by Jacob Ninan
What we all need as people who are born in sin (Psa.51:5) and who have lived in sin (Rom.3:23) is not just forgiveness for our sins so that we can be made right with God. We also need to be delivered from a lifestyle of sin. Unfortunately, much of preaching today promises only acceptance from God and that too through an easy way – just 'believe' in Jesus. This ends up in making the way broader than God meant it to be. More people can enter and walk in this way, but it is not the way that leads to salvation (Matt.7:13,14). I wonder how many have come to wrongly assume that they are on their way to heaven but they have not entered the narrow way that leads to life. It is understandable that certain verses from the Bible taken by themselves seem to indicate that what they think is right. For example, look at "If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved" (Rom.10:9), "Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God" (1Jn.5:1). The way of salvation seems to be merely based on certain things we believe or accept in our mind. If preachers base their message on such verses and then they inform their hearers that if they have believed these truths they have actually become children of God, they have been misguided in their understanding and mistaken in their preaching.What we need to understand is that even after the Bible has been understood as the revelation of God to man, truths have to be gleaned from all over the Bible to give us the big picture. Verses such as the ones quoted above are true, but not complete in the sense of being able to stand alone and present the whole truth. When we look at the big picture, what we see is this.
To believe in Jesus in the right way, we need to know who He is, why He came to earth, what He taught, why He had to die, what it signifies to us that He rose from the dead, etc. We then understand that He had to die because that was the only way for God to show us His love without having to punish us for our sins. That makes us realise what our sins deserve and what they did to God. It is only then that we appreciate what Jesus has done for us, and it is then that we love Him and put our trust (faith) in Him. Godly sorrow over our sins causes us to want not to sin again. All this is included in the phrase 'believe in Jesus', but unless they are described plainly to people they cannot be blamed for not knowing them. People just assume that believing means accepting facts such as that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead – without finding a personal connection to their own life and responding to it.
The problem with this approach of mental belief shows up later when people who believe they have become children of God do not have any fruit in their lives to show that they have changed from what they used to be. Of course, there may be changes of the religious type – now they 'go to church', read the Bible, follows some habits of prayer, etc. But these are merely external while their heart remains practically the same as before. But now they have an additional burden of having to keep up the image of being a Christian while they actually have other interests at heart.
The sad fact in such cases is that they have not experienced any 'regeneration' from God. In other words, they have not been really born again. That is because some prerequisite conditions have not been met for them to be born again. They have not repented from their sins.
Repentance is not just about admitting we are sinners or have sinned; rarely do we find anyone who would claim they are sinless. Just a casual acknowledgement of sin is not repentance. If there is true repentance, it will be accompanied by a deep sorrow over our sins and an acknowledgement of the punishment that we deserve. It will also be followed by a strong desire not to sin again. See 2Cor.7:10,11, "For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death. For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you: what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong!"
It was not just John the baptiser who came preaching about repentance (Matt.3:1,2), but it was the same message that Jesus started His ministry with (Mk.1:14,15). The Old Testament prophets all gave a call for repentance. John asked people to repent and believe in the One who was coming, and then Jesus came and asked them to repent and to believe in the Gospel. The Gospel is that since God knew that no one could qualify himself by his own efforts (Rom.3:20) He was offering salvation as a free, undeserved gift to all people. To receive this free gift, we have to repent from our sins and put our trust in Jesus.
When anyone goes to Jesus in the right way and surrenders to Him in faith, God causes him to be born again. The Holy Spirit will come into his spirit and give him the seed of divine life which has to grow. That is how he becomes a child of God. Now he has to grow more and more into the character of Jesus. He gets spiritual food through the word of God, prayer and fellowship.
Repentance is not just for the beginning of the spiritual life but for every time a child of God falls into any form of sin in action, word or thought. There repentance will help us to return to God, acknowledge our sin, receive our forgiveness and strengthen our resolve not to sin again (1Jn.1:9;Psa.130:4). Those who believe and teach that we don't have to repent once we have become children of God not only ignore reality but also neglect the power to overcome the next time.
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