“For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death”. 2 Corinthians 7:10
If faith comes by hearing the Word, the likelihood of a genuine repentance in our churches today is almost nonexistent. It seems you can’t find more than a few who understand the concept behind real repentance. They all think God must first save you from your sins (as you continue to sin, as a wretched, miserable sinner) and then you can (but probably won’t) repent, someday. To the Pastors and other Christians who say, “If you can stop sinning, you don’t need Jesus because you can then ‘save yourself”, we humbly tell them they do not know what they are talking about. The question answers itself. The question presupposes that a person can stop sinning. And only sinners can stop sinning. All sinners need a savior, even if there comes a day when they stop sinning. Their past sins condemn them, and for that, they need a savior, even if they never sin again.
Merely because a person can stop their wrongdoing (sinning), that has no bearing whatsoever on their eternal salvation. Their ability makes them responsible and accountable. What they do with this ability determines their eternal destiny. Their ability allows them to repent and believe in God. They can seek God’s mercy by confessing and forsaking their sins. But the fundamental Church Doctrine for the past 1600 years (and especially since the Reformation) denies that man has the ability or will to seek God. Thus, the concept of repentance proven by deeds is lost to their thinking. Because if they agreed that a man’s deeds demonstrate his faith, that would give man the ability. And they deny man’s ability to obey God and believe in Him. See article six, Westminster Confession of Faith, states that man does not possess the free will to obey God, according to Mike.
“They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions”. Westminster Confession of Faith.
Now, even if they affirm that man is born with free will, as most of them will do, they actually mean he has a limited free will, damaged by inbred sin. They redefine free will when the truth is that man no longer has free will after the fall of Adam. Their new free will is a non-free, free will. Therefore, man lost his ability to respond to God. With the fall of Adam, all his posterity are born totally depraved and totally unable to obey God. Consequently, God has to somehow offset mankind’s malady and compel him to come, while man is still in his sins. The major problem with this theory is that it’s not Biblical and not reasonable. God does not unilaterally change your desires or the direction of your life; you do.
God is waiting for you to respond to Him. He has already done His part in the calling, drawing, convicting, and stretching forth His hand. He has done so with all men everywhere. (See Acts 17:30-31 and Isaiah 1). God is the one initiating the call to repentance and faith, which must be validated by good deeds. (Acts 20:21, 26:18-20). It’s fundamental, so why is it that only a few see it? Evangelical pastors today have everyone waiting around for God to make the first move to change their desires (so they can sin less and less) and magically regenerate them with the mind of Christ. But God has already made the first move, and He is waiting on us to respond in faith and obedience.
The problem (and the reason so few are being saved) is it doesn’t work that way. The longer you wait on God to change you unilaterally, or give you some magic shock to your system so that you will miraculously desire to love Him, the harder your heart will become against His truth. Why? Because unrepentant sin hardens your heart. It does not make it more humble, as some Christian leaders vainly imagine (Hebrews 12:14-17). The more you trifle in sin, believing you were born with an inbred sin disease you have no control over, the less likely you will ever yield to God in a real repentance. Once you embrace this lie of inbred sin, Strong Delusion will follow. But many Christians will swear up and down this is what the Bible teaches, and those calling it false, like me, are crazy lunatics who are ignorant of the Word of God.
Incident after incidents in the Bible clearly shows God working in this manner. He is constantly entreating us to repentance and faith proven by deeds. Time and again, God allows us to respond to Him naturally before He acts. That way, the outcome is most always determined by our free will choices, and not by election and by God’s decrees. Of course, you can find isolated Scriptures that SEEM to prove otherwise, but the weight of evidence is overwhelmingly against a fated or determined future. In Nineveh, the people clearly STOPPED their evil doings and sought God. Making no assumptions at all that God would automatically show them mercy, they repented of their sins. This proves, beyond ANY DOUBT, that even unregenerate men and women can indeed clear themselves of the wicked things they have done (repent) and seek God without coercion and force. (Jonah 3:5-10).
Similar incidents happened under Moses’ ministry. God was vexed by the people’s rebellion and had every intention of destroying them. Yet because Moses entreated Him, begged for His Mercy, He changed His mind.
Zacchaeus the tax collector made full restitution for his wrongdoings before Jesus came to his house. He knew in his heart the right thing to do and did it. He didn’t expect it to earn his salvation, but he understood that coming to God meant cleaning up his act and getting right with both God and man.
In true repentance is a vehement desire to change, 2 Corinthians 7:11. You turn from sin to obedience to God, from the heart. And then you receive the Holy Ghost, Acts 5:32. The Holy Ghost comes into a clean temple and vessel, not a filthy one. The Holy Ghost inhabits a heart made pure by faith, Acts 15:9. Nothing physical changes in your nature or body. This is not magic, even though it is miraculous that any stubbornly unrepentant person ever chooses to get right with God. And now the Christian obeys and keeps obeying daily, to keep their heart pure and undefiled from the world, 1 Peter 1:22. Is that not simple and reasonable?
