Repentance...A Fad?

I listened to a pastor on a download today. I don't know his name as his sermon was excerpted on another program. What I did hear was an interesting diatribe however on how people should be leading unbelievers to salvation. He sounded pretty upset, and his complaint was about Christians who maintain that men are sinful creatures with wicked and deceitful hearts. He also seemed quite annoyed with the notion that men must repent to be saved. He called repentance a "fad", and a "trend". He said those concepts were not to be found anywhere in the Bible.

I guess I could laugh at that, but it isn't really that funny. I guess one could arrive at a different meaning for the word somehow, but saying the concept of repentance and its relationship to salvation is not to be found in the Bible is just ridiculous. Perhaps this fellow has a wrong-minded preconditioned theological connotation attached to the word. An illegitimate totality transfer of that connotation to the word might explain his problem. I don't know. "Metanoia" and "metanoeo" are the Greek noun and verb forms of the word "repent". Repentance is about changing one's thinking, and the context in which it is used has to determine what in particular is involved in how and why one's thinking changes.

When salvation is in view in a passage, the word is about turning away from an allegiance to self, to trusting in one's own works for salvation, and turning to trust in Christ and the completed work that He did on the Cross. It is an "about face", where one turns one's back on sin and entrusts one's self to the grace of God, and it should be an outgrowth of our response to the very goodness of God, but repentance must come. It is part of that change of heart that describes one who loves Jesus, knowing that He alone is worthy and has the power to save us. If we do not change in this way, we do not love Jesus, but rather our own works and our own sin.

I know there are those who would flatly disagree with the notion that one must repent to be saved, but where is salvation without repentance? It is like faith as described within the book of James. Faith out of which works for God with an end toward glorifying His name is a living faith. A faith without that natural outgrowing of works is a stagnant, dead faith. As works must be part of a living faith, repentance must take place in order for God to be first in our hearts and lives. Mankind's heart is not something that is basically good. God said that the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. He said that our righteousness is like filthy rags. His word says that until we get saved by Him that we are His enemies in our minds, alienated from Him by our own wicked works.

Repentance a fad? A trend? No. Repentance as an important element of salvation is nothing new. It is necessary, and as old as mankind. If anything, this type of thinking is a "new" old fad from new age thinking that has been around for a long, long time. The idea that man's heart is not wicked is a notion that denies the need for a repentant heart. That is just a part of the growing, emerging spirituality of which so many postmodern thinkers a part these days. A pastor was on "Hannity and Colmes" talking up his new book last week. When pressed by Jewish Alan Colmes about the exclusivity of Christ, the pastor challenged him and others to "give Jesus a try. Give Him a sixty day trial." I could not tell if meant it or if he was being flippant. Either way, how does one respond to that? It is seeker sensitive in the extreme.

That kind of thinking is based upon taking Jesus and making Him into a God that one can be comfortable with. "Try Him out, and see what He brings to your life. I just bet in sixty days your life will be better." Quite likely it will only produce a false convert. What part does repentance play there? Where in that concept does man need to recognize that he is full of sin? That he is fully in need of a Savior, because his greatest problem is his sin, and that he is incapable of earning his own way to heaven?

Clearly, because we see God's goodness and recognize our own sinfulness, Jesus becomes the object of our repentance. To believe--to trust in, cling to and rely on Jesus instead of our own work--is to repent of trusting in our own works. We must repent and trust to be saved. Is this a work of our own? No. This is a response of the heart to a good God who saves a sinful man by grace, through faith.