Clayton Howard Ford

There is an important statement which, of course, has been in the Scriptures all along but which I did not see until Billy Glenn, Jr., pointed it out in a Facebook post a few days ago. In Mark 6:7-11, Jesus sends the disciples out to preach. Then verse 12 says, “So they went out and preached that people should repent.” As Billy pointed out, Jesus did not send them out to preach love. He sent them out to preach repentance.

After Christ’s resurrection, he gives the disciples a Bible lesson. Then he says to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:46-47). Notice that the disciples’ mission was to preach the gospel of repentance, not the gospel of love.

I hear so often nowadays that we should stop preaching the gospel of repentance because telling people that they are sinners only turns people away. Instead, we should be preaching the gospel of love. We should be telling them that we are here to help them with their problems. We should be offering them food and shelter and clothing. We should be telling them that they are basically good people who just need a helping hand. We should be telling them that Jesus loves them just the way they are. And if we love them enough, then they will change.

However, when Jesus sent his disciples out to preach, he did not send them with food to distribute to the hungry and he did not send them with clothing to distribute to the naked. In fact, they did not have enough provisions for themselves. They depended on others to feed and shelter them. Does that mean that Christians should not build soup kitchens to feed the hungry or shelters to house the homeless? Of course not. But those came later. Those came when there were enough Christians to man them. And those Christians became Christians because of the gospel of repentance. And those Christians should be preaching the gospel of repentance to those they serve, not the gospel of love.

Preaching the gospel of love is like telling doctors that they should stop telling their cancer patients that they have cancer. Instead, they should be telling their patients about how healthy the rest of their bodies are and they should be telling them how much their families love them and they should be reminding them how talented they are, etc., as if that will cure the cancer. Most problems do not go away by simply ignoring them. It is true that you cannot help an alcoholic until he acknowledges that he has a problem, but that does not mean that you ignore the problem until he acknowledges it. Sometimes you have to rub his nose in it until he finally admits to it.

However, I can see where the people who push the gospel of love are coming from. We have been commanded to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15), but many times those of us who preach the gospel of repentance hate the sinners to whom we are preaching. And many times, especially when we are speaking to homosexuals, we treat them as if they are the worst sinners on earth. While it is true that here on earth some sins carry more serious consequences than others, in God’s eyes a sin is a sin is a sin is a sin. And while it is true that homosexuals cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10), it is also true that those who love and practice a lie are kept outside of the New Jerusalem as well (Rev. 22:15). The fact is all sinners, whether they are homosexuals, liars, thieves, adulterers, gossips, murderers, atheists, or those who have kept the commandments all their lives but cannot give their riches away to the poor and follow Jesus, must repent. Our message should be, “You need to repent of your sins, all of your sins, because if you do not, first of all you will spend eternity in the worst place imaginable and second of all you will miss out on spending eternity in the best place imaginable with the person who loves you the most: your Heavenly Father.”

The fact is, those who preach the gospel of love are only telling people half the truth. They are telling people that Jesus loves them just the way they are, which is true, but that does not mean that he is going to let them get into heaven just the way they are. The complete message is, Jesus loves you just the way you are and because he loves you, he is not going to leave you “just the way you are” because “just the way you are” is killing you and “just the way you are” is sending you to hell and “just the way you are” is keeping you from entering heaven and “just the way you are” is keeping you from spending eternity with Jesus.

Jesus himself told the parable of the king who held a wedding feast for his son (Matt. 22:1-14). The king sent his servants to bring the people he had already invited, but some refused to come and others beat and even killed some of the servants. In his wrath, the king sent his army out to destroy those murderers and their villages. He then sent his servants out again to invite whoever they could find. Once the feast began, the king went in to greet the guests, only to find one who was not wearing a wedding garment. When he asked the man why he was not wearing a wedding garment to a wedding feast, the man was speechless. So the king had the man thrown out and tortured.

The point is everyone was invited but no one could come in “just as they are.” When the servants found these people, they were at home or they were working in their business or they were working in the field. They could not go to the wedding feast in their street clothes or their casual clothes or their work clothes. They had to put off those clothes and put on a wedding garment.

