The following is part two of a two-part series from J. Vernon McGee on the
Biblical doctrine of salvation.
May God bless,
Carl
my website -- http://www.nettally.com/saints/
my blog -- http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/
---
Salvation (Part 2)
by J. Vernon McGee
Up to this point, the doctrines concerning salvation have had to do
largely
with the work of Christ upon the cross. We dealt with atonement,
substitution, redemption, propitiation, and reconciliation. All of them
had
to do with the work of Christ on His side.
Now we are dealing with something else: first, regeneration, and following
this we will cover the tremendous subjects of justification, faith, and
repentance. These four doctrines are very im****tant for us to know. They
are
closely related, yet there is a sharp distinction among them that must be
made in order to understand our salvation. All four of them are involved,
and not one of them will stand alone.
Will you notice this distinction here at the beginning: Regeneration is
subjective; it has to do with the interior person. justification is
objective; it is without cause-a judicial act of God. You and I are dead
in
tresp***** and sins. Therefore we need a new nature. We need life, if you
please, life from God, which is regeneration.
But we need something else-justification-because by nature and conduct we
are guilty. That is, we are guilty sinners before God, and justification
is
that work or act of God whereby He deals with this fact of guilt. He
removes
the guilt from the sinner.
And then faith is the instrument. It is that which you and I exercise in
order that we might stand justified before God. And repentance is included
in saving faith. It's im****tant. In fact, it's essential.
We will go into detail as we come to these doctrines. I've made this
distinction, and yet mention them together, so that you might see that
they
are related, although each one of them is a separate doctrine.
-----
Regeneration
First let's consider regeneration. This word does not occur many times,
actually only twice in the New Testament, and the Greek word is
palingenesia, which actually means "?to recreate.?" It means "?the new
birth,?" and that is the word we associate with it. It is that which is
essential because of the fact that you and I are dead in tresp***** and
sins.
Notice something for just a moment back in the first chapter of Genesis:
Then God said, "?Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the
air,
and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that
creeps on the earth. (Genesis 1:26)
In other words, God said, "?I intend to make man, make him after Our
image,
and this is what I will do for him: I'll give him dominion.?"
In the second chapter of the Book of Genesis you find the detailed account
of the creation of man, and in verse 7 we are told:
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into
his
nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
This means that the creature God created had been taken out of the dirt,
if
you please. On the physical side we are dirt. "?For dust you are, and to
dust you shall return?" (Genesis 3:19). That speaks of our physical being.
But God breathed into this man. And He breathed into him the breath of
life,
and man became a living being. That is, man now is able to commune and
have
fellow****p with his Creator. But you see, man sinned. God had told him:
Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat
of
it you shall surely die. (Genesis 2:16-17)
Man didn't die physically that day. It was almost a millennium after that
before Adam and Eve died. But they did die spiritually that day. That is,
they were dead to God. The apostle Paul confirmed that. When he was
writing
to the Gentiles, to you and to me, he said:
And you He made alive, who were dead in tresp***** and sins. (Ephesians
2:1)
That's the reason you and I must be born again. Because of Adam's sin, we
were dead to God, dead to the things of God. We had no relation****p to Him
at all.
The human family demonstrates this in a very emphatic manner. Look into
the
land of India today, and look into China, and look into any other nation
of
the world. In fact, look into our own nation today. How many people are
actually in a right relation****p with God and are having fellow****p with
Him? Very few. Well, what's the explanation? Men and women are dead in
tresp***** and sins. The reason the new birth is so essential is because,
first of all, we are dead.
We see something of the necessity and the nature of the new birth when we
come to our Lord's first recorded interview, which He had with a religious
man. This was not an accident. You see, if this had been Zacchaeus, there
would have been folks who would have stepped up and said, "?Of course
Zacchaeus needs to be born again. He's a publican, a rotten sinner.?" Or
suppose that the man Jesus spoke to had been from over in Gadara, the
country of the Gadarenes. People would have said, "?Well, I can
understand.
That fellow was demon-possessed. Of course he needed to be born again.?"
But Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a leader of the Pharisees, religious to his
fingertips. He was following the Old Testament precisely. And yet our Lord
said to that man:
Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the
kingdom of God. (John 3:3)
May I say that the expression He used is very interesting. It is genosthe
anothen. It means "?to be born from above.?" If you want it literally,
"?to
be born from the top.?" You've been born down here physically, but you are
dead to God. Now you need to be born in the spiritual sense. You need to
have life, and that's regeneration.
