The Urgency & Necessity of Repentance

By Pastor Chris McKnight

Is repentance essential for salvation or is it extra? Is it part of every conversion or just some? And what happens if you don’t repent?

Last time we sought to define repentance. Today we consider the pressing urgency and universal necessity of turning away from sin to follow Christ.

After the 400 years of silence, the last of the great OT-type prophets hit the streets. They called him John the Baptist. The first recorded words of his first sermon to a wayward nation were, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mat. 3:2). It is coming, it is close, the King is here!

Given his long hair, full beard, diet of locusts and wild honey, rough clothing and prophetic appearance, if you knew anything about prophets and their warnings, this call to repent implied danger if you didn’t.

The Lord Jesus came on the scene, fresh from His battles with Satan and prior to calling His first disciples, and uttered these blazing, unpopular yet identical words – “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mat. 4:17).

What’s the big hurry? In Psalm 7:11-13, the text reads: “God is a righteous Judge, and a God who has indignation (settled, burning anger) every day. If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword; He has bent His bow and made it ready. He has also prepared for Himself deadly weapons; He makes His arrows fiery shafts.”

Consider a man living in sin who hears the gospel. He refuses to feel heartfelt sorrow over sin (“I’m basically a good person”), to renounce his sin (“I’m having too much fun”), and make a sincere commitment to forsake it and walk in obedience to Christ (“I’m sick of my sin and want to change.”) The Bible clearly teaches that if he will not turn around, God will inflict a fatal, devastating wound of eternal judgment in time.

In fact, the wood is stressed, the string is tight! The angry arrow of God’s judgment is even now aimed at the unrepentant. Sobering thought.

If you walked in the room to find your compound bow and arrows lying on a table and the kids were watching TV, you would not be too alarmed. Likely, you would just put it away. Maybe ask a few questions. But if you walked in and one child had it drawn and aimed at another, now that would bring a completely different reaction.

In this case, God is the one with His arrows aimed at the ungodly. This is why just 20 verses past the ever popular John 3:16, the ever unpopular John 3:36 says: “he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

Yet Psalm 7:13 takes urgency to yet another level. In warfare, when would they light the tips? Exactly! The unrepentant sinner could be on his last day and not know it! All he can know for certain is that God’s burning arrow is aimed at him, with only God’s patience keeping Him from releasing the arrow, and plunging the unrepentant straight into hell.

But what is the one thing that prompts God to douse the flame and unstring the arrow? Repentance. Carried forward to after the Cross, we know that God’s wrath was in fact spent on Christ, so that those who turn from sin and embrace Him as Lord and Savior are spared.

Now to the NT and the words of our Lord Jesus (see Luke 13:1-5). Pilate, the Roman governor over Judea, was stationed in Jerusalem. The Galileans were Jewish people from northern Israel who had come to Jerusalem to offer animal sacrifices as prescribed by God’s Law for the temporary covering of their sins. While in the very act of this religious devotion, Roman police under Pilate’s command storm in and kill them. It was a sudden, horrible death by the hand of man in a seemingly safe place. Some in Jesus’ day would think, “wow, killed in the Temple, they must be really bad sinners.”

In an unexpected twist, Jesus uses this blasphemous execution by pagan rulers not to denounce Pilate or Rome or to go into the intricacies of God’s sovereignty over human actions, but for what? Hear His words: “Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:2-3). Suddenly, unexpectedly, when you thought you were safe, then instantly gone. Dear reader, it happens every day.

The example is then repeated, this time with a “natural” disaster in mind. A tower in southern Jerusalem fell and killed 18 innocents. One minute someone was sitting by the pool, enjoying the afternoon sunshine. The next moment, death and judgment. One minute a group of friends were walking home from work or market, laughing, planning dinner, sharing life, the next moment – dead.

Like that bridge collapse in MN, the unexplained plane crash, hurricanes, earthquakes, all on the one hand, terrible tragedies. Yet on the other hand, these are merciful messengers preaching this warning to a watching world: “unless you repent, you will likewise perish” (I’m not implying that people killed in such events are perish eternally; Christians also die in like manner.)

These events are not God singling out the really bad people – that’s faulty theology of the worse kind, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Instead it is God’s way of warning all sinners to wake up and say – that’s what I deserve – “for the wages of sin is death”.

If you are unrepentant, unwilling to turn from sins, deny yourself and take up your cross to follow Christ, your eternal destruction could not be more imminent. The call to repent is the call to feel the danger you are in because of your sin, and get out of the burning building, no matter what it takes, no matter what it costs. The beginning of wisdom is to fear the Lord.

You must abandon your life of sin and abandon yourself to Christ. If you don’t, you will perish. If you do, you will live forever! The urgency and necessity could not be greater.