ways, can and should be preached to, warned, and exhorted to flee from the wrath to come, in the confidence that Christ is willing and able to save all who come to him for salvation. The instruction of this paragraph lies in the implication that though such of the elect as are saved after a long life of wickedness are granted repentance unto life, not all of the elect are converted after long years of ungodliness. A child raised in a Christian home might early experience the light of salvation dawning like the day, rather than flashing like lightning upon their soul in latter years; someone may sit under preaching for a long time, and come slowly to a saving knowledge of Christ; others might hear one sermon, and be immediately converted. A crisis experience (like the exile of Manasseh or the earthquake that shook the Philippian jailer into heaven, or similar to Christ’s direct confrontation with Saul) might be a legitimate but is not a necessary part of any man’s salvation. We should not demand it either of ourselves or of others. Some who are drawn gradually to faith in Christ might agonise over their lack of such a rapid and distinctive experience of salvation, but they should not be building their hopes upon any felt experience in themselves, but rather upon the Christ of salvation. On the other hand, we observe that not everyone who experiences some sort of deep emotional or spiritual crisis (even one that issues in a profession of faith) is necessarily saved. There are other indications of new life in Christ that must go alongside any such experience.
The second paragraph has warning and encouragement for believers falling into sin. The authors probably had in mind the Biblical examples of David, who committed adultery with Bathsheba, but repented of his sin (2 Samuel 11.1 – 12.15; Psalm 51), and Peter, who denied the Lord Jesus three times, even with cursing, but who was pierced to his soul by Christ’s look, wept bitterly in true repentance, and was subsequently restored by our Lord (John 13.36-38; 18.15-27 cf. Luke 22.54-62; John 21.15-19). We are reminded here that ‘the best of men are men at best’: every person sins and has sinned, even the best and most sanctified of men (Proverbs 20.9; Ecclesiastes 7.20), Christ excepted. Sin no longer reigns in the Christian – the power of sin is broken (Romans 6.11, 17-18) – but sin does remain in the Christian, and temptation stirs up that sin and it breaks forth in thought, word, and deed (James 1.13-15), as it did with both David and Peter, who were redeemed men. Observe, too, that though David and Peter sinned awfully – adultery and murder in the former, and the denial of the Lord Jesus in the latter – the principles of repentance taught here are true for every believer with regard to any sin.
This is not told us so that we can relax about the prospect of falling into sin. Rather, there is an encouragement to the penitent saint who grieves over sin (sometimes truly grievous sin): God has mercifully provided in the covenant of grace (see Chapter 7, “Of God’s covenant”) that believers who sin might be renewed through repentance unto salvation. The new covenant in Christ is an everlasting covenant, in which the Almighty so puts his fear in the hearts of his people that they will not depart from him (Jeremiah 32.40). Our Lord himself prayed for Peter, that his faith should not fail (Luke 22.31-32). But notice that the sinning and falling saint is renewed through repentance unto salvation: this is the only path back. While there is encouragement for the believer who truly repents over sin, there is a fearful warning for those who simply become dull to sin, or who sin and resist all the means that God has provided for their restoration. This is not preservation of the saints regardless of their activity: it is preservation by means of perseverance. A man who goes on in sin without repentance calls into question his profession: it does not matter what he has been in the past, the mark of a true saint under such circumstances is renewed and ongoing repentance for sin, joined with faith in Christ. Then, and only then, can there be any confidence of God’s favour (1 John 1.9 – 2.2). Someone who goes on in sin without such repentance calls into question the genuineness of his or her profession of faith. Observe, too, that no believer is bound to fall into some great and public sin: it is not inevitable. Many believers go through life without committing such sins (and every believer will desire and aim to live without such sin breaking out). Great sins and great repentance are not required to validate Christian experience. True repentance is repentance, regardless of the sin or sins over which someone grieves.