A man told me about taking his son, whom he thought was color-blind, to
the
doctor. He was put through all the tests at the clinic, and it was
determined that the boy was indeed color-blind. The parents seemed to be
distressed over it, for the father told me, "?I said to the doctor, '?Is
there any cure for this at all? Is there any way in the world that we can
change this??'?" And the doctor made this strange statement, "?The only
thing in the world you could do for him is to have him born all over
again.?"
Well now, isn't that what the Lord Jesus said to this man Nicodemus when
he
came to Him, wanting to talk about the Kingdom of God? Our Lord says,
"?You
can't see. Unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.?"
In
other words, "?You do not have eyes to see the Kingdom of God. You can't
understand about the Kingdom of God because your brain is dead as far as
the
things of God are concerned.?"
My friend, this fact is being more and more impressed on my mind. I'm not
invited as often as I was formerly to speak to groups like the Rotary Club
and the Lions' Club. But I've detected the few times I have gone that it's
becoming increasingly difficult to present the gospel to unsaved
men-actually, to intelligent men. When I was in the East I spoke in a
little
town to a group of men who represented the top businessmen of the
community.
It was amazing. They were sharp men. Certainly they were not dummies, and
yet they were the densest men spiritually that I had ever addressed! I
recognized that I was speaking to a bunch of dead men sitting there.
May I say, that's the thing which disturbs and rather frightens me today.
Oh, the spiritual deadness that there is! Men are dead in tresp***** and
sins. And our Lord said to this man Nicodemus, "?Unless one is born again,
he cannot see the Kingdom of God.?"
There are those who will interject here, "?Our Lord also said, '?Most
assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he
cannot enter the kingdom of God?'?" (John 3:5). Some folks interpret
"?born
of water and the Spirit?" to mean that you have to be baptized by water
before you can be saved. It's hard to believe, but there are two
denominations which are built on the assumption that you must be baptized
by
water before you can be saved. Consider what God's Word means when it says
here:
Jesus answered, "?Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of
water
and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of
the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.?"
(John
3:5-6)
Notice that He dropped the word water in verse 6, but He did mention it in
verse 5. What did He mean? May I say to you that water speaks of the Word
of
God. Anywhere you turn in the Scriptures, you find that water, when used
in
a symbolic sense, refers to the Word of God.
For instance, Paul, writing to the Ephesians concerning the husband and
wife
relation****p, said:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave
Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the wa****ng
of
water by the word. (Ephesians 5:25-26)
The Word of God is the water that he's talking about.
The Lord Jesus, talking to His own yonder in the Upper Room, said:
You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.
(John
15:3)
James, in his epistle, wrote:
Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be
a
kind of firstfruits of His creatures. (James 1:18)
You'll also find that Peter wrote about this:
.. having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible,
through
the word of God which lives and abides forever. (1 Peter 1:23)
And you'll find in the Book of Acts that
many of those who heard the word believed; and the number of the men came
to
be about five thousand. (Acts 4:4)
Our Lord is certainly emphasizing the im****tance of the Word of God for
the
new birth. I personally take the position-and I think I can substantiate
it-that never is there a genuine conversion apart from the Word of God. We
have to use the Word of God. There is no substitute.
This is the reason that all of the good courses in evangelistic work tell
you never to argue. You never win people by arguing. You may win the
argument, but you will lose the person. It's the Word of God only that can
convict people. It's the Word of God only that can cleanse. It's the Word
of
God only that can be used in regeneration, because
faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)
Unless they hear the Word of God they cannot receive it, they cannot
believe, and they cannot be born again. The Word must be used.
When I was a student at Dallas Seminary, some of us fellows used to go
down
to the mission on Ackard Street. A gray-haired lady known to everyone as
Mother Moore lived right there and ran that mission on skid row, and many
times she did it alone. My, what a witness that woman was!
One day when I was there I heard a testimony from a man who was a graduate
of either Yale or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a top
engineer. He had worked on Boulder Dam but was finally discharged from the
job, not because he didn't have ability, but because he stayed drunk all
the
time. And when he was thrown off that job it was difficult for him to get
another, so he began just bumming around-and he stayed under the influence
of liquor. When he got to Dallas, he did what a lot of these bums do, he
headed for the mission, knowing that he would at least have one or two
nights there.
