REPENTANCE-NEED FOR
We need to be
straitly warned, that it is no light matter whether
we repent or not. We need to be reminded, that there is a hell as well as a
heaven, and an everlasting punishment for the wicked, as well as everlasting
life for the godly. We are fearfully apt to forget this. We talk of the love
and mercy of God, and we do not remember sufficiently His justness and
holiness. Let us be very careful on this point. It is no real kindness to keep
back the terrors of the Lord. It is good for us all to be taught that it is
possible to be lost forever, and that all unconverted people are hanging over
the brink of the pit.
Commentary: Matthew 3.
There comes a
time when God’s patience runs out (Rom. 2:4-10; 2 Pet. 3:8-10; Jude 5). Those
living in continual disobedience must not presume upon God's grace, falsely
assuming that God's kindness means that He is winking at their sin. Nor should
we take God's forgiveness for granted. We must not sin willfully, thinking that
by doing so we are simply giving God another opportunity to glorify Himself by
showing forth His mercy. As Paul would put it centuries later, "Are we to
continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means!"
(Rom. 6:2). To do so is to reveal by one’s hardened disobedience that the
saving power of God is not really in one’s life (see Rom. 6:2b-14).
The God of Promise and the Life of
Faith. Crossway Books, 2001, p. 97.
Jesus' gospel
of forgiveness is not unrelated to the Bible's demand for holiness. Obedience
is not a "second step" added to our faith, so that "accepting
Jesus as Savior" must be supplemented by "accepting Jesus as
Lord." We are not saved by grace and then sanctified (made holy) by our
own works. Being a Christian is not a matter of adding our will to God's, our
efforts to His. Rather…"putting away sin," which is faith in action,
is the means to persevering, which we do by depending on Jesus from beginning
to end. In other words, repenting from the disobedience of disbelief, and the
life of persevering faith that this brings about, which entails obeying God, are all one expression of "looking to Jesus." One
cannot exist without the other… There is only one thing, not two,
that we must do to be saved: trust God with the needs of our lives. This
one thing in God's provision (now supremely manifested in Christ) will show
itself, from beginning to end, in our many acts of repentance and obedience.
Scott Hafemann
The God of Promise and the Life of
Faith. Crossway Books, 2001, p. 191-192.
The Christian
who has stopped repenting has stopped growing.
A.W. Pink
I cannot
pray, except I sin; I cannot preach, but I sin; I cannot administer or receive
the holy sacrament, but I sin. My very repentance needs to be repented of; and
the tears I shed need washing in the blood of Christ.
William Beveridge
Little sins unrepented of will damn thee as well as greater. Not only
great rivers fall into the sea, but little brooks; not only greater sins carry
men to hell, but lesser; therefore do not think pardon easy because sin is
small.
Thomas Watson
A Puritan Golden Treasury,
compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 100.
If you will
not have death unto sin, you shall have sin unto death. There is no
alternative. If you do not die to sin, you shall die for sin. If you do not
slay sin, sin will slay you.
C.H. Spurgeon
Sermons, 15.419.
You and your
sins must separate or you and your God will never come together. No one sin may
you keep; they must all be given up, they must be brought out like Canaanite
kings from the cave and be hanged up in the sun.
C.H. Spurgeon
The saints
are sinners still. Our best tears need to be wept over, the strongest faith is
mixed with unbelief, our most flaming love is cold compared with what Jesus
deserves, and our intensest zeal still lacks the full
fervor which the bleeding wounds and pierced heart of the crucified might claim
at our hands. Our best things need a sin offering, or they would condemn us.
C.H. Spurgeon
If there be a
man before me who says that the wrath of God is too heavy a punishment for his
little sin, I ask him, if the sin be little, why does he not give it up?
C.H. Spurgeon
I learn from
the Scriptures that repentance is just as necessary to salvation as faith is,
and the faith that has not repentance going with it will have to be repented
of.
C.H. Spurgeon
Another
proof of the conquest of a soul for Christ will be found in a real change of
life. If the man does not live differently from what he did before, both at
home and abroad, his repentance needs repented of, and his conversion is a
fiction.
C.H. Spurgeon
If
Christ has died for me – ungodly as I am, without strength as I am – then I can
no longer live in sin, but must arouse myself to love and serve Him who has
redeemed me. I cannot trifle with the evil that killed my best Friend. I must
be holy for his sake. How can I live in sin when He has died to save me from
it?
C.H. Spurgeon
The problem
with (an altar call for rededication) is that it is not biblical. The crux of
the gospel message is not a call to rededication, but a call to repentance.
John the Baptist preached repentance (Matt. 3:2). Jesus preached repentance,
both in His earthly ministry and as the resurrected Lord (Matt. 4:17; Rev.
3:19). If one's previous commitment did not keep him walking in obedience, a
re-commitment is no more likely to make him faithful. The proper response to
disobedience is not a commitment to try harder, but brokenness and repentance
for rejecting the will of Almighty God. God looks for surrender to His
will, not commitment to carry it out. Rather than asking church members
to repeatedly promise to try harder, churches must call their people to repent
before Holy God.
G. Richard Blackaby
Corporate Hindrances to Revival,
Revival Commentary, v. 2, n. 2.
The question
has been discussed: which is prior, faith or repentance? It is an unnecessary
question and the insistence that one is prior to the other is futile. There is
no priority. The faith that is unto salvation is a penitent faith and the
repentance that is unto life is a believing repentance... It is impossible to
disentangle faith and repentance. Saving faith is permeated with repentance and
repentance is permeated with faith
John Murray
We often hear
the "Savior" characteristics of God stressed – His love, mercy,
goodness and so on – but the matter of his lordship is absent. The distortion
is particularly clear in evangelism. In modern practice the call to
repentance is usually called an "invitation," which one can obviously
accept or refuse. It is offered politely. Seldom do we hear presented
God's sovereign demand to repent or his demand for total submission to the
authority of his appointed king, Christ Jesus.
