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As Distinguished from Other Kinds of Faith This past Sunday I digressed from the pattern of expositing a passage in Mark verse by verse and offered a critique of a particular contemporary theological/doctrinal phenomenon. And even though I regret not working through each verse of that passage (Mark 1:16-20), I have to say that the intent of the passage was and is consistent with my digression. Mark, by distilling this initial encounter between Jesus and the first four disciples down to such a stark call/response, is actually highlighting the point I made in the digression – that to be a disciple is to forsake all other loyalties and follow Jesus; it is decisive and total in it implications. Yes, when Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die. How we understand the call of discipleship has profound consequences and implications. It matters in the way we present the gospel to people, when we, as the instruments of Christ, call them to repent and believe in Jesus. There is a well-entrenched understanding of the Christian gospel that says that it is not necessary to submit and to be loyal to Jesus, or to be a disciple, in order to be saved by Jesus. When I say that the result of this teaching has been that millions of people believe they are going to heaven who are not, I am not saying that my friends who believe this are themselves not going to heaven. Thankfully, even though they affirm that one does not have to repent and bow to Jesus as Lord to be saved, most of them thankfully have repented and have bowed; indeed many of them are beautifully humble and holy Christian men and woman. Rather, I am saying that there are millions of people who have heard the gospel presented to them according to the method and definitions of my friends who are not going to inherit eternal life. Not that all people who hear and respond to their wrongly presented gospel will fail to inherit eternal life. Thankfully, in His grace God brings about in people’s hearts biblical faith and repentance regardless of whether the sermon asks them to repent and trust in Christ as Lord and Savior or not. God has effectually called millions of people through this inadequate presentation. But there are countless others who say a “sinner’s prayer,” who are given “on-the-spot assurance,” who go home and never change and who think they are saved because they said a prayer in 1976. Why do I think they will not inherit eternal life? Because they have never heard and responded to the biblical gospel. They have never been told that they must repent and believe. They have never been told that “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” They have never been invited to come unto Jesus, in the way that he said, “taking his yoke upon him and learning from him.” They have never heard Christ in the way the apostle Paul presented Him: You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:20-24 NIV). But rather than go on and on about the scheme that produces such an unbiblical theology, I will simply make a few summary comments, and then spend the bulk of my time making positive affirmations about what we are being called by Christ to do and to become. If you are struggling with what I have said or will say here, then let us get together and work through the Scriptures and use this as a learning opportunity for all concerned. There are several questions that need to be addressed. How is the gospel actually presented in the Scriptures? What is the nature of saving faith? What is repentance? What is the relation between faith and repentance? What is rebirth? What is justification and its relation to sanctification? My friends would define faith as consisting of understanding and credence – as understanding the message about Christ and agreeing that it is true and applicable to me as a sinner. They would say that since, in their understanding, God has promised that if I believe (in this way), then I will be saved and inherit eternal life. I may even be asked to repent, according to the scheme of my friends, but their repentance is defined as a change of mind about what is true about Jesus, not a commitment or change of loyalty or actual submitting of my life to Jesus. Now my friends can read just as well as you and I, so what gives? They say all of this and teach as they do because of their understanding of the difference between the church and kingdom dispensations. They would say that many of the Scriptures I cite below do not apply to us in the church today, and claim that they only apply to the millennial kingdom of Israel. In the words of one of the major proponents of this view the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount has “no application to the Christian but only to those who are under the law.” Because of their understanding that we now in the church are under the dispensation of “pure grace,” they believe that we don’t have to be sanctified or “follow” Jesus or bear fruit to be saved. They believe that we must be able to have Jesus as Savior and not as Lord, or else we are not saved by grace. To them this is all very serious. They believe that what I am going to say in the rest of this letter is dead wrong. Sadly, their teaching has had such a profound effect upon the way Christ has come to be presented in many of the more common tracts and evangelism programs of the last forty years, that when someone like myself takes issue with it all, people stare in disbelief, and I am deemed a legalist and a heretic. OK, so what would I say to all that? Well, I cannot in this letter discuss the dispensational scheme that underlies this teaching about the kingdom. I would point you to another writing, “The Kingdom of God,” for an exposition of the kingdom of God as I understand it. But I must say that there are many within the dispensational family who have also taken issue with our friends. In particular I refer you to one of the most profound and important books of our generation – The Gospel According to Jesus by John MacArthur. This book is worth your time. Written by a dispensationalist, it shows that it is not inherent to the dispensationalist system to see the Sermon on the Mount and all the other passages I will cite as referring only to the millennial kingdom. This book offers a profound call to the church back to the historic gospel which Jesus Himself preached. OK, starting with the first question above, the best way to answer the question as to how the gospel is presented is to go back and read the encounters in the Gospels between Jesus and various people, and then go on read the sermons in the book of Acts. Obviously I cannot cite or exposit all of