The confession goes on in the third paragraph to deal more particularly with what repentance is, and with its place, practice and importance in the life of the man of God. First of all, saving repentance is an evangelical grace. This implies that there is a repentance that is not saving i.e. something that appears to be or can be called repentance, but which is not joined to faith, and which does not issue in salvation. We see such ‘repentance’ in the lives of men like King Ahab, who humbled himself before God so that the punishment for his wickedness was postponed, but was never a man of faith, and never tasted salvation (1 Kings 21.17-29). We see it in Judas Iscariot, who was filled with remorse because of his betrayal of Christ, but who hung himself (Matthew 27.3-5), and was called “the son of perdition” (John 17.12). Such false repentance may involve grief and remorse, a desire to avoid the consequences of sin, a terror of hell, and even outward reformation of life, but if it does not involve a hatred of sin as offensive and odious to the righteous God of heaven and earth it is lacking something necessary. Furthermore, true repentance involves more than merely a true recognition of sin; it also involves an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ.
Saving repentance, then, grows in gospel soil: it is an evangelical grace. It is not just a natural terror stirred up by the law, or a merely human response caused by fear of retributive justice and to which the Almighty God is obliged to respond. Rather, it is the gift of God, a product of gospel grace. It is something worked by the sovereign God in the heart of the regenerate man (Acts 5.31; 11.18). Although true repentance does not consist solely in a sense of sin, we must realise that a true sense of sin is a fundamental part of true repentance. Such a sense of sin is something worked in a man by God’s Holy Spirit, who opens his spiritual eyes (1 Corinthians 2.14) to understand something of the horror of transgressing God’s law. Older writers spoke of “the sinfulness of sin,” calling sin “the plague of plagues” and “the evil of evils,” in an attempt to communicate something of how foul a thing is sin. When a person is “made sensible of the manifold evil of his sins” he has a more than merely intellectual grasp of what sin is, and what are its consequences. To understand something of what a man feels like when he sees his sin, look at the Biblical examples: David’s groans over his iniquity (Psalm 51); the psalmist’s appreciation of his vileness and guilt (Psalm 130.1-3); Job’s sense of the abhorrence of his sin before God (Job 42.5-6); the sense of unworthiness of the prodigal son (Luke 15.18-19); the deeply wounded hearts of the men of Jerusalem when Peter’s sermon was used to convince them that they had crucified Jesus, whom God had made both Lord and Christ (Acts 2.36-38). To be sure, different people might respond differently, according to their God-given character or temperament, or the usual indications of grief in their culture: some might be evidently full of outward weeping and groaning, others might have a less evident but no less real sense of these things. However, something of this “godly sorrow, detestation of [sin], and self-abhorrency” will be true for every truly repentant person, however it is manifested.
But alongside the grieving sinner’s sense of sin, and arising out of it, is a casting of oneself, in faith, upon God for mercy. Observe that in most, if not all, of the examples above, there is also an explicit or implied conviction that there is forgiveness with God (Psalm 130.4). David’s confession in Psalm 51 is a cry for mercy to the very God whom he has offended, and who alone is able to deal with his sin! The psalmist calls upon God’s people to hope in him because there is mercy and abundant redemption with him (Psalm 130.7-8). Job abhors himself and repents because he has seen the might and mercy of God. The prodigal son, convinced of his unworthiness, nevertheless casts himself upon the forgiving love of his father. Peter’s congregation, cut to the heart, nevertheless ask “What shall we do?” and Peter calls on them to repent. God hates sin, but a sense of sin should not drive us from God, but to God, through faith in Christ, because it is God whom we have offended, God who extends mercy to us in the gospel, and God alone who has devised a remedy for our sins in the death of Jesus Christ his Son. Satan often twists our guilt to make us feel that we cannot approach God, but true repentance contains this apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, which carries us to the gracious Lord, to be cleansed of our transgressions, and washed thoroughly from our sins. True repentance therefore involves a crying out to God in faith, for pardon of sins, on the basis of his promises in Christ Jesus.