James Montgomery Boice
Taken from "Foundations of the
Christian Faith-Book I" by James Montgomery Boice, page 120.
(c)1986 InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of the USA,
Revised edition. Used by permission of
InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com http://www.gospelcom.net/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=991.
Why are we
experiencing such an epidemic of open – and not-so-open – sin in the church
today?... [Because] we have promoted a “gospel” that
says it is possible to be a Christian while stubbornly refusing to address
practices or behaviors we know are sinful. We have accepted the philosophy that
it’s OK for Christians to look, think, act, and talk like the world. We have
made it an offense to admonish people about their sin, either privately or,
when necessary, publicly. If only we were as loath to commit sin as we are to
confront it!
Nancy Leigh DeMoss
Holiness, The Heart God Purifies, Moody
Publishers, p. 175-176.
I need to
repent of my repentance.
Author Unknown
The Valley of Vision, ed. Arthur
Bennett, 1975, p. 76, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.
Even
our tears of repentance need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb
Author Unknown
Our Lord and
Master Jesus Christ, in saying, Repent Ye, intended that the whole of the life
of believers should be repentance.
Martin Luther
First of 95 Theses.
The nature of
Christ's salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day evangelist. He
announces a Savior from Hell rather than a Savior from sin. And that is why so
many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake
of fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and
worldliness.
A.W. Pink
God really
loves us and wants us to turn away from our sins. If He passed final judgment
now, we would have no such opportunity; that would be the end of time for us.
He has sufficient provocation to do so; that we recognize. We have sinned
enough to deserve His infinite wrath at any moment, but we do not receive it.
We have an opportunity, therefore, to turn away from our sin and to turn to
God. Instead of continuing to offend Him, we can plead for forgiveness and seek
to please Him. While there is yet life, that is possible.
John Gerstner
The Problem of Pleasure, Soli Deo Gloria,
2002, p. 20.
Some people
do not like to hear much of repentance; but I think it is so necessary that if
I should die in the pulpit, I would desire to die preaching repentance, and if
out of the pulpit I would desire to die practicing it.
Matthew Henry
Just as the
angel's announcement to Joseph declared Jesus' primary purpose to be to save
His people from their sins (Mt. 1:21), so the first announcement of the kingdom
(delivered by John the Baptist) is associated with repentance and confession of
sin (Mt. 3:6).
Matthew, The
Expositor's Bible Commentary, Zondervan, 1984, p. 99.
To exhort
sinners to be saved by “Accepting Christ as their Saviour” without pressing
upon them the imperative necessity of repentance is dishonest, and is to
falsify God’s terms of salvation, for “Except ye repent ye shall all likewise
perish” (Luke 17:3) is the Divine dictum. The sinner must either repent or
perish, there is no other alternative. And since “All have sinned” (Rom. 3:23)
all therefore need to “repent and believe the Gospel” (Mark 1:15) else they
will be “punished with everlasting destruction” (2Thess. 1:9). To delay
repentance then is most perilous.
I.C. Herendeen
Accepting Christ.
For
salvation, “repentance unto life” is just as necessary as is faith in our Lord
Jesus Christ. No sinner was ever pardoned while he remained impenitent, while
he remained in rebellion against God and His authority, and without submitting
himself whole-heartedly to His Lordship. This involves the realization in his
heart, wrought therein by the Holy Spirit, of “the sinfulness of sin” (Rom
7:13), of the awfulness of ignoring the claims of God and of defying His
authority. Repentance is a “holy horror and hatred of sin, a deep sorrow for
it, a contrite acknowledgment of it before God, and a
complete hear forsaking of it.”
I.C. Herendeen
Accepting Christ.
Repentance
needs to be as loud as the sin was.
John MacArthur
A person who
is not being purified from sin has no claim on being saved from it.
John MacArthur
Titus, Moody, 1996, p. 108.
The Christian
life is not adding Jesus to one’s own way of life but renouncing that personal
way of life for His and being willing to pay whatever cost that may require.
John
MacArthur
Matthew 8-15, Moody, 1987, p. 24.
The portrait of
Jesus in the gospels is altogether different from the picture contemporary
evangelicals typically imagine. Rather than a would-be redeemer who merely
stands outside anxiously awaiting an invitation to come into unregenerate
lives, the Savior described in the New Testament is God in the flesh, invading
the world of sinful men and challenging them to turn from their iniquity.
Rather than waiting for an invitation, He issues His own – in the form of a
command to repent and take on a yoke of submission.
John MacArthur
The Gospel According to Jesus, © John MacArthur, 1988, p. 107.
If
I am content to go on in sin, I am an enemy, an adversary of God. Hell, not
heaven, follows at the end of my life. I must not comfort myself in this state.
I must repent!
Tom Wells
Christian: Take Heart! By Permission of the
Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle, PA. 1987, p. 90.
It [is]
impossible…to be converted to Christ while at the same time loving (your) sin.
It is true that anybody who comes to Christ will come with sin. In fact, he or
she will come precisely because of that sin – that is, to be rid of it and its
awful result. But to come to Christ while loving and
cherishing sin is totally impossible. It is like an airplane trying to
fly in two directions!
Jim
Elliff
Pursuing God – A Seeker’s Guide, Christian
Communicators Worldwide, 2003, p. 45, www.CCWonline.org.