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John the Baptist
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The Gospel and Repentance
by William Webster
(Continued)

"Unless you repent, you will...perish"
Luke 13:3

And Charles Hodge states:

Hence it is that repentance is the burden of evangelical preaching...Repentance...is the great, immediate, and pressing duty of all who hear the gospel. They are called upon to forsake their sins, and return unto God through Jesus Christ. The neglect of this duty is the rejection of salvation. For, as we have seen, unless we repent we must perish...Though repentance is a duty, it is no less the gift of God (Charles Hodge, The Way of Life (Edinburgh: Banner, 1959), pp. 153, 166-169.

The importance of turning from sin and its relationship to forgiveness and conversion is seen in the following scriptures:

Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon (Is. 55:6-7).

And a Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from transgression in Jacob, declares the Lord (Is. 59:20).

Say to them, 'As I live!' declares the Lord God, 'I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?' (Ez. 33:11).

Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, each according to his conduct, declares the Lord God. Repent and turn away from all your transgressions, so that iniquity may not become a stumbling block to you (Ez. 18:30).

Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God, 'Repent and turn away from your idols, and turn your faces away from all your abominations' (Ez.14:6).

For you first, God raised up His Servant, and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways (Acts 3:26).

And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord (Acts 11:21).

We are also men of the same nature as you, and preach the gospel to you in order that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, Who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them (Acts 14:15).

To open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, in order that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me' (Acts 26:18).

But kept declaring both to those of Damascus first, and also at Jerusalem and then throughout all the region of Judea, and even to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance (Acts 26:20).

For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God (1 Thes. 1:9).

Repentance means turning from sin. It does not mean a mere acknowledgment of sin or remorse, but a turning from it with a purpose to forsake it altogether. Sin is defined by the law. As we have seen, the law relates to God as a person and to his will. And repentance therefore relates to God as well as to issues of behavior. Paul preached 'repentance towards God'(Acts 20:21), and that men must 'bring forth fruits meet for repentance' (Acts 26:20). If man is to enter into salvation he must also turn from self-will and self-rule and submit his life to Christ as Lord and First Love, in addition to turning from behavioral sins. A.W. Pink sums it up in these words:

In repentance sin is the thing to be repented of and sin is a transgression of the law (1 John 3:4). And the first and chief thing required by the law is supreme love to God. Therefore, the lack of supreme love to God, the heart's disaffection for His character and rebellion against Him (Rom. 8:7) is our great wickedness, of which we have to repent.

What is sin? Sin is saying...I disallow His (God's) right to govern me...I am going to be lord of myself. Sin is rebellion against the Majesty of heaven...The language of every sinner's heart is, I care not what God requires, I am going to have my own way. I care not what be God's claims upon me, I refuse to submit to His authority...The Lord Jesus taught and constantly pressed the same truth. His call was 'Repent ye and believe the gospel' (Mark 1:15). The gospel cannot be savingly believed until there is genuine repentance.

When the gospel first comes to the sinner it finds him in a state of apostasy from God, both as sovereign Ruler and as our supreme good, neither obeying and glorifying Him, nor enjoying and finding satisfaction in Him. Hence the demand for 'repentance toward God' before 'faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ' (Acts 20:21). True repentance toward God removes this dissatisfaction of our minds and hearts toward Him, under both these characters.

In saving repentance the whole soul turns to Him and says: I have been a disloyal and rebellious creature. I have scorned Thy high authority and most rightful law. I will live no longer thus. I desire and determine with all my might to serve and obey Thee as my only Lord. I subject myself unto Thee, to submit to Thy will...Repentance...is the perception that God has the right to rule and govern me, and of my refusal to submit unto Him...As the Holy Spirit sets before me the loveliness of the divine character, as I am enabled to discern the exalted excellency of God, then I begin to perceive that to which He is justly entitled, namely, the homage of my heart, the unrestricted love of my soul, the complete surrender of my whole being unto Him.

Many are the scriptures which set forth this truth, that there must be a forsaking of sin before God will pardon offenders...He must be crowned Lord of all or He will not be Lord at all. There must be the complete heart renunciation of all that stands in competition with Him. He will brook no rival...Thus repentance is the negative side of conversion. Conversion is a whole-hearted turning unto God, but there cannot be a turning unto, without a turning from. Sin must be forsaken ere we draw nigh unto the Holy One. As it is written, 'Ye turned to God from idols to serve (live for) the living and true God' (1 Thes. 1:9) (A.W. Pink, The Doctrine of Salvation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1975), pp.45, 49-53, 56, 58, 60, 79).

This emphasis on repentance has important implications in understanding the Reformation teaching of faith alone. When we say we are saved and justified by faith alone we understand that term faith to mean a repentant-faith. The quotations cited from the various Reformers and Reformed theologians affirm this. Repentance is an essential element of biblical faith. In order to turn to Christ one must turn from sin. Repentance is a gift of God and not a work. It does not save, and is not the basis of one's acceptance with God, but an individual cannot be saved without it.

