God's Grant of Repentance
Part I
When we last left our friend Sally she had just been moved by the Holy Spirit to make a personal decision of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Sally has indeed exercised faith in our Lord. But something else happened concurrently with Sally's faith, and this is repentance. Paul instructs Timothy “with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth...” 1 Tim. 2:25. It is God who grants repentance unto salvation. To understand repentance as it relates to the salvation of person in the age of grace however, we must understand how God uses this term in the Scriptures. There are five separate acts of repentance outlined in Scripture. These are: 1. National repentance on the part of Israel (and one other nation) in the Old Testament. 2. The repentance of Israel called for by Christ, John the Baptist, and the apostles in the New Testament. 3. The repentance the apostles called Israelites to directly after the day of Pentecost and in the early part of the book of acts. 4. The repentance of believing Christians. 5. And the repentance that leads to salvation of the human soul. It is this last one that is really the subject of our investigation. In order to understand this we must understand all the other acts of repentance to guard ourselves against convoluting God's teaching and wrongly dividing the word of truth.
I will begin by giving a very general definition of repentance. I will give a more specific definition of repentance unto salvation in the age of grace (in which we are living now) in my next article. Our general definition is: Repentance is a turn to, or a return to God. Let's now examine the five separate acts of repentance given in Scripture with this definition in mind.
The nation of Israel repented and turned back to God. “The sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth. Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, so that He sold them into the hands of Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia; and the sons of Israel served Cushan-rishathaim eight years. When the sons of Israel cried to the LORD, the LORD raised up a deliverer for the sons of Israel to deliver them...” Judges 3: 7-9. This repentance was the turning of the nation back to God. It is not meant to speak of the turning of an individual Israelite in salvation toward God. The Hebrew word is Shubh which means: to turn, to turn about, and to return.
Very closely related to this is the preaching of John the Baptist, Jesus, and the apostles during the ministry of Christ on earth. John said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” Matt. 3:2. Jesus said, “From that time Jesus began to preach and say, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand'” Matt. 4:17. The ministry of John and Jesus was to turn the nation of Israel back to God in preparation for the beginning of the promised Kingdom of Messiah. Of course we know that the nation refused the call to repentance and rejected the kingdom.
The ministry of the apostles in the first part of Acts echoes the ministry of Jesus and John. Peter said to the Jews gathered to him on the day of Pentecost “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ--this Jesus whom you crucified.... Peter {said} to them, 'Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit'” Acts 2:36, 38. Peter called Israel to repent. Why? In his next sermon Peter says, “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until {the} period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time” Acts 3:19-21. Peter knew Israel's repentance would be a sign that the kingdom would come. Peter was preaching repentance to Israel. The difference between this and the O.T. call to repentance was that this call also had the salvation of the individual Jewish person in view; for that matter it was the primary goal of the preaching. The call of Peter was a call to both the national salvation of Israel and the personal salvation of Jewish people.
But Israel also refused this call to repentance as well. Paul, after the Jews began contradicting the message of the gospel said, “Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said, 'It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first; since you repudiate it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.'” As time went on it became obvious to the apostles that Israel had rejected God's call to repentance so much so that Paul in Romans 11:25 said, “For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery--so that you will not be wise in your own estimation--that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in...” Two things are clear. The ministry of the gospel of grace is primarily to the Gentiles, that is Gentiles are the primary beneficiaries because Israel has been “hardened” to the truth. But equally true is that Israel's eventual repent and restoration is also assured in that the hardening is “partial” not complete.
As the ministry of the apostles in the book of Acts continues the calls to repentance diminish and the calls to believe increase. Paul said to the Philippian jailer “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” Does this mean that repentance is not necessary for salvation?
The answer to this question is of course, no. Repentance is spoken of in a believers salvation in Luke 24:46-47 Jesus said, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” It is spoken of by Paul when he said “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all {people} everywhere should repent...” Acts 17:30. And again, as we have quoted in 1 Tim. 2:25 “with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth...”
In each of these cases however the word repentance is used as a figure of speech where the part us substituted for a whole. This means, in the uses above, the word repentance is substituted for the whole of salvation. This is obvious from the context if we ask is it simply repentance that is being proclaimed by the apostles or is it also the necessity of being born again, of faith toward God, of justification, etc? Is God simply declaring that all men should simply repent or should they also believe in Christ? Of course all would be included in the single term. There is good reason for this and we will examine it in our next article.
The last act of repentance used in the Word of God is the repentance of believers after falling into sin. In the book of Revelation Jesus says to believers at Laodicea “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent” Rev. 3:19. The repentance of believers however is not a repetition of the repentance of the human soul at salvation. This happens only once and is never repeated.
In examining the teaching of God's Word on repentance it is important to understand the different acts of repentance in Scripture in order to understand more clearly the one act of repentance at salvation. It is this act that we will examine in next months article.
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