But what if they did not have a wedding garment? What if they were too poor to buy a wedding garment? Or what if they were too poor to get the materials to make a wedding garment? That is probably the problem the man in the parable had: he came to the feast without a garment because he simply did not have one. He was thrown out and tortured because he was speechless. What he could have said was, “My Lord, I know that I should not have come to the feast without a wedding garment, but I do not have one and I did not want to offend my Lord who extended me such a gracious invitation. So, in your mercy, my Lord, may you grant me a garment that I may borrow for just this occasion?” And the king would have gladly not only let the man borrow a garment but would have given him one to keep. In other words, if the man had acknowledged his need, the king would have fulfilled his need and the man would have had the opportunity to see that his king cared for him after all.

Yes, Jesus loves us “just the way we are,” and because he loves us, he has invited us to his wedding feast. But as much as he loves us, he will not let us into the feast without a wedding garment, and if we do enter the feast without a wedding garment, even though he loves us, he will still throw us out into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The problem we have is that none of us can create a wedding garment good enough to get us into the feast. Nor can any of us afford to buy a garment good enough to get us into the feast. That is the beauty of the gospel. When Jesus died on the cross for us, he bought a new wedding garment for each and every one of us. But he is not going to simply distribute one to everybody. He is going to give one only to those who really desire to be at the feast and who acknowledge that their everyday clothes are not good enough to get them into the feast and that they cannot make or get a wedding garment that is good enough to get them into the feast and that only the garment that Jesus provides is good enough to get them in. In short, the only ones who get the garments are the ones who acknowledge that Jesus not only loves them enough to invite them to the feast but also loves them enough to have provided the only way into the feast at great cost to himself.

The gospel of love actually cheapens the love of Jesus. It implies that what Jesus did for us was not a choice; he couldn’t help himself because he just naturally loves everybody. And it implies that he so badly wants people in heaven that he is willing to blink at sin. But if Jesus is willing to blink at sin, why did he die on the cross? And if he is willing to blink at sin, why do the vast majority of people end up in the lake of fire (Matt. 7:13-14)?

The gospel of repentance, on the other hand, actually emphasizes the true value of the love of Jesus. The gospel of repentance tells us that we are sinners, meaning that we have rebelled in one form or another against our Heavenly Father and our Lord Jesus Christ all of our lives. Our rebellion has made us enemies of God. We deserve the punishment that the murderers in the parable received. We deserve to be destroyed by God’s wrath and spend eternity in the lake of fire. We don’t deserve to be loved. But our Heavenly Father and our Lord Jesus Christ chose to love us anyway. And they proved it by saving us from the wrath we deserve:

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation (Rom. 5:6-11).

We are saved from this wrath by putting our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. This faith makes us one with Christ, which means that his righteousness now becomes our righteousness. Repentance means that we agree in our minds and in our hearts to leave behind the sinfulness that we had been living and start living the righteousness that Christ has now given us, to leave behind that lifestyle of rebellion and start living a lifestyle of obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ, to put off our old sinful rags and put on the new wedding garment that Jesus bought for us. More than that, because we are not only Christ’s guests at the wedding feast, but we are also Christ’s bride, repentance means that we show up at our wedding no longer wearing that dirty, sinful handmaidens’ dress we used to wear every day but wearing “fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints” (Rev. 19:8).

As we learn how to live as the bride of Christ, as we learn how to be one with Christ, as we learn how live in our new garments of righteousness, we learn how to live righteously as Christ lives righteously and we learn how to love as Christ loves. That is why the gospel of repentance is so much better than the gospel of love.

I have attended churches which had altar calls every Sunday and almost every Sunday you would see the same people down at the altar crying and telling God that they are sorry for committing the same sins yet again and that they would try better this week, knowing in their hearts that they were never intending on actually fighting those sins; they were hoping that those sins would just go away.

Then there are people on the other extreme who know that repentance is not an emotional show but must come from the heart. They believe that if a person truly repents of a particular sin, then that person will never commit that sin again. If that person does commit that sin again, then that person’s so-called repentance was just a farce.

As is usually the case, when people are deceived about a subject, they have not taken into account everything the Scriptures have to say about it. The first group has not taken into account Prov. 28:13, which says, “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.” They think they are repenting of their sins when all they are really doing is confessing them. True repentance is the second part: forsaking them. As we saw in my previous blog, repentance simply means “to change your mind.” When a sinner repents, he decides to forsake his sinful lifestyle and begin to live a righteous lifestyle. Sins simply do not “just go away.” The sinner must make a decision to make them go away. That decision may involve emotion, but it does not have to do so. But it does require a change in one’s mind and one’s heart.

