Repentance is Part of the Gospel Message

By Pastor Chris McKnight

Have you ever been to a funeral of a really ungodly person, only to have the preacher preach him right into heaven? “Oh Billy Bob was a good ole boy. He walked the aisle when he was 8, lived like the devil till he was 58, but let’s rejoice that he’s in heaven.” Why would God make a person spend eternity in a place he wouldn’t spend five minutes thinking about on earth? Why would God confine a person to a place with no sin when that same person wouldn’t turn from sin? Confused, you begin to think you wandered into the wrong funeral.

It is mind boggling how someone can live like the world, in the world and of the world and still think he or she will go to a place completely opposed to worldliness. Have we forgotten these words: “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (I John 2:15).

A gospel without repentance is like a gun without a trigger – it might look good, but it’s useless. As a result, you have churches filled with goats who think they are sheep and you have the deception of many high school and college age who have a life long association with Christianity but no connection to Christ because this one thing has never happened in their sinful hearts. And we wonder why they are perpetually “backslidden”?

When repentance gets left out, hearers will have head knowledge but no heart knowledge of the power of the gospel. They will travel the broad road to destruction but think they are on the narrow road to life. They will give cheap, meaningless mental assent to Christ but never bow the knee to the Master.

Please hear me. You can know right from wrong, believe in God, pray, go to church, sing hymns, teach Sunday school, know about Christ’s and His work, do Bible studies and attend youth groups, and try really hard to be nice and moral, be sprinkled, confirmed, dipped and dunked, but if you haven’t repented, you will perish. At least this is what Jesus taught.

The call to turn from sin is a non-negotiable, as essential as belief in the deity of Christ and His resurrection from the dead, as essential as faith itself. Vines Dictionary of NT Words says this on repentance: “this change of mind involves both a turning from sin and a turning to God. The parable of the prodigal son is an outstanding illustration of this.”

Is repentance really part of the gospel message? Jesus said it was from the very beginning, before His Cross and Resurrection (see Mark 1:1, 14-15). The King’s Son came with the King’s message, announcing as a herald the very best news from God and about God. “Hear ye, hear ye, the great King is offering Peace to rebels, forgiveness to sinners, pardon to criminals and eternal salvation for the damned. But the time is now. Turn from living as your own king in rebellion against God’s Kingship, submit to Him and rely upon the good news from God that Jesus has come to save sinners, including you.” The “repent and believe in the gospel” of Mark 1:15 are both present, active, commands to continue to repent and believe. These two realties mark the Christian’s life.

The full gospel is that God comes to rule over you through His Son Jesus and to atone for your sins through His Son Jesus because we need both a Ruler and a Redeemer, both a King and a Priest. The required response to the first half is to repent of self rule, surrendering to the will to the King; the required response to the second half is to trust that Jesus died for your sins and rose again.

Expositor’s Bible Commentary on Mark 1:15 says: “In the person of Jesus men are confronted by the Kingdom of God in its nearness. The only appropriate response is repentance and faith. There is an urgency about the nearness of God’s kingdom. Since it ushers in the End, it speaks of judgment. Jesus thus proclaims God’s kingdom so that men will repent and believe.”

Jesus calls the Twelve and teaches them the same (see Mark 6:2, 6, 7 and v.12). The Cross and Resurrection didn’t change the message (see Luke 24:44-47). The early church got it (see Acts 2:37-39, 3:19, 17:30-31, 20:21 and 26:18-20. Paul implied repentance is necessary in his expanded gospel tract (see Romans 2:4-6). Peter implied that those who don’t will perish (see 2 Peter 3:9). It was clearly part of conversion (see I Cor. 6:9-11, Gal. 5:19-21 and I Thess. 1:9-10).

Just these two verses shut the door on all arguments: “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32) and “God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world” (Acts 17:30-31).

Dr. J. I. Packer wrote these timeless words in 1961: “Evangelism means exhorting sinners to accept Christ Jesus as their Savior, recognizing that in the most final and far-reaching sense they are lost without Him. Nor is this all. Evangelism also means summoning men to receive Christ Jesus as all that He is – Lord, as well as Savior – and therefore to serve Him as their King in the fellowship of His church … In other words evangelism is the issuing of a call to turn, as well as to trust; it is the delivering, not merely of a divine invitation to receive a Savior, but a divine command to repent of sin. And there is no evangelism where this specific application is not made.”

What does this mean to us? One, ask yourself, “have I repented? Have I?” Two, get it right. Just as we would never think of presenting the gospel without a call to trust Christ, we should never think of presenting the gospel without a call to repent. We have no right and no grounds for leaving it out. Three, cultivate a brokenness and disgust over your sin along with daily trust in Christ. This is the Christian life – constantly turning from sin and constantly trusting Christ.