Mother Moore always talked to the men when they first came in, and so she
wanted to talk to this engineer-but not in the manner he anticipated. He
had
been through that ritual before elsewhere, so he knew what was coming when
she said, "?Now after you get cleaned up, you come down before dinner. I
want to talk to you.?" He went upstairs to the showers with a feeling of
self-satisfaction. That poor old woman down there, when she starts trying
to
convert me, will I tie her up intellectually! I will make her look very
foolish! This highly educated engineer could see that she was not what
you'd
call a member of the intelligentsia.
When he went downstairs, he saw it was the same old routine he had been
through before, and he knew all the answers. Mother Moore began to present
to him the plan of salvation. Now he had been able to tie up many of the
smart boys, because they would argue with him. But she didn't argue. He'd
say, "?Well now, I don't believe this because of this.?" But she'd say,
"?Well, but the Bible says.?" and she would turn to another verse. Then
he'd
say, "?Wait a minute.?" And she'd say, "?Yes, but the Bible says..?" He'd
say, "?Yes, I know, but I want to put in this,?" and he would insert a
contradiction, and she would say, "?Yes, but the Bible says..?"
Later in his testimony he said, "?You know, I never could get that old
woman
away from the Bible. If I had for one minute, I would have tied her up,
but
she wouldn't let go of it.?" Then he said, "?That's what finally got me. I
found out I couldn't answer it. All of a sudden, I discovered that the
Bible
was answering me! It was giving me the answers, and if I was honest at
all,
I would have to accept what it said.?"
That man came to Christ by the use of the Word of God. And I do not
believe
that our clever books nor our clever tracts, and certainly not our clever
arguments, win people to Christ. Nothing does but the Word of God. Unless
one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot be born again! Born of
water,
yes, the Word of God. But don't bring H2O into this verse! The Bible is
the
water that our Lord is talking about; it's the Word of God.
There are three outstanding conversions in Acts: the conversion of the
Ethiopian eunuch, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, and the conversion of
Cornelius. In the conversion of all three of these men the Word of God was
used. Always the Word of God is used, or there can never be a conversion.
And that is exactly what our Lord was talking about to Nicodemus.
Now let me present that which to me is conclusive, and I do not believe
there is a rebuttal to this at all. I turn to Paul's first letter to the
Corinthian believers. The Corinthians were babes in Christ, carnal
believers, and they were arguing over who was their greatest instructor.
Each was saying, "?I am of Paul?" or "?I am of Apollos?" or "?I am of
Cephas?" or "?I am of Christ.?"
Notice this very carefully-if Paul thought baptism by water meant
salvation,
he sure slipped up here!
For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do
not
have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the
gospel. (1 Corinthians 4:15)
Their contentions were causing divisions among them, you see. And Paul
says,
"?Listen, you may have many instructors, but you have only one father-I am
your father. The way I begot you was through the gospel. All of you
believers there in Corinth are my children because of the Word of God I
used. That was what brought you to a saving knowledge of Christ and made
you
children of God.?" But wait a minute. Paul had already told them back in
chapter 1, verse 14, "?I thank God that I baptized none of you except
Crispus and Gaius?"-then he was reminded of another-"?the household of
Stephanas?" (verse 16). But their new birth came when he preached the
gospel. Apparently the water of baptism was not essential to salvation,
because Paul said he was thankful that he had baptized only a very few.
"?And if there were any others, I have even forgotten about it. But I do
know this, I preached the gospel to all of you, and you were saved.?"
Baptism was not essential for salvation, you see.
Let me emphasize that regeneration, palingenesia, means "?the new birth,?"
"?born from above,?" if you please. This is God's work. Do you remember
what
was said in the Epistle of James?
Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be
a
kind of firstfruits of His creatures. (James 1:18)
May I say this to you today, and would you pay careful attention, because
we
hear a great many wild-eyed ideas about witnessing: The work of conversion
is the work of the Holy Spirit. The work of regeneration is the work of
the
Holy Spirit! Look carefully again at what James says here: "?Of His own
will
He brought us forth.?" The Holy Spirit is sovereign in this matter. You
don't
tell the Holy Spirit whom to convert; He will tell you.
I get so many letters from folks who write, "?I witnessed to So-and-so and
he didn't accept Christ. What's wrong??" If this is your question, you ask
God-He's running it, not I. You ask Him. He is sovereign in this matter.
