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REPENT AND BELIEVE THE GOSPEL By Rosco Brong
NOT ONLY THE COMMANDS OF GOD BUT THE ORDER OF THESE COMMANDS MUST BE OBSERVED
"Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and behave the gospel” (Mark 1:14, 15).
Of all the satanic perversions of the gospel message, one of the most pernicious is the reversal of the scriptural order of repentance and faith. Necessarily conceded with this reversal is a complete lack of understanding of the meaning of repentance and of the nature of saving faith. It is no accident that the only time in the New Testament that the command to repent and the command to believe are brought together, they are quoted from the Lord Jesus Himself, and the command to repent comes first.
REPENTANCE AND FAITH
Moreover, it needs to be noticed that only twice in the New Testament do the nouns repentance and faith appear together, and both times in this order. Those false teachers of counterfeit "faith and repentance'' cannot justify their reversed order from the scriptures, and their arguments defending their anti-scriptural order are based on gross misinterpretation of the meaning of both repentance and faith. The two places in the New Testament where the nouns repentance and faith are used together are Acts 20:21 and Hebrews 6:1.
In Acts 20:20, 21 the Apostle Paul sums up his ministry by telling "how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but showed you, and have taught you publicly, and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greek, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ."
In Hebrews 6:1 we are exhorted to "go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God," etc.
"That YE MIGHT BELIEVE"
There is one other place in the New Testament where, in the King James version, the words repent and believe come together, and although in the original the word for "repent" is different from that used in the other passages cited, the same order prevails. This is in Matthew 21:32, where we find Jesus speaking to "the chief priests and the elders'' (verse 23):
"John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye behaved him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him, and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him."
"INSEPARABLE GRACES"
In this last citation (Matt. 21:32) the word for “repented” might better be translated "regretted.''
As to the words usually represented by "repent'' and ''repentance'' in the King James version, the truth is as stated in the New Hampshire confession of faith, that repentance and faith are "inseparable graces." This is true not because it is so stated in the confession, but it was so stated and agreed upon by sound Baptists because it is truth revealed in the New Testament.
The truth is that divinely inspired speakers and writers of the New Testament generally considered it sufficient to refer to either repentance or faith alone, knowing that either word necessarily implies the other. It was only for special emphasis, and perhaps to make clear their relationship, that these few times terms are used.
A SAD MISTAKE
I have heard Baptist preachers who ought to know better say of the Philippian jailor in Acts 16 that Paul and Silas told him only believe because "he had already repented." The man who can make such a statement either does not know the meaning of repentance or has not carefully considered his words.
As a matter of fact, there is no such thing as a sinner who has truly repented "from dead works'' and "toward God" without also coming to saving faith in Christ. And there is no such thing as a saved believer in Christ who has not repented in the New Testament sense of repentance.
Repentance and faith are not "steps" to salvation; much less are the reversed and Counterfeit "faith and repentance" of false religion "steps" to anything but delusion and destruction.
New Testament repentance and faith are "inseparable graces" two out of many aspects of a single experience of God's saving grace.
MEANING OF TERMS
True repentance is a change of mind, and when used in a gospel connection this means, for the lost sinner, a change from unbelief to belief. Obviously, then, when a sinner has fully repented, he has also come to believe what before he had not believed, involving a trust in One Whom before he had not trusted.
Saving faith necessarily involves personal trust or commitment, as dearly taught in the Bible. Since the lost sinner is in a natural state of unbelief, obviously he cannot believe without a change of mind, which is the New Testament meaning of repentance.
BELIEVE THE GOSPEL
Paul in I Cor. 15:3-8 sums up the gospel: ''How that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: and that he was seen . . ."
lf you have not yet believed this message to the extent of trusting Christ for salvation, may you, by the grace of God, repent (change your mind) and believe the gospel to the saving of your soul (Heb. 10:39).
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