The reason being that one cannot appropriate the person of Christ, who is our justification before God, apart from repentance. This truth bears repeating: Salvation is more than deliverance from the guilt and condemnation of sin in justification and therefore of hell. It includes deliverance from sin as a ruling power in one's life. In the preaching of the gospel this fact must be emphasized: Coming to Christ for salvation will mean a turning from sin and idols or Christ cannot be received. As Jonathan Edwards observes:

The apostasy of man summarily consists in departing from the true God, to idols; forsaking his Creator and setting up other things in his room...The gods which a natural man worships, instead of the God that made him, are himself and the world...When we say that natural man are not willing to come to Christ, it is not meant that they are not willing to be delivered from hell; for without doubt, no natural man is willing to go to hell. Nor is it meant, that they are not willing that Christ should keep them from going to hell. Without doubt, natural men under awakenings often greatly desire this.

But this does not argue that they are willing to come to Christ: for, not withstanding their desire to be delivered from hell, their hearts do not close with Christ, but are averse to him...They are not willing to take Christ as he is; they would fain divide him. There are some things in him that they like, and others that they greatly dislike; but consider him as he is, and he is offered to them in the gospel, and they are not willing to accept Christ; for in doing so, they must of necessity part with all their sins; they must sell the world, and part with their own righteousness. But they had rather, for the present, run the venture of going to hell, than do that...He is a Savior appointed of God; he anointed him, and sent him into the world. And in performing the work of redemption, he wrought the works of God; always did those things that pleased him; and all that he does as a Savior, is to his glory. And one great thing he aimed at in redemption, was to deliver them from their idols, and bring them to God (Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Edinburgh: Banner, 1974), Volume 2, Discourse: Men Naturally are God's Enemies, pp. 132, 138-139).

John Owen says:

The repentance which, in any case, God requireth absolutely, is that which is internal and real, in sincere conversion unto himself, accompanied with the fruits meet for such repentance...A new heart and a new spirit, or real internal conversion unto God, by the grace of the covenant, is required in this repentance, as the renunciation and relinquishment of all iniquities must be the fruit of it (John Owen, The Works of John Owen (Edinburgh: Banner, 1967), Volume 8, pp. 635-636).

Repentance is commanded by God. It is a turning from all that is opposed to God as expressed in his law. We were created to love God, to live in submission to him, to worship, serve and obey him. Sin is rebellion against this purpose, loving self and the world instead. We must repent. But repentance will mean more than turning from individual sins in our lives. We must also deal with the root cause of sins-self. Living a life of independence from God in self-will and self-rule is sin. We must not only repent of what we do, but of what we are-self centered, self directed, independent creatures. If a person has not surrendered his heart and life to Jesus Christ as Lord he has not fully repented of sin. Charles Spurgeon makes this point in these remarks:

Evangelical repentance is repentance of sin as sin: not of this sin nor of that, but of the whole mass. We repent of the sin of our nature as well as the sin of our practice. We bemoan sin within us and without us. We repent of sin itself as being an insult to God. Anything short of this is a mere surface repentance, and not a repentance which reaches to the bottom of the mischief. Repentance of the evil act, and not of the evil heart, is like men pumping water out of a leaky vessel, but forgetting to stop the leak. Some would dam up the stream, but leave the fountain still flowing; they would remove the eruption from the skin, but leave the disease in the flesh (C.H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (Edinburgh: Banner, 1970), Volume 35, p. 127).

B. B. Warfield makes this observation:

By repentance we are to mean, not merely sorrow for and hatred of sin, but also the inward turning away from it to God, with full purpose of new obedience. By original sin we are to mean not merely adherent but also inherent sin, not merely the sinful act of Adam imputed to us, but also the sinful state of our own souls conveyed to us by the just judgment of God. When so understood, it would seem sufficiently clear that we must 'repent of original sin.' The corruption that is derived by us from our first parents comes to us, indeed, as penalty; but it abides in us as sin, and must be looked upon as sin both by God and by enlightened conscience itself...And thus it appears, that so far from its being impossible to repent of original sin, repentance, considered in its normative sense-not as an act of turning away from this sin or that sin, but of turning from sin as such to God-is fundamentally just repentance of 'original sin.'

Until we repent of original sin, we have not, properly speaking, repented in the Christian sense at all. For it is characteristic of heathen thought to look upon sin atomistically as only so many acts of sin, and at repentance also, therefore, atomistically as only so many acts of turning away from sinning; the Christian conception probes deeper and finds behind the acts of sin the sinful nature and behind the specific acts of repentance for sins the great normative act of repentance for this sinful nature. He only, then, has really repented who has perceived and felt the filthiness and odiousness of his depraved nature and has turned from it to God with a full purpose of being hereafter more conformed to his image as revealed in the face of Jesus Christ (B.B. Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings - 1 (Nutley: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1970), pp. 279-280).

Repentance is a turning from sin, self and the world to God in Christ. In order to turn to Christ, one must first turn from sin. This is the consistent teaching of scripture, the Reformers and Reformed theologians who have remained true to the heritage of the Reformation. To deny or diminish the necessity for repentance is a repudiation of the gospel of scripture and of the Reformation. This brings us to a consideration of faith in the application of redemption.

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