That does not mean, however, that a person who has truly repented will never commit that sin again. Jesus did say, “Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him” (Luke 17:3-4). Notice that Jesus never doubted the brother’s repentance, even though he repented seven times in a day. Jesus recognizes that just because we have decided to never commit a sin again does not automatically mean that we will never commit it again. He recognizes that our decision to stop sinning means that we have just signed on to join a war.

Paul reminds us in Galatians that “the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish” (Gal. 5:17). Within your body there is a fight going on between the Spirit and your flesh, and it is a fight to the death. You may have repented. You may have decided that you are no longer going to commit a particular sin. But your flesh is going to fight you every step of the way. That is why repentance is not an emotion. That is why repentance is a commitment. It is a commitment to fight that sin until it is completely gone.

Some people treat repentance like some people treat marriage. They stay married as long as the good emotions are there. But as soon as the bad emotions come in, they think the love is gone and this just isn’t going to work anymore and they give up. They do not realize that good marriages work because the couples are committed to making it work. Sure, the good emotions are nice to have and make it easier to work, but the couples make the marriage work even when the good emotions are gone or when the bad emotions come around and tell them to quit. So, too, with repentance. Repentance is a commitment that says, “I am committed to my relationship with my Lord Jesus Christ no matter what, which means I am also committed to eliminating this sin from this relationship no matter what.” The emotions that make you feel like you are winning are nice to have and make the fighting easier, but your commitment makes you press on even when those emotions are not there or the bad emotions come around and tell you to quit.

Your flesh will rise up and tempt you to commit that sin. You will fight it but in your weak moments you will give in. You will then go before the Lord and confess your sin and ask for forgiveness. The Lord, of course, will forgive you. Then, when you least expect it, your flesh will tempt you again. This cycle may play itself out over and over again until you are sick of it. But stick to your commitment. Your flesh wants to keep sinning because it gets pleasure from it (Heb. 11:24-25). And even though you confess your sin, the Lord will chastise you for sinning because your flesh must learn that not only does sin produce pleasure, it also produces an inordinate amount of displeasure (Heb. 12:11). When your flesh finally says, “The consequences are not worth doing this sin anymore,” it will die, and that is the day when you will have finally won.

Before I became a Christian, I became addicted to a particular sin. I fought this sin for more years after I became a Christian than I did before I became a Christian. After fighting this for a few years, I became very frustrated and said to the Lord, “Wouldn’t I be a better witness for you if you would just deliver me from this right now?”

The Lord spoke very clearly to me about this.

He said, “Who is the Lord here? You or me?”

I said, “You are.”

“Am I the Lord over only certain parts of your life or over every part of your life?”

“Over every part of my life.”

“Then I am the Lord of your sanctification, which means I decide in which order I will sanctify your sins and how I will sanctify your sins.”

That conversation took a load off of me. Until then, I had not realized that I had been frantically trying to perfect myself so that I could be a better witness to the world. The Lord knew that the Glory of his Name was at stake. But he also knew that he could clean me up better than I could. Yes, repentance is a commitment to put the old sinful lifestyle behind me and live the new righteous lifestyle, but it is more than that. It is the commitment to obey the Lord of my sanctification who will determine which sins we will fight and how we will fight it. If that meant fighting that particular sin for the rest of my life here on earth, then so be it.

Many years later, I woke up one morning and realized that I had not been tempted to commit that sin for at least two weeks. To this day, I do not know when that particular sin left me. I just know that the Lord one day quietly delivered me of it and it took me at least two weeks to realize it. Does my flesh sometimes tell me that it wants to do it again? Of course. But it no longer controls me. I now control it. The battle has been won.

That conversation with the Lord was also a reminder that I am not alone in this fight against sin. My flesh is fighting against me. But the Spirit also fights against my flesh. And he who is in the world also is fighting against me. But “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). And some day, if I keep fighting the good fight with the help of my Lord, I will stand before him with a new body that is completely free of sin, a body that my Lord bought for me when he died on the cross. From that day forward, I will never have to fight sin again. I am so looking forward to that day.

On the Day of Pentecost, the 120 were gathered in a house, presumably in the same upper room in which the apostles had shared their last supper with the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit suddenly descended on them like a rushing mighty wind and they could all speak in different languages. The noise attracted a crowd of curious people who wondered how these 120 could speak in their native tongues. Peter then stood up and delivered his first great sermon. When he was done, the people said to him and the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37).