When religious leaders mess up the process with a bunch of made-up doctrines invented by men to accommodate the sin nature teaching (Original Sin dogma), you will never consistently obey God. Why? Because you will always have an excuse, why you can’t obey Him. Please grasp the fundamental difference here. If you are born hating God, dead in sin, depraved in nature, even after salvation and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, because of something you had no control over, how can you repent or forsake sin? How can you ever stop your wrongdoing? They have made it impossible for you to repent as God has commanded. They have made void the law of God! Your will is in bondage to something inborn, which is contrary to the Truth. But no one will fight harder to support this false Doctrine than the evangelical Church. It’s their bread and butter. Everything is based on it. They can never cure your problem, only offer you temporary fixes, and keep you in bondage to their teachings. They offer no victory over the root cause of your problems. They would rather burn you at the stake for telling them to stop sinning than repent and be saved. They will invent every excuse in the book to prove you wrong and show others you are a lunatic or a heretic or both.
Genuine repentance involves humility, brokenness, and is a humiliating experience. When the true light of God’s Word floods into your soul, you see yourself as you are, in rebellion against God. This is what Godly sorrow is about. Deep regret for your sin against God, who has done nothing but try to save and bless you. There needs to be a season of sorrow. Most people will think you have gone off your rocker. Why? Because their thinking is not sound, and still in bondage to sin, a sound mind is frightening to them. People fear those who are focused on God and the straight and narrow path. Why? Because it’s not a common condition for men. And two contrary spirits are at work. The Spirit of Truth and the spirit of Error, 1 John 4:4-5. They may not be able to articulate it, but they do sense it. The Spirit-filled person is obedient to God. They have a pure heart of faith, which is a threat to them and what they love the most. Why do you think they killed Jesus and all His followers? Could it be that the god of this age is in control of the religious systems and the author of all false doctrines? Hard to believe that the god of this world might be in control of the religions of the world, isn’t it? Christians have no problem believing that is the case for every other religion but their own.
Under Strong Delusion from God because you take pleasure in wickedness, you will never see your need for this kind of repentance. You will continue to believe that it is impossible. Why? Because you believe everyone saved in the Bible was saved ‘in their sins’ and not ‘from their sins’ as the angel said at the announcement of the coming savior. It is understandable that you may hear this information as someone telling you to be perfect before you can be saved. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Stopping your wrongdoing has nothing to do with perfection. Admitting you are a sinner means that you can never be considered absolutely perfect. This message is intended to tell you that God has already given you the power and grace to do what is right. And that’s what God is waiting for you and me. We must do our part (repent and believe) for He has already done His part. Yes, I know that many, in their ignorance and stubbornness, will say I am preaching a works-based salvation. That is not the case, as I have explained many times in these articles and my book.
If your salvation is based on a fallacy (born in sin doctrine), it will vanish one day before your eyes. And then it may be too late to do anything about it. if you do what is right to begin with, the odds are you will stay on the narrow path to eternal life. If you and I never repent or never stop sinning, we will remain in darkness and never stop of new ways to twist God’s Word to our own destruction.
Some people may think that they can wait to repent and get right with God. They want to wait until the last moment. I was there at one time in my life. But no one knows when the last moment will be. Your last opportunity may very well be long before you actually die. Have you ever thought of that?
Hebrews chapter six comes immediately to my mind. We are told in this chapter that under certain circumstances, it is impossible for Christians to be renewed unto repentance again. The day of grace is gone, and the day of repentance has vanished; only condemnation remains. The consequences of continued sin are frightening.
“For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to open shame.” Hebrews 6:4-6.
“A man who hardens his neck after much reproof will suddenly be broken beyond remedy. Proverbs 29:1 NASB. Like many other passages that tell us that God will not always strive after us, this one is clear. God’s patience wears out, and there is no remedy, no mercy, and no forgiveness. Our opportunity to repent and be saved is now. There may not be a tomorrow.
Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. It’s the Word of God that convicts and judges the thoughts and intents of the heart. If the Word of God is not preached in a manner designed to bring about this conviction, that leads to a godly sorrow for sin, no one will repent. Of course, you can get people to respond to an ‘invitation’ and manipulate them to repeat some words. They may even ‘feel’ some sorrow and emotion doing so. But this may have nothing to do with genuine repentance from sin. When the Word of God really cuts to their heart, the cry is heard, ‘What must I do to be saved?
The typical evangelical church will tell this person that they must ask Jesus into the heart. They must accept Christ, who died for their sins, as their only savior. They must trust Jesus to save them and take them to heaven. They may be told that they must confess their sins (not forsake their sins) and ask Jesus to save them. If repentance is mentioned at all, they will be told that God will eventually help them overcome their sinful habits.
Where in the Book of Acts or the early Church, for that matter, was such a thing ever practiced by the Saints? It wasn’t. Therefore, why has the present evangelical Church embraced it wholeheartedly? Simply because their twisted Gospel is based on the most demonic fallacy ever invented, that we are born sinners with a sin nature that can only do evil. In their gospel, when we are born again, we get a nature (a good one), but that new nature is incapable of consistent obedience to God because we will not lose the sin nature until we die and go to heaven. Their gospel is that Jesus came to save us in our sins and not from our sins, which directly contradicts what the angel announced at the coming birth of Jesus Christ.
The repentance that leads to salvation is a perishable gift. Don’t wait.
