1. Free As Sons
   
2. Does "Go Ye" Mean "Go Me?"
   
3. Are We Really Born Again?
   
4. The Sacrifices of Cain and Abel
   
5. Silence Says Something
   
6. Body Language
   
7. Repentance Before Faith
   
8. I Wonder
   
9. Can I Know?
   
10. Ultimate Logical Conclusions
    
11. Errors in Peter's Sermon
    
12. Did Timothy Need Admonition?
    
13. Jesus' Youth Sermon For Adults
    
14. Why Didn't Paul Reform?
    
15. Christmas
    
16. Let The Unmarried Marry
    
17. A Dialect of Division
    
18. Our Traditions
    
19. Adding Our Safeguards
    
20. According To The Pattern
    
21. A Creed In The Deed
    
22. Samuel Did Not Know The Lord!
    
23. Response From Our Readers
    
24. Cries Of A Troubled Church
    
25. Sharing Without Fellowship
    
26. I Joined A Church
    
27. Open Membership
    
28. Another Last Will And Testament
    
29. Sad Thoughts About Church Growth
    
30. My Four Retirement Homes
    
31. Hook's Points: A Potpourri
    

REPENTANCE BEFORE FAITH

This may not be news to you more studious fellows, but recently it caught me by surprise: In the three passages where faith and repentance are coupled together, repentance precedes faith (Mark 1:15; Acts 20:21; Heb. 6:1f). I had long been aware that some teachers contend that repentance comes first, and I knew that they use the first passage as their proof­text; but how could anyone be so misled as to think that a person would repent before he believed, for faith must be the motivation for repentance.

As simple as that seems, it does not explain those three pairings of repentance and faith. It is not sufficient to assert that the inspired writers simply gave no attention to sequence. So, let us look at each of those references.

1. "Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel'" (Mark 1:14f). Jesus was addressing Jews who were already believers in God. Because of their lack of fidelity to him, and in view of the approaching kingdom of God, they were called upon to repent toward God and to believe the good news concerning the kingdom.

That explains the first reference to my satisfaction, but how does it fit the other two?

2. In Acts 20:21, Paul includes the Greeks along with the Jews, "..testifying both to Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." Of the Jews we might expect repentance based upon their belief in God, the very thing Peter called for on Pentecost, but how could we expect that of the Greeks who were outside the realm of God's chosen people?

Greeks, along with all Gentiles, knew God through nature (Rom. 1:18­32). God has revealed himself to all men sufficiently to expect honor and thanksgiving from them. Whether they lived in Athens, Nineveh, or wherever, or whenever, God commanded repentance of the ungrateful and dishonoring ones. In all ages and places, man has been accountable to the moral law to love his fellowman. In this chapter, Paul enumerates their violations against one another. They should have demonstrated "what the law required written on their hearts" (2:14), but they had not. So, they should repent toward God and believe in Jesus Christ, for, "There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for every one who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek" (2:9f). Conviction, penitence, and repentance cause one to seek for relief, thus opening the heart for belief in, and acceptance of, Jesus. It is ineffective to preach Jesus to impenitent people.

3. This idea is taken back a step further in Hebrews 6:1. Here the repentance precedes faith in God. A "foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God" is an elementary doctrine of Christ the premise that religion starts out with. Religion begins with man realizing a need, an inadequacy, a guiltiness. Such a realization opens the heart for faith in a deity who can meet his need, and it ultimately leads to faith in God and Jesus as his answer.

These points I have put forth reveal two defects in my approach to evangelizing. First, I proclaimed a Jesus who, supposedly, gave us a law by which we were all condemned, and now he seeks to save us from the condemnation. It makes Jesus as much a condemning lawgiver as a forgiving savior not a personification of Good News!

If I push you into a well and then throw you a rope by which you may climb out, I am not much of a hero, am I? We commit an injustice when we picture Jesus as having pushed us into the well of condemnation by giving a law which we break and then being eager to help pull us out, if we are willing to struggle hard enough. Instead, Jesus found us in the well of hopelessness and condemnation and is eager to lift any trusting soul out of it.

Jesus has told us, "For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:17). All men are condemned already. Jesus continues, "He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the only Son of God." It is a matter of an already condemned person coming to Jesus for salvation rather than him coming to Jesus to learn of his condemnation.

Preaching to the untaught should first deal with man's guilt due to his violation of the law written on the heart. Yes, we should first preach repentance! The penitent can then be led into faith in Jesus. Thus, Jesus becomes the Good News of salvation, not the bad news of condemnation.

The new life process begins with faith which is preceded by repentance from dead works. The repentance from works of death opens the way for life­giving faith. How can a person have life­giving faith while performing dead works? Of course, there must be a motivation toward repentance, and at least indirectly, this must be faith in God. By instinct man reaches out toward a higher power. A person who is uniformed about the true God, in recognition of the futility of his life and the violation of the law of his heart, may hunger and thirst for righteousness out of his poverty of spirit. That person is no longer at enmity with God; so, the God who comforts those who mourn will satisfy the hunger and thirst because his heart has been opened. As this person is taught, his instinctive faith will grow and continue to produce the fruits of repentance. At whatever stage of faith a person has reached, an impoverished spirit and hunger must precede further development of that faith into a mature trust.

This repentance precedes his faith in the gospel and continues to grow afterward. Robert Milligan, in his comments on Hebrews 6:2 in his Commentary on Hebrews, explains that faith and repentance nurture each other: "And hence it is that faith and repentance have a mutual reflex influence on each other. Faith leads to repentance, while repentance again serves greatly to increase our faith, and especially that element of it which relates to the heart and which we call trust in God".

In the second place, I fear that I have spent too much of my effort in trying to produce faith in impenitent people. If a person has no conviction that he is a hopeless sinner in need of salvation, he may well feel that religion is some sort of superstitious enslavement. That would not sound like good news to him.

Both of the robbers being crucified with Jesus joined the chief priests, scribes, elders, and soldiers in reviling Jesus. One of them, however, came to realize that he was condemned and, seeing in Jesus his only hope, called to him in faith, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

On Pentecost, Peter did not proclaim Jesus as a lawgiver whom they had failed to obey, or offended. He convicted them of working against God's plans and purposes by rejecting and killing the one whom he had sent. Their penitence was evident through their cry of despair, "Brethren, what shall we do?" Peter then confirmed their need for repentance toward God and of their need of accepting Jesus through baptism in his name. Once cut to the heart, they could, without hesitation, happily accept faith in Jesus as the answer.

When Paul approached the Athenians, on the contrary, he began in an effort to produce faith in God which would call for repentance based upon the additional premise that all will be judged by Jesus. This proved to be one of Paul's less successful attempts in converting.

In the narratives of the conversion of the Samaritans, the eunuch, and Cornelius, no demand was made for repentance. These sincere worshippers had not been rebellious. They needed only to extend their faith in God to include and accept Jesus.

Although Jesus identified himself to Saul on the road to Damascus, he was not introduced as his Savior until Saul had endured three miserable days of penitence and repentance.

This is not to say that faith should never be dealt with first. Some may trust their present misguided efforts in pagan or perverted concepts, like the Jews who trusted in a righteousness of their own, so that they must be brought to belief in God and Christ as their authority in religion first.

When we can convince the unbeliever that, through his violation of God's timeless law to love God and man which is written on his heart, he is in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity, his heart may be open to believe in Jesus as the Good News of God's salvation.