Chapter 4 - CHRIST'S CALL TO REPENT
"The law was given by Moses, but grace and
truth came by Jesus Christ." Notice that
combination — grace and truth. Men must face
facts if they would enjoy grace. Surely there
never was a more insistent call to repentance
than that put forth by Him of whom it could be
said, "Grace is poured into thy lips."
From the moment He began to preach, His
message, like that of His forerunner, John, was,
"Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
There is something intensely solemnizing in
this. God had come down to earth and was
speaking in His Son. He came with a heart filled
with love and compassion for men, so bruised and
ruined by sin; but He had to wait upon them; He
had to press home to them their sad plight; He
had to call upon them to acknowledge their guilt
and their ungodliness ere He could pour into
their hearts the balm of His grace. For God must
have reality. He refuses to gloss over iniquity.
He insists upon self-judgment, upon a complete
right-about-face, a new attitude, ere He will
reveal a Saviour's love.
With this principle the arrangement of the
four Gospels is in perfect harmony. In the
Synoptics the call is to repent. In John the
emphasis is laid upon believing. Some have
thought that there is inconsistency or
contradiction here. But we need to remember that
John wrote years after the older Evangelists,
and with the definite object in view of showing
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and
that, believing, we might have life through His
Name. He does not simply travel over ground
already well trodden. Rather, he adds to and
thus supplements the earlier records, inciting
to confidence in the testimony God has given
concerning His Son. He does not ignore the
ministry of repentance because he stresses the
importance of faith. On the contrary, he shows
to repentant souls the simplicity of salvation,
of receiving eternal life, through trusting in
Him who, as the true light, casts light on every
man, thus making manifest humanity's fallen
condition and the need of an entire change of
attitude toward self and toward God.
To tell a man who has no realization that he
is lost, that he may be saved by faith in
Christ, means nothing to him, however true and
blessed the fact is in itself. It is like
throwing a life preserver to a man who does not
realize he is about to be engulfed in a
maelstrom. When he sees his danger he will
appreciate the means of deliverance offered. So
when the message of the Synoptics has made a
profound impression on the soul of a man, he
will be ready for the proclamation of eternal
life and forgiveness through faith in Christ
alone.
When they came to Jesus and told Him of
certain Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled
with their sacrifices as his Roman legions
quelled a Jewish uprising, and again when they
reported the falling of a tower in Siloam as a
result of which many were killed, He solemnly
declared: "Think ye that these were sinners
above all others? I tell you, nay, but except ye
repent ye shall all likewise perish." Whether
men are taken away by violence, by accident, or,
as we say, by natural death, their doom is the
same unless they have turned to God in
repentance. We perhaps think of such occurrences
as those referred to, as signal instances of the
divine judgment against wickedness. But God's
holy eye discerns the sinfulness of every heart
and calls upon all to take sides with Him
against themselves. Until this is done, saving
faith is an impossibility. This is not to limit
grace. It is to make way for it. And be it
remembered, repentance is not a state
automatically produced. It is the inwrought work
of the Holy Spirit effected by faithful
preaching of the Word. But how seldom today do
we hear the cry, "Except ye repent."
When our Lord looked on to the day of
manifestation He declared: "The men of Nineveh
shall rise in the judgment with this generation,
and shall condemn it: for they repented at the
preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than
Jonas is here." Could He have made it clearer
that grace is for the repentant soul, and there
can only be judgment without mercy for him who
persists in hardening his heart against the
Spirit's pleading?
And so, when He upbraided the cities wherein
most of His mighty works were done, He
prophesied their doom because they would not
repent. Bethsaida, Chorazin, Capernaum are but
ruins today because, although the testimony
given was of such character that if it had been
vouchsafed to Tyre and Sidon they would have
repented in sackcloth and ashes, the people in
these cities were unmoved. The stones of these
Galilean cities are today crying out of the dust
of ages, "Repent ye, and believe the gospel."
But how few there are with ears to hear and
hearts to understand!
It has often been noticed with wonder by
thoroughly orthodox theologians that, whereas
many cultured preachers, whose Gospel testimony
is unimpeachably correct, see few or no
converts, some fervent evangelist who does not
seem to proclaim nearly so clear a Gospel, but
who drives home to men and women the truth of
their lost condition and vehemently stresses the
necessity of repentance, wins souls by the
scores or even hundreds. It was so with Sam
Jones, with D. L. Moody, with Gypsy Smith, with
Billy Sunday, with W. P. Nicholson, with Mel
Trotter, and many more. Is not the explanation
simply this, that, when men truly face their
sins in the presence of God, their awakened and
alarmed consciences make them quick to respond
to the slightest intimation of God's grace to
those who seek Him with the whole heart? This is
not to set a premium upon ignorance, nor to
glorify a half-Gospel, for undoubtedly where the
full clear announcement of salvation by faith
alone in a crucified, risen, and exalted Christ
follows the call to repentance, the converts
will be much better established than where they
have to grope for years after the truth that
sets free from all doubt and confusion of mind.
