REPENTANCE

 

 

The most important issue in any man's life is that he believe the Gospel of God which reveals His glorious Son Jesus Christ and His righteousness, and that he trust in God alone for his salvation. Coupled with believing is another very important and vital item: REPENTANCE! Most who profess to be Christians are taught to believe that repentance is about ceasing known sin and replacing it with doing good. Certainly, one who is converted to Christianity—believes God's Gospel—needs to, and will, turn from his sins of immorality etc., and begin to do the good works prepared by God for those that love Him, "...for how shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" (Rom. 6:2). But repentance involves a lot more than just turning from immorality to morality. It has to do with a change of attitude or change of mind, which is what the word repentance, or metanoia, means. True biblical repentance is the act of having one's mode of thinking changed from that of the world's ways to God's ways in every aspect. No small part of repentance has to do with turning from false gospels to the true and only Gospel of God. It does a man no good, and Christ will not profit a man AT ALL, who hears the Gospel, claims to understand and believe the Gospel, and yet still considers himself saved before having heard it! Such a man has not repented. He has not changed his mind and seen that all gospels apart from God's unique Gospel cannot save and that none are saved, no matter how sincere and zealous they are, who believe they were saved whilst holding to a false gospel. Again, it will do a man no good to claim to believe in the doctrines of the Gospel of the grace of God and yet consider himself or others saved who do not believe the whole Gospel of God, which is His only power unto salvation. 'Believe and REPENT' is the call! With salvation comes the free gift of faith. With this God given and God authored faith, one believes the only Gospel that saves AND will believe in no other. The saved man sees that no gospel previously believed in places any man into the Kingdom of Light. None can trust in the true Christ before they have heard the Gospel, and none are sealed by the Holy Spirit of God before they have received the faith that believes only the Gospel of God and rejects all others as having any potency or potential to save. Paul the apostle told the Christians at Ephesus that their trusting in Christ was only possible "...AFTER that ye heard the word of truth, the GOSPEL of your salvation: in Whom also AFTER that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise" (Eph. 1:13). The man among you, be it your friend or family member, or any religious leader you know of and may even ignorantly respect, who believes that to be saved a man must believe the Gospel, but also that a man is saved on his way to believing the Gospel, or that a man can be saved who believes most of the Gospel or at least the most basic fundamentals, is a lost man. Such a man is not preaching the truth of God, but is preaching/believing a false hope. No one is right while believing an answer that is wrong. Neither are any right who are in the process of learning what the right answer is. One can only be right, one can only have the right answer, AFTER one has learned and believes the right answer!!! How can a man who believes that 2 +2=5 be as right as the one who believes that the answer is 4? Who would be so stupid as to recognize the man who believes the correct answer to be 5 as having the right answer, who knows full well that 5 is the WRONG answer? Why is it and how is it that many, even respected ‘Christian' leaders who say they hold to right doctrine, insist that those who do not, who have another gospel, are saved? Christ says that ALL who do not believe His Gospel SHALL BE DAMNED and only those who believe it, not some of it or even most of it but every part of it, will be saved (see Mk. 16:16). With salvation comes belief of the true Gospel AND rejection of any and every false gospel out there, be it that of the Arminians, the Roman Catholics, the Mormons, the Charismatics, the Seventh-Day Adventists, and even that of the tolerant Calvinists who say that one can be saved who does not believe in the true Gospel. The most tragically sad reality is that there are so many people who frequent Baptist and Presbyterian churches and the like who say they believe in the true doctrines of the Gospel, yet insist they were saved before they believed those doctrines! And, that others like Arminians who believe that Christ died for everybody, though having another gospel, are nonetheless saved!! This, according to the word of God, simply cannot be. The true Christian, the saved man, believes with the faith of God that no other Gospel but the Gospel of God saves. Whatever you believed before you heard and believed the true Gospel was not the true Gospel, so how could you have been saved whilst believing it? You were lost in those days and unless you recognize and confess this most vital of truths, unless you repent of ever believing that any other gospel than the Gospel of God can save, you remain in your sins. There is no salvation for a man who thinks, and stubbornly holds onto the lie, that he was a saved man even before he claims to have heard and begun to believe the Gospel. There is not even a hint in the Scriptures of any man who was considered saved before he heard, understood, and was given the faith of God by God to believe God's Gospel to the exclusion of all others. Unless you believe AND repent you shall be damned!