these in this letter, but I will try to summarize what I have found. Jesus himself proclaimed the message of the kingdom at the outset of his ministry. "The time has come," he said; "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" Paul, in his farewell to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, summarizes his own ministry: “I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.” Jesus, preaching to the crowds, and addressing his words to “whosoever,” put it this way: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” We think of Jesus’ invitation to the weary and burdened: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Later Jesus speaks of the going forth of the gospel from Jerusalem: "This is what is written: ‘The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.’” In the great Pentecost sermon which resulted in the salvation of over 3000 men and women, Peter, after explaining the life of Jesus in terms of its Old Covenant background, commanded the people as follows: "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off--for all whom the Lord our God will call." In his second sermon he puts it about as clearly as I can imagine it being put: “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” To the pagan idol worshippers in Athens, Paul says: “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” I could go on and on and on, to John, to the epistles, to anywhere in the New Testament, for the message is always the same. When people are invited (commanded!) to participate in the good news about Jesus, they are told to repent and believe. The meaning of these two words is so interconnected that sometimes only the word “believe” is used and other times only the word “repent” is used. Repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin. One cannot understand faith without repentance or repentance without faith. In summation, if one would inherit eternal life, he must repent and believe; he must believe repentantly and repent believingly. There is no other way. One must turn. One must “come to Jesus.” Saving faith involves a forsaking of one thing and an embracing of another. It means a change in loyalty. When the gospel is presented in such a way that the hearer is not called to see himself as a rebellious sinner in need, not only of forgiveness and repair, but of a change in loyalty, when the hearer is not called to embrace, cling to, follow, and love Jesus, then the gospel has not been presented. What has been presented is a false gospel. The faith through which justification (the declaration of acquittal) comes is a repentant faith. It is the faith of the publican, “Have mercy on me a sinner!” Seeing myself as a sinner in need of salvation is not some dry intellectual recognition, some factoid I check off on a salvation test, it is the disturbing and highly personal recognition that I have been living for myself, in opposition to my Maker, that I am impure and unholy and under wrath. It is the response of the three thousand on Pentecost Sunday: “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" The hatred of and horror over my own plight as a sinner which then compels me to Christ for his mercy and cleansing involves a turning from and a clinging to. That is, it involves repentance. And repentance, which means a turning from and forsaking of my former pattern of life, assumes my belief in and trust in that to which I am now turning. I do not forsake the one loyalty and then just stand there with no loyalties to replace it. No, I cling to Jesus as my Lord and king. There is a starting point to our life in Christ. But we go on from there. The same repentant trust through which we were justified abides over the course of our lives as disciples. “The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent” (Rev. 3:19). “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). We think of the gallery of faithful saints in Hebrews 11: Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see…This is what the ancients were commended for….By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family…..By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith….By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going….All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth (Hebrews 11:1,2,7,8,13). The same sort of faith through which I embrace Christ in the first place leads me to live trustingly as I go. Abraham believed the promise of the Lord that he and Sara would have a son, that his offspring would be as the stars of heaven, that from him would come a great nation. Trusting in the promises he left his homeland, he wandered as a stranger in a foreign country, he eventually even obeyed the command to sacrifice his only son, all because he had entrusted himself to his Lord. Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6). Abraham didn’t just agree with the facts. He entrusted his life to the Lord. He based his life decisions on the promises of God. He obeyed and went forth. What if he had said, “Yes, Lord, I understand what you’re saying. Yes, I believe that you will make me a great nation and give me a son and all that” but then didn’t leave Ur, didn’t go to Canaan, didn’t act on his belief? What would we say about his so called “belief?” Would it ever have been said of Abraham, “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness”? Saving, justifying faith is an obedient faith. It is a faith that works itself out in the course of life. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through (Galatians 5:5-6). So that same repentant trust that causes us to turn to the Lord in the first place becomes the foundational principle of our lives thereafter. Indeed, to strengthen and further equip us, the Lord brings testings and trials into our lives, that our faith would be proven genuine: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed (1 Peter 1:3-7). Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance (James 1:2-3). This last verse is significant in that it points out an important quality about saving faith – it perseveres. Saving faith is a persevering faith. Indeed, despite bumps and failures and falls and periods of wavering trust along the way, saving faith perseveres by God’s grace and power until the end: So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very little while, "He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him." But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved. (Hebrews 11:35-39). At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved (Matthew 24:10-13). Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us (Hebrews 12:1). Thus we clearly see that not only do we come to Christ in the first place through repentant trust, we abide in Him over the course of time the same way. There is no other way. This is the fundamental principle of our new life in Christ – ongoing persevering repentance and trust in Him. I am every bit as much called to live by repentant trust today as I was twenty years ago when I first came to Christ. Each day I repent. Each day I believe. I am as dependent upon the cross of Christ today as I was twenty years ago when I started this journey. And through this daily ongoing turning to Him, I find that I am becoming more like Him, at least that’s what I’m told. It’s hard to see it myself. My becoming like Christ -- my being made holy as he is holy (my sanctification) -- happens through this lifelong process of believing and repenting. I keep learning new things of which to repent. I keep growing in my awareness of ways in which I have not submitted to Christ as King. As I see this, I also keep asking Him for that grace and that strengthening needed to live a life pleasing to Him. And He keeps arranging life circumstances so that I would be forced to learn to trust Him in new ways. So through this daily process I grow into His image more and more. I also keep growing in knowledge of Him, which means that I learn more and more of His trustworthiness, His good intentions for me, and His desire to bless me with His presence and Spirit as I walk in obedient love to Him. I keep learning of the beauty of His person, and am increasingly blessed in knowing Him as my God. And I am made more and more aware of the hope before me, that eternal life in His presence in His renewed earth. There is another important image or concept used in Scripture to define and describe our new life in Christ – and that is the concept of the new birth or regeneration. However you may understand the relationship between regeneration and faith (that is, which comes first – I will address that in a future letter), certainly you would agree that when a person is truly justified through faith in Christ alone, that person is or becomes born again. He is a new creature in Christ, he is baptized in the Holy Spirit, and that same Spirit comes to dwell or abide with him. To connect this up with what I have said before, I would say that this born again person will in fact, because of his new nature, persevere in repentant trust throughout his life (OK, there being bumps along the way!), and through this ongoing repentant trusting will become more and more like Christ. In other words, the new nature will come to show itself, must come to show itself, over the course of the believer’s life: This concept is expressed in too many Scriptures to quote, but I have included several here: Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham (Luke 3:8). "No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks (Luke 6:43-45). This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.(John 3:16-18). "So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds (Acts 26:19-20). "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me (John 15:1-4). I could go on, but I hope these few Scriptures will do! I worry of course that in making this point I could cause those of you with a particularly sensitive conscience and a tendency towards introspection and self-flagellation to look at yourself disapprovingly, concluding that you are not bearing fruit, and then be robbed of your assurance. I want to speak to you from my heart as a pastor for a moment. I can relate to this. In fact, I have just described myself, or the way I used to be! Some of us who are overly introspective have experienced horrible struggles with assurance. The fruit of our growing in and abiding in Christ is often hard for us to see in ourselves. Perhaps this is as it should be, to keep us from pride and cockiness. The more we learn about ourselves the more we learn about our sin and the more we see how much we need Christ and his forgiveness and cleansing. It is best that we not look too much upon ourselves. We are generally poor judges of our fruitfulness as Christians. Instead of looking inward, we must work at looking outward, to the cross, to the needs of others, to the word of God. And we MUST remember that it was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us. We were his enemies when he set his love upon us to save us. “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4-5). We began by resting upon His righteousness, we continue by resting upon His righteousness. As we keep clinging to Him, keep resting upon His righteousness and not our own, keep expressing our godly sorrow over our sin, keep seeking his strength to obey Him even when we fail over and over, then we are living out the life of repentant trust. It is best we not look so much at ourselves, as hard as it is for us introspective folk not to. And if you struggle with assurance, I will commit myself to pray for you in this if you will tell me. On this issue I empathize with you, and can pray accordingly. In addition, we can play a great role in encouraging one another along. We as brothers and sisters in Christ desperately need each other. First, we need to be acknowledging the growing Christlikeness we see manifest in one another. One of you is so kind to always be making mention to me that you see Christ in me and working in me. It helps me and encourages me to hear that, for I am inclined not to see this in myself. Second, we motivate and stimulate one another to keep becoming the kind of people Jesus calls us to be -- people who love and do good. This is one of the main reasons we meet together and one of the main reasons we need each other, even if we don’t think we do. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching (Hebrews 10:23-25). Third, God use us to keep one another persevering in faith and obedience. When He promises, as I believe He has, that He will cause or enable us to persevere until the end, He fulfills this promise to a great extent through our ministry one to another. See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first (Hebrews 3:12-14). Sometimes our faith is on the ropes and we seem ready to throw in the towel and walk away from it altogether. Sometimes we are so enticed by sin and its deceitful promises of fulfillment or happiness or power that we would throw it all away. We are accountable to God to hold each other accountable. God uses our encouragements and admonitions to keep us on the road to heaven, to keep us persevering in repentant trust, to keep us close to Him. Copyright © 1998 by Joel Gillespie. Reproduction for non-commercial use is permitted, provided hi! |
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