"?Of His own will He brought us forth.?" And you and I need to remember
that
He is the One who is leading the parade. We are following.
Oh, how we need to follow the Holy Spirit in this matter! That's the
reason
I believe we need more prayer for doing evangelistic work than for
anything
else we do. You need to pray, really pray about it, and ask the Lord to
open
up the door for you. Maybe you have a neighbor next door to whom you
witnessed, but she slammed the door in your face! Well, did you pray about
it before? Did the Holy Spirit lead you to do that?
"?No, I wanted to witness.?"
Well, I know, but you are to let the Holy Spirit lead you in this matter.
"?Of His own will He brought us forth.?" And, my friend, that just happens
to be very im****tant. "?Born of the Spirit?" is His work. He is God, and
you
and I need to follow along in this matter and trust the Holy Spirit to do
the converting.
I'd like to give you a personal illustration of this. When I was a young
preacher in Nashville, there was a young man whom I was determined to lead
to the Lord. I went after him, and I really antagonized him and drove him
away. Months went by, and one night he knocked at my door and asked me,
"?Would you explain to me the plan of salvation??" After I had quit, given
up, there were other people praying for this man, and there came the day
when the Holy Spirit could take over and get rid of some of us who wanted
to
run ahead of God in the matter. What a thrill it was when that man knocked
on my door and asked to hear the plan of salvation! I got a big piece of
paper and put it down on the living room floor. He wanted to know about
the
dispensations, and since I like to explain those too, I had him down on
the
floor with me. I charted them out, explaining how God saves us today by
grace.
May I say to you, let's quit trying to take the place of the Holy Spirit.
Regeneration is God's work, and when we are born again, it opens up a new
world, a brand-new world.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have
passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of
God..
(2 Corinthians 5:17-18)
A new world opens before us. And when it says that old things are passed
away, it means relation****ps-not little habits, but relation****ps. We no
longer are joined to Adam; we're now joined to Christ. This world becomes
a
new world to us. When you are born again you become a child of God. We are
joined to Christ, and we are in Christ, if you please. We have a new life,
and that new life is a very wonderful thing. I want to give you two
Scriptures in this connection.
Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him;
and
he cannot sin, because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:9)
We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but he who has been born
of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him. (1 John 5:18)
When we are born again we are given a new nature, and that new nature can
never sin. That may be the reason some Christians are having such a hard
time-including this preacher. Do you know why? It is because when we were
born again we were given a nature that cannot sin and won't sin. And when
you and I lapse back to living in the flesh and in sin, the very fact that
we are having trouble is probably the proof we are children of God. The
man
in the world can get by with sin, but if you are God's child, you can't
get
by with it for long. Your new nature won't let you, because that new
nature
is of God and knows your life is wrong.
That may be the reason you toss and turn in your bed and cannot sleep. And
this is the reason you said, "?Oh, why did I do that thing? I'll never do
that again.?" That new nature won't sin. It's when you drop back into the
flesh and live in it, committing sin, that you can expect to have problems
and difficulties. And that's the reason you're not satisfied with your
life.
My friend, you can see that regeneration is a tremendous word!
-----
Justification
We have come now to the most im****tant word of all. Have you noticed that
some of the words we have considered are used very seldom in Scripture?
You
find very little concerning reconciliation, propitiation, and
regeneration.
But justification is a word that you'll find again and again and again.
The
fact of the matter is, it occurs about 229 times in the Bible, and in one
epistle, the Epistle to the Romans, it occurs 92 times! To be justified
before God simply means to be right before God.
We are hearing today what I first heard in college when the sociology
teacher and the psychologist asked the question, "?What is right??" How do
you know what's right? One person says this is right, somebody else says
another thing is right. How do you know what is right? My friend, that
which
is right is what God says is right. And if anyone is to be righteous, he
or
she has to be right with God. Now you may disagree with God's standard,
and
you may not like some of the things that He likes, but to be right with
God
is to agree with His standard and to meet it. You and I cannot be accepted
until we have done this.
May I say that to be justified before God never means to be made
righteous.
God never makes a sinner righteous because the word justified means "?to
be
declared righteous.?" It's a legal term. For instance, you are arrested
and
brought up before a judge, and the charge is read against you. The judge
hears the evidence and the judge says, "?Not guilty.?" That doesn't change
you, but it does change your standing before the law. You may have been
guilty before you were arrested. Now you have been declared "?not
guilty,?"
and you are turned loose. That is what being justified or declared
righteous
is.