The heart of repentance, then, is a turning from sin to God. It is more than simply being sorry for our sins. It is a fundamental and radical change of perspective, feeling, and desire (involving the intellect, emotions, and will). Our perspectives on God, ourselves, sin, and righteousness, undergo a radical transformation, from what was perverse and flawed, to what is right and true. The repentant person turns from sin with grief and sorrow over sin, and hatred for it, because it offends a holy God, and turns to a merciful God with a heart that desires to walk no longer in the paths of sin, but to be found in the ways of righteousness, and to walk in holiness, in dependence upon the Spirit of God (Philippians 2.12-13). This is why, alongside “praying for pardon” goes prayer for “strength of grace.” The repenting sinner who has a true sense of sin appreciates his or her own weakness and inability to walk pleasing to God by natural strength and gift, and mourns over every manifestation of sin, crying out wholeheartedly for deliverance (Romans 7.24). He cries to “the Spirit of grace and supplication” (Zechariah 12.10) to grant the grace and strength to walk in the newness of life to which he has been delivered and to work out salvation by God’s strength and grace. He undertakes to put off of the old man with his deeds, and to put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of the Lord who created him new (Colossians 3.9-10) in prayerful dependence on the Spirit of God. We cannot “walk before God unto all well-pleasing in all things” without the grace of God enabling us to do so. The pursuit of obedience is joined with the renunciation of sin.
We see all this worked out in the Thessalonian Christians, who had turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God (1 Thessalonians 1.9): it was a complete reversal of attitude and lifestyle (Psalm 119.59, 128). It was true repentance. Note that the prodigal son of Luke 15 did more than become convinced of the vileness of his sin; he did more than recognise his father’s mercy; having come to his spiritual senses, he actually got up and went back to his father, and placed himself back under his father’s loving care and rule.
The confession goes on in paragraph four to speak of the ongoing nature of this repentant life. Again, we must not imagine that, in order to remain justified, we must keep repenting of our sins, and that every time that we sin, or think of a sin not confessed and repented of, that we lose our justification. Justification is a once-for-all declaration by Almighty God, the God-given faith that receives and rests on Christ being the sole instrument of this justification. But, although we are once justified (in which saving faith in Christ will have been joined with repentance), the work of repentance in a believer’s life does not end with his justification (see Chapter 11, “Of Justification,” especially paragraph five of that chapter) but is also a part of his sanctification.
The reason that the authors give for this ongoing repentance is “the body of death, and the motions thereof.” In other words, although we have been redeemed from sin and death and hell – although the reign or dominion of sin in the Christian has been ended – there is sin remaining in the Christian which needs to be mourned over and mortified. Repentance, therefore, is a lifelong task. The Christian is a saved sinner who is a new creation in Christ, and who is putting off the old man and putting on the new, but there is still sin, and will be until he dies and his soul is made perfect, or until Christ returns and the resurrection and glorification of the saints occurs, whichever happens first.
Here the confession seeks to steer us clear, on the one hand, of self-deception: there must be an ongoing forsaking of sin in the life of a true saint of God. Someone who is consistently unwilling to acknowledge, confess, and forsake sin shows few indications of walking in newness of life (Mark 1.4-5; Psalm 51.1-4; Matthew 3.8; 1 Thessalonians 1.9-10). On the other hand, we are steered away from unbiblical and unreasonable expectations of perfection in this life. Forsaking sin is not the same as perfect obedience: it is the pursuit of and desire after full obedience, with all one’s heart and mind and soul and strength, with repentance over our failings and shortcomings. A wise Christian once said, “There’s nobody perfect – that’s the believer’s bed of thorns; that’s the hypocrite’s couch of ease.” The Christian is not perfect, but would be if he could, and mourns over his imperfections. Hypocrites do not care about full obedience, from the heart. A Christian is concerned not to sin at all, rather than not to sin too much.