The evangelists cited above all came themselves
to a better understanding of grace in their
maturity than in their early years. But those
years were nevertheless wonderfully fruitful in
the turning of many from sin to righteousness
and from the power of Satan unto God.
And is it not marvelously significant that,
in the three Gospels which were first circulated
throughout the ancient world, the call goes
forth to Jew and Gentile insisting that no
unrepentant soul will ever find favor with God?
Then, as the Christian testimony was better
known, the sweet and precious unfoldings of
light, life, and love were given in the Gospel
of John. Of course, in the actual testimony of
the Lord, the two were ever intermingled, for
"grace and truth" are never to be separated.
Our Lord was the master soul-winner, and we
who would be used of God in winning our fellows
to a knowledge of Himself may well learn His
ways and copy His methods, so far as human
frailty will permit.
How easily He might have declared to the rich
young ruler, who came running to Him asking,
"Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal
life?" that there was nothing to do, "only
believe and live." Had He done so it would have
been actually true. But He did not so say.
Instead He undertook to probe the conscience of
the young man by using the stern precepts of the
Law, and He put a test upon him that only real
faith would have led him to meet. "One thing
thou lackest." What was that? The young man had
never realized his need of a Saviour.
Self-satisfied and self-contained, he honestly
prided himself on his goodness. The test, "sell
what thou hast, and give to the poor," was not
putting salvation on the ground of human merit;
but it was intended to reveal to the young man
the hidden evil of his heart and to show him his
need of mercy.
To the Samaritan woman He did not give the
living water until He had uncovered her life of
sin, so that she exclaimed, "Sir, I perceive
that thou art a prophet." This was tantamount to
saying, 'I perceive that I am a sinner.' And
after she believed in Him as Saviour and Messiah
her own testimony was, "Come, see a man who told
me all things that ever I did: Can this be the
Christ?"
Rutherford complained in his day that there
were so few professed believers who had ever
spent a sick night for sin. And if this was true
then, it is doubly true today.
When our Lord answered the complaining
legalists who objected that He received sinners
and ate with them, He related the threefold
parable of Luke 15. There we see the entire
Trinity concerned in the salvation of a sinner.
The Saviour seeks the lost sheep. The woman with
the light, illustrating the Holy Spirit's work,
seeks the lost piece of silver. And all heaven
rejoices when the lost one repents.
The eager father welcomes back the returning
prodigal. But we should not overlook the fact,
that it was when the ungrateful youth "came to
himself" and took the position of self-judgment
because of his wicked folly, and actually turned
his face homeward, that the father ran to him,
though still a great way off, and fell on his
neck and kissed him. He did not wait for his boy
to ring the door bell or knock in fear and
anxiety upon the gate. But, on the other hand,
he did not offer him the kiss of forgiveness
while he was down among the swine. He hastened
to meet him when in repentance he turned
homeward with words of confession in his heart.
Does all this becloud grace? Surely not.
Rather does it magnify and exalt it. For it is
to unworthy sinners who recognize and
acknowledge their dire condition that God finds
delight in showing undeserved favor.
The weeping harlot in the seventh of Luke,
kneeling at the feet of Jesus and washing them
with her tears while she dries them with her
hair — and a woman's hair is her glory —
illustrates, as perhaps nothing else can, the
relation of repentance to saving faith. Her
tears of contrition told out the grief of her
heart as she mourned over her sins and judged
her unclean life in the light of Christ's
purity. His words of grace, "Her sins, which are
many, are forgiven," no sooner had fallen upon
her ears than she believed His testimony, and
she went away knowing she was clean. True, He
had not yet died for her sins, but faith laid
hold of Him as the one only Saviour who had
power on earth to forgive. Her weeping, her
washing of His feet, her humiliation had nothing
meritorious in them. The merit was all His. He
who said to another of like character, "Neither
do I condemn thee: go and sin no more," had
remitted all her iniquities and won her heart
forever.
"It is not thy tears of repentance or
prayers,
But the blood that atones for the soul:
On Him then, who shed it thou mayest at once
Thy weight of iniquities roll."
When Bernard of Clairvaux was dying the monks
praying by his pallet spoke of his merits. He
cried out in Latin words which translated into
English mean, "Holy Jesus, Thy wounds are my
merits." Only a repentant man would so speak.
And so our Lord tells us that "there is joy
in heaven over one sinner that repenteth more
than over ninety and nine just persons that need
no repentance." There, where they know what a
soul is really worth, every saint and angel
rejoices with the Good Shepherd when a lost
sheep is reclaimed from its wanderings.
Table of
Contents |
Previous |
Next