And that's also what it meant back in the Old Testament. I have been
reading
a most profound book, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross by Leon Morris,
an Englishman. It is one of the finest books I've read, and he has two
chapters on justification. I have been greatly blessed by reading what he
has to say concerning this. He points out that justification carries this
same thought even back in the Old Testament. Abraham had it. When God told
him He was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, this is what Abraham said:
"?Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right??" (Genesis 18:25). It's
an
Old Testament concept, you see, this matter of being right and doing
right.
Notice Deuteronomy 25:1, which concerns a legal matter:
If there is a dispute between men, and they come to court, that the judges
may judge them, and they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked..
You see, it's a legal term. When two men are at odds, one is right and one
is wrong. They are to come before the judge, and the judge is to declare
one
of them righteous and the other one wrong.
Now, friend, God exercises that prerogative. He must judge you and me as
guilty sinners; there is no other alternative for Him. He has done that.
He
says that you and I do not meet His standard; we have never kept His law;
we
are in rebellion against Him; we are sinners and are guilty before Him.
And
He says that the penalty is death: "?The soul who sins shall die?"
(Ezekiel
18:4). God goes on to say this, "?You are guilty, the penalty must be
paid,
and I cannot be lenient with you.?"
Oh, if we could only see that! God, when He forgives you, my friend, is
not
being lenient with you. It's not that He's letting down the bars. It means
this: Christ bore the penalty. So now God can justify a guilty sinner and
declare the guilty sinner "?not guilty,?" because the penalty has been
paid
by Another. We are now right before God because God has declared that we
are
righteous in His sight. Jesus our Lord
was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our
justification. (Romans 4:25)
The picture is of a courtroom. The Judge (God the Father) looks down at
mankind and He says to us, "?You are guilty. The penalty is death-eternal
separation from Me.?" But, you see, the Judge (God in the person of His
Son)
leaves the bench, and He comes down to where the prisoner is. He says to
the
prisoner, "?Move over.?" He then looks back at the Judge on the bench and
says, "?I will pay the penalty.?"
The Judge says, "?That's satisfactory to Me. You can take the penalty. You
are worthy and You are able.?" So God the Son takes the penalty. The Lord
Jesus bears the cru****ng load of our sin in His own body on the
tree-delivered for our offenses and raised for our justification. Now a
holy
God can look down on a sinner, and He can declare that sinner righteous,
not
because of anything within the sinner, not because of anything that he has
done.
Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the
deeds
of the law. (Romans 3:28)
God now can look down at a lost sinner, and He can say to that sinner,
"?You
are no longer guilty. I make over to you the righteousness of Christ so
that
you can stand in My presence, and there can be no charge brought against
you.?"
Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.
(Romans 8:33)
So today a sinner stands in God's presence saved! Not because of some
compromise that's been worked out in the back room, or because God has
somehow or another opened the back door and slipped us in. That's not the
way we get to heaven. We come in the front door. We come in like Christ
comes in! We stand complete and accepted in Him.
Now you have the same right in heaven as Christ has or you don't have any
right there at all. You are in Him completely, 100 percent saved, or you
are
lost, out of Christ, 100 percent lost, and it doesn't make any difference
how many merits you are trying to earn. We are not saved by our character.
For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being
sanctified.
(Hebrews 10:14)
Jesus Christ, by the offering of Himself, has made us 100 percent
acceptable
to God, so nothing else is added to that.
-----
Faith
The only thing that God asks of you and me is faith. Faith is more than
intellectual assent. It includes that, but it is also personal trust in
God.
Faith does, however, rest upon knowledge.
So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans
10:17)
The only condition of salvation is faith-it's to believe God. It rests
upon
one foundation: the integrity of God. We believe Him. We take Him at His
word; we believe in God.
He who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of
those who diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6)
It's the same old illustration we have everywhere that "?saving faith?" is
mentioned. It is always used with a preposition, either the preposition
eis,
"?into,?" or the preposition epi, which means "?upon.?" To be saved means
to
put your trust either "?into?" or "?upon?" Christ. You can stand by a
chair
from now until judgment day and say, "?I believe this chair will hold me
up,?" but faith is not exercised until you sit in it, trust your whole
weight to it-believe into it, if you please, or believe upon it-and when
you
do that, then the chair is holding you up.