Observe also that the authors bring their exposition of God’s word right to the heart of the individual. Repentance is much more than a general change of mind, or a vague awareness of sin. It is very easy to assault sin generally, to speak with fervour against sins in the plural, but true repentance deals with particular, individual, specific sins. Charles Hodge writes that “no man has any right to presume that he hates sin in general unless he practically hates every sin in particular; and no man has any right to presume that he is sorry for and ready to renounce his sins in general unless he is conscious of practically renouncing and grieving for each particular sin into which he falls.”
True repentance, then, involves dealing not simply with sin in general, but with our sins in particular. Most of us have what might be called “constitutional sins” i.e. sins which, in their form, occasion, regularity, or manifestation, are peculiar temptations to ourselves, and to which we might be particularly prone. In some, it might be envy; for others, covetousness; others struggle with sexual lust, some with gluttony. The list might go on and on. Our Bibles are particular about sin: they do not allow vague concepts of sin to float around ‘out there’: sin is brought to bear upon our individual consciences with regard to its particular manifestations in us. The Thessalonian believers had, before their conversion, been conspicuous for idolatry. Their repentance was demonstrated in their turning to God from idols. The evidence of their alienation from God was idolatry, and the specific sphere of their repentance was in turning from that specific sin (1 Thessalonians 1.9-10). So it must be with us: though truly redeemed, we engage in a battle with sin and must identify, repent of, and mortify the particular sins to which we are particularly prone, naming them and seeking God’s grace to fight free of them and kill them.
Here, then, is a forsaking of sin that is both comprehensive and specific, particular and ongoing. Repentance is to be a turning from all known sin generally and every known sin particularly, with faith in Christ for mercy from God. Every Bible-minded Christian knows the reality of this ongoing battle. The redeemed person sets out to be well-pleasing to God in all things, and soon discovers much with which God is not pleased. Old sins are recalled, new sins come to light, new circumstances create new temptations, and new spiritual awareness and insight reveals not just the breadth of sin but the depth of sin, as an instructed conscience identifies more and more what is ungodly, and strips away our ignorance about sin (Psalm 19.12-13). Repentance is a continual, near-constant, daily experience for the God-aware, Christ-centred, sin-aware Christian. Although there may be incidents that call forth or demand particular and focused acts of repentance (e.g. the old sinner who comes to a recognition of his lifelong wickedness; the believer who falls into particularly grievous sin; the Christian who is reforming in his faith and life and comes to see that there is some area of his believing or living that has previously been largely untouched by Scripture; or, a particular demand for repentance on the part of a church or nation), repentance is not a one-off or temporary experience (see 1 John 1.9, in which the language implies an ongoing and constant work). Christian experience holds a Biblical hatred of sin alongside a Biblical apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ. To be unaware of the horror and just punishment of sin that is not dealt with is unreal and illusory, and a delusion; to be unaware of the glorious mercy of God held out to the repentant sinner is crushing and destructive. They must go hand in hand. Sadness and sorrow arise out of our convictions of sin, joy and gladness out of our thankfulness for the mercy and goodness of God. Weeping endures for a night, but joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30.5), and there must be a night of repentance as well as a morning of gladness (Psalm 32.3-5).
We might summarise what we have considered so far by using the illustration of a tree. True repentance grows in the gospel soil of God’s sovereign grace working in the lives of sinful men and women, effectually calling them from death to life. The roots of true repentance are this Biblically-informed grief over sin on the one hand, and a Biblically-informed apprehension of God’s mercy in Christ on the other. The trunk and branches of true repentance are this turning from sin and turning to God. The fruit of true obedience is this pursuit of and endeavour after new obedience, in dependence upon the Holy Spirit.
The confession completes its treatment of repentance with some particular and searching counsel about the necessity of preaching repentance in the light of what we know about sin. As we noted when we began, every sin is grievous, and the least sin (as men perceive it) – any single sin – is sufficient for the condemnation of any man. However, that God is willing to forgive the sins of those who come to him in faith and repentance is the hope of the sinner, and must therefore be preached to sinners fully and freely. This is the teaching of paragraph 5 of this chapter.