The answer modern Protestant preachers most likely would give is, “Believe in the Lord Jesus,” or, “Ask Jesus into your heart,” or, “Confess Jesus as your Lord and Savior.” But Peter’s answer was, “Repent.”

Mark tells us that as soon as Jesus returned from being tempted in the wilderness, he began “preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.” And what was that gospel? “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:14-15). The gospel Jesus preached was not just believe. It was repent and believe.

Perhaps Peter’s answer and Jesus’ gospel surprise us because this is not the gospel we are used to hearing today. We are used to hearing the gospel of belief. We are used to hearing that faith and not works saves us. We are used to hearing emphasis being placed on verses like Romans 10:9-10 (“if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”) and Ephesians 2:8-9 (“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”). But we rarely hear the next verse: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” And we are troubled by James when he says, “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?… Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (James 2:14-18). In fact, we are so troubled by him that Martin Luther wanted his book thrown out of the Scriptures because James seems to be saying that we are saved by works after all.

But Jesus, Peter, Paul, and James are saying something that we seem to have forgotten a long time ago. The faith that saves us is not a free ticket into heaven. The faith that saves us does not merely save us from hell. The faith that saves us saves us from the one thing that was sending us to hell in the first place: sin.

True faith delivers us from the old man who was sinful and brings us to the new man who is righteous. True faith delivers us from the sinful lifestyle and brings us to the righteous lifestyle. True faith delivers us from doing sinful works and brings us to doing righteous works. In other words, true faith makes us want to repent.

The Greek word for “repent” is metanoeō, which literally means “think afterward” or “think again,” hence, “to change your mind.” To repent means to look back over your life and decide that it is time to make a change. It starts with a decision but it is a decision that results in action. A sinner repents when he looks back over his sinful life and decides that continuing that lifestyle is just not worth it and that it is time to make a change. That change comes when he puts his faith in Jesus Christ and lets Jesus transform him so that he can now begin to live a righteous lifestyle.

The Old Testament word for “repent” is return. The Hebrews saw the sinful lifestyle as walking down a path that led you away from God. Repentance was simply turning around and walking back to God. Again, repentance involved a decision (continuing this way was just not worth it) that resulted in an action (turning around and heading in the other direction).

What the Gospel says is that you cannot make that change yourself. You cannot by yourself transform yourself from that old man who lived that sinful lifestyle to that new man who lives that righteous lifestyle. Only Jesus Christ can do that. That is why you must place your faith in him. That is why only his grace through faith can save you. But your repentance means that you have decided that you really want him to make that change in you. And when people see that change in you, when they see that you have gone from doing the sinful works to doing the righteous works, then they can see that you really have placed your faith in Jesus Christ.

But so many churches are trying to get so many more people into their pews, thinking that they are getting so many more people saved, that they have lopped off the repentance part of the gospel message and are preaching only the faith part. They say that Jesus is our Lord and our Savior, but they have watered down sin so much (if they talk about it at all) that Jesus is really neither to them. If a person is caught in a rushing river that is pulling him or her towards a waterfall and certain death, we save that person by pulling him or her out of the river and placing that person on solid ground. What is the point of saying that we have saved that person if that person is still in the river? So too, what is the point of saying that we have saved a person if that person is still living a sinful lifestyle and is on his or her way to spending eternity in the lake of fire?

If James were to walk into some of our churches today, he would take one look around and say, “Nope, you aren’t saved.” Then the people would rise up and say, “Who are you to be so judgmental? You don’t know what’s in their hearts!” And he would say, “I am not being judgmental. And I don’t have to see what’s in their hearts. I’m just looking at their works. And their works are no different than before they supposedly got ‘saved.’”

And what’s going to happen to these people on Judgment Day? They are going to stand before our Lord who is going to say to them, “Why should I let you in?” And they are going to say, “Because we said the sinners’ prayer!” And he is going to say to them, “Depart from me! I never knew you.” Then they are going to turn to us and say, “What? We trusted you! You said that all we had to do was say the sinners’ prayer and we were in. Now we have to spend eternity in the lake of fire! YOU LIED TO US!” Then Jesus will turn to us and instead of saying, “Well done, good and faithful servants,” he will say to us, “Their blood is on your hands.” Do we really want to hear that?