At this moment you say you believe in Christ. But how do you believe in
Christ?
You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons
believe-and
tremble! (James 2:19)
The demons believe and tremble, but they are not saved. Is this faith? And
among some Bible-believing folks in our day it has become just sort of a
little intellectual assent to something. Oh, friend, that's not salvation.
It's not until you and I come and trust ourselves to Jesus Christ that we
are 100 percent saved.
-----
Repentance
Faith alone saves. Somebody says, "?What about repentance? Don't we need
to
repent??" Well, the word for repent, metanoeo, means "?to change your
mind.?" And all the repentance God asks for is in the word believe. You
see, in the New Testament, salvation is made a matter of believing.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
Paul and Silas said to that Philippian jailer:
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. (Acts 16:31)
There are 150 passages in the New Testament that make salvation dependent
on
believing and believing alone. In the Gospel of John and in the Epistle to
the Romans, it is faith and faith alone. Repentance is not there.
"?But,?" somebody says, "?isn't repentance necessary??" Yes, it is. But it
is included in saving faith. Paul, when he was writing to the Thessalonian
believers, said:
For they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to
you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true
God.
(1 Thessalonians 1:9)
Obviously, Paul, when he came to Thessalonica, found the people wor****ping
idols. He probably said to them the same thing which he later said in
Athens. Let me paraphrase, "?When I came, I found an idol to the '?unknown
God.?' You wor****p every kind of god here, and you're afraid you'll miss
one
of them, so you put up an idol to an unknown god. Well, I'm going to tell
you about an unknown God. And that One is the living and the true God.?"
And
then these people heard about Christ. They heard that He would save them
from sin, and they turned to God. But when they turned to God, they turned
from idols. And when they turned from idols, that was repentance. Metanoeo
means "?change of mind,?" and that's in faith. You could not turn to Jesus
Christ in faith without turning from something.
For this reason I keep repeating that these people today whose lives have
not been changed, although they say they trust Christ, are deceiving
themselves. The apostle James makes it very clear:
Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my
works. (James 2:18)
In other words, "?I want to see something,?" James says. He is not talking
to them now about being saved by works. He is saying that you are saved by
faith, but the faith which turns to Christ turns from something, so
repentance is there. And we need lots more of it today.
Repentance is not just shedding tears nor just being sorry. Repentance
means
a change of mind. It means right-about-face and turning to God. When we
turn
to God, my beloved, we certainly turn from something. Believe me, people
will know when you have been converted because your manner of life
changes.
And if it doesn't change, there is something radically wrong.
May I say that repentance is a word that's primarily in the New Testament,
and it's used for believers. When our Lord wrote to the seven churches of
Asia Minor (Revelation, chapters 2 and 3), He used the word repent
frequently. And that's His message to every church in our day: "?Repent.?"
That's His message to every believer: "?Repent.?" This is something that
we
as believers need to do a great deal more of, since repentance is changing
our minds and our direction about sin and indifference. How many of us are
really convicted about being cold and indifferent? I don't find many.
Are you satisfied to keep going along in an indifferent way? Are you
satisfied to be a nominal Christian in these difficult days? Are you
satisfied doing nothing for God? Well, what our Lord says is, "?Turn
around,
and start in the other direction.?"
"?Remember,?" He says, "?and repent.?" That was His message to the church
in
Ephesus. "?Remember.?" Do you remember when you were converted? Do you? Do
you remember what a thrill it was? I never shall forget that Christmas
holiday conference in Memphis, Tennessee, when Dr. Harry Ironside and Dr.
Louis Sperry Chafer spoke. I had never heard anything like that before,
and
I would get down to the church before they even opened the doors. The
caretaker said to me, "?You're a funny fellow, coming this early!?" I
said,
"?I don't want to miss a thing.?"
Remember? I even go back to God today and say, "?Oh, restore unto me those
days. And give me the thrill I had at that time.?" Remember, and repent.
Start in the other direction.
Oh, may I say, there needs to be repentance for the sinner, but there is
repentance for the believer also. The believer needs to do a great deal of
repenting. We need to see more tears in church than we are seeing today.
We
need to see more of these cold hearts of believers stirred and sorry and
turning to God with a full purpose of, and an endeavor after, a new
obedience to Him. Beloved, how we need to repent!
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