Let us never underestimate sin: there is no sin so small but it deserves damnation. The wages of sin – all sin, each sin, and every sin – is death (Romans 6.23). In this sense, no sin should be considered small, as it brings so great a condemnation. The holy law of God is like a great and fragile object, perhaps a beautiful window or some other work of art, all made of one piece. If I make a crack in this great and fragile thing, no one accuses me of breaking only a part of it! The entire object is no longer whole. Thus it is with the law of God: to break it at all is to break it all (James 2.10). To stumble in any point is to become a lawbreaker, and therefore to be guilty, and deserving of punishment. When David cries out for forgiveness in Psalm 51, there is a comprehensiveness in his desperate request: he is concerned for particular sins, yes, but with every particular sin also. He wants God to cleans him from sin in its totality and sins in their plurality: he desires a complete cleansing (e.g. Psalm 51.2, 7, 9), because he knows that one sin is fatal to peace with God. All this means that when we look at any man or woman, boy or girl, we are looking at someone who is a lawbreaker, and is therefore liable to the just and fearful punishment of a holy God for the transgression of his revealed will: death and hell. This is the awfulness of sin in all its horrible sinfulness.
But, as we should not underestimate sin, neither should we underestimate the Christ who saves us from sin! Here is cause for great praise and thanksgiving! Such is the provision which God has made through Christ in his covenant of grace for the preservation of believers unto salvation, that there is no sin so great that it shall bring damnation on them that repent. The blood of Christ is sufficient to wash away the deepest stain of iniquity: his blood can make the foulest clean. The gospel offer, the gospel provision, for repenting sinners is that those whose sins are like scarlet shall be made as white as snow through the blood of the Lamb; though our sins are red like crimson, they shall be as pure new wool (Isaiah 1.18). All upon whom God has set his love are so provided for by the atoning blood of Christ in his propitiating sacrifice that each sin, all sin, and every sin can be covered, transgressions swept away as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103.12). Again, this is no ground for sinning with impunity, but is rather the great motivation to holiness of life and fleeing every sin.
We should also be very clear in our minds and hearts, and in our preaching, about the certainty of forgiveness where true repentance is demonstrated. As we should ourselves repent with an “apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ,” so we should preach to others! God is always pleased to forgive those in whom he is working faith in Christ and repentance unto life. The one follows on from the other as night follows day: those whom God predestines and calls (a sovereign, mighty, and effectual call) are invariably justified (Romans 8.30). God’s effectual calling works newness of life, which issues in faith and repentance in the heart of man; God is then graciously pleased to forgive and justify that man, declaring him righteous in his sight. Although repentance does not oblige God to forgive us, true repentance always issues in true forgiveness, and we should assure men that it does. We do not call on men in our preaching to know that they are regenerate before they believe and repent; we call upon them to believe in Christ and to repent of their sins, and trust in God to work salvation in men by his effectual call, which will be manifested in those men by faith and repentance.
To put it concisely, in order for men to be saved they must repent and believe, and this makes the preaching of repentance absolutely, vitally and constantly necessary.
Much contemporary preaching always demands faith. This is right insofar as it goes, but it is not all, because it should not demand faith only. We are saved by faith in Christ, yes, but Christ saves us, through faith, from sin. He was called Jesus (literally, Saviour) because he would save his people from their sins (Matthew 1.21). If the preaching of salvation through Christ has no reference to sin, then the people to whom we preach are robbed of the whole context of sin which gives faith in Christ its significance. It is easier, even pleasant, to preach faith in Christ as the only necessary response to the proclamation of gospel truth, but it is sin to which sinners are attached, and so-called “faith in Christ” that is divorced from any recognition of sin, and any turning from sin to God through faith in Christ, is not the saving faith of which the Bible speaks. To preach faith without repentance waters down the gospel demands addressed to men and women wedded to their sins. But to preach repentance in its proper relation to faith is not a pleasant task, and usually calls forth the anger and hatred of sinful men (although some may later repent), and it can therefore be tempting to avoid preaching in this way. But it is absolutely necessary for the gospel preacher to preach repentance in its proper relation to faith: if you do not marry faith and repentance in your preaching, you will never see men divorced from their sins. Men might make all manner of accusations, and accuse the preacher of “legal preaching”, or of not preaching the gospel, but saving repentance is an evangelical grace (paragraph 3), and saving repentance must therefore be an indispensable element of evangelical preaching (paragraph 5). There is no hope for pardon without repentance of sin, and to fail to preach the necessity of repentance is, to some extent, to abandon the souls of those to whom we preach, and to bring condemnation upon ourselves (Ezekiel 3.18-19).
