Repentance As A Part of Faith
Repentance is part of the “process” of faith. We not only “believe” Jesus – affirm that He and His words are true – we also “trust” Jesus (interesting that Greek has a verb for “faith”, but English does not; we’re stuck with “trust”) as He Who has borne our sins upon His cross so that we may be forgiven, Who has risen from the grave, opening the graves of men, that we may have everlasting life.
We aren’t going to do that, until we have come to understand:
- Who God and Christ are,
- what our condition and position before God is,
- that we have no remedy in ourselves to overcome our lostness, our guilt, and our condemnation, BUT
- that in Christ, that remedy has been fully provided, through His death & resurrection,
- that we must come to Christ, acknowledging our sin, our powerlessness to remediate it for ourselves, His sovereignty and deity, and His free gift,
- that we only benefit from Christ’s acts on our behalf by believing and trusting Him (faith).
All of those things are part of the “repentance” that occurs as we come in faith to the Saviour of our souls. Without those things, we won’t come in faith to the living and true God, and without faith, we will never be saved. We can say words without faith. We can agree with facts without faith. We can do all manner of things, without faith, but without faith, what we cannot do is be saved, regardless of all the other “stuff” that we do.
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