The Old Testament men of God called upon their hearers to repent of their sins, turning to God in faith and with repentance, and practiced such repentance themselves (see Isaiah 6.5 and 55.7; Joel 2.12-13; Ezekiel 1.28 and 33.11; Job 42.5-6; Jeremiah 3.12-13; 8.6). We find precisely the same pattern and language in the servants of God in the New Testament, pre-eminently in Jesus Christ himself, the great Servant of the Most High (who, of course, needed to repent of no sins himself, being perfect in obedience), the opening note of whose preaching ministry was repentance (Matthew 4.17; Mark 1.15). It was a constant theme in our Lord’s public teaching and in his own understanding of his mission (Luke 5.32; 13.3, 5; 15.7, 10). It was the note sounded by his forerunner, John the Baptist (Matthew 3.2, 8, 11; Mark 1.4; Luke 3.3, 8; Acts 13.24; 19.4). It was the command that the Christ issued to his disciples (Luke 24.46-47; Acts 26.16-18); it was a command that they obeyed, from their first public ministry (Mark 6.12) to their ongoing efforts to spread the gospel of God abroad (Peter in Acts 2.38; 3.19; 8.22; Paul in Acts 17.30; 20.21; 26.20); the writer to the Hebrews puts “repentance from dead works” alongside “faith toward God” as part of the foundation of the truth as it is in Jesus (Hebrews 6.1).
The nature of the gospel ministry itself, the requirement for obedience to the command and example of Christ, and the absolute necessity of true repentance, alongside faith, for the salvation of lost sinners, all demand that we preach a full-orbed and Biblical gospel: that means that repentance must be preached. The apostle Peter said that God has exalted Christ to his right hand as Prince and Saviour, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins (Acts 5.31). The present heavenly ministry of our Lord involves his dispensation of repentance unto the forgiveness of sins: if we would be well-pleasing to God as we undertake the awful privilege of labouring together with him (2 Corinthians 5.9-11; 6.1), and if we would be faithful ambassadors of Christ in our ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5.18-21), then our pleading with men must include the gospel demand for repentance from their sins. It is necessary for the unconverted, as an indispensable element in their initial experience of salvation; it is necessary for the converted, as an indispensable element in their ongoing experience of salvation.
As faith is not a momentary experience of dependence, but a constant and ongoing attitude of trust and confidence toward Christ, so repentance is not a momentary experience, but a constant and ongoing activity, a heartfelt contrition over our sinfulness and our sins. God does not despise the broken spirit, the broken and the contrite heart (Psalm 51.17), and this is a picture of the attitude of the faithful follower of the Lord Jesus. A Christian cannot look at the cross of Christ, and the awful blood-price paid for our deliverance from sin, without grief over the sin that took Christ to the cross, and demanded of him the full price of forsakenness from God. Christ’s blood pours out as an overflowing and everflowing fountain, one to which the believer goes repeatedly and continually, for the cleansing of sin and uncleanness (Zechariah 13.1). The cross is where repentance begins, and the cross is where repentance continues.
The principled pursuit of holiness, the life of heart obedience to all the revealed will of God as a bondservant of Jesus Christ, is a life of unparalleled peace through the mercy of God, but it has within it as a foundational element that true gospel repentance, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, does, with grief over and hatred of his sin, turn from that sin to God, with full purpose of, and endeavour after, new obedience.
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