A Bible Christian Is One Who Has Wholeheartedly Complied With The Divine Terms For Appropriating The Divine Provision:
The divine terms are two – repent and believe. That is what Jesus preached, ‘At that time Jesus came preaching, Repent and believe the gospel’ [Mark 1.15, 16]. It is what Paul preached. He says, ‘I testified to Jews and Greeks wherever I went, repentance toward God, faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ’ [Acts 20.21]. This is the Gospel that Jesus told his own to preach [Luke 24.45, 46]. He opened their minds to understand the Scripture and told them it was necessary for Christ to die, and to be raised again from the dead the third day, that repentance unto remission of sins should be preached in his name among all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
What are the divine terms for obtaining the divine provision? We must repent, we must believe. Now because we have to speak in terms of one word following another, or preceding another, we must not think that this repentance is ever divorced from faith or that this faith is ever divorced from repentance. True faith is permeated with repentance, true repentance is permeated with faith. They interpenetrate one another so that, whenever there is a true appropriation of the divine provision, there you will find a believing penitent and a penitent believer. The one will never be divorced from the other.
What is repentance? The definition of the Shorter Catechism is an excellent one: ‘Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of (that is, a laying hold of) the mercy of God in Christ, does with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavour after, new obedience’.
True faith is permeated with repentance, true repentance is permeated with faith. They interpenetrate one another…
Repentance is the prodigal down in the far country coming to his senses. He left his father’s home because he could not stand his father’s government. Everything about his father’s will and ways irritated him. It was a constant block to following the desires of his own foul, wretched, sin-loving heart. The day came when he said he wanted what was due to him. He went into the far country. When he left he had a notion of his father, of his government and of his ways, which was entirely negative, but the Scripture tells us in Luke 15 that down in the far country he came to himself: ‘And when he came to himself he said, I will arise and go to my father and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before you, and am no more worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants’.
And then the Scripture says he did not sit there and think about it, and write poetry about it and send telegrams home to his Dad. It says, ‘He rose up and came to his father’. He left all those companions who were his friends in sin; he loathed and abominated and abhorred everything that belonged to that life-style. He turned his back on it. And what was it that drew him home? It was the confidence that there was a gracious father with a large heart and with the righteous rule for his happy, loving home. And he said, ‘I will arise and go to my father’. He did not send a telegram saying, ‘Dad, things are getting rough down here; my conscience is giving me fits at night; won’t you send me some money to help me out and come and pay me a visit and make me feel good?’ Not at all! He did not need just to feel good, he needed to become good. And he left the far country.
It is a beautiful stroke in our Lord’s picture when he says, ‘While he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran, and threw his arms around him and kissed him’. The prodigal did not come strutting up to his father, talking about making a decision to come home. There is a notion that people can come strutting into enquiry rooms and pray their little prayer and so do God a favour by making their decision. This has no more to do with conversion than my name is ‘Abraham Lincoln’. True repentance involves recognizing that I have sinned against the God of heaven, who is great and gracious, holy and loving, and that I am not worthy to be called his son. And yet, when I am prepared to leave my sin, to turn my back upon it and to come back haltingly, wondering if indeed there can be mercy for me, then — wonder of wonders! — the Father meets me, and throws the arms of reconciling love and mercy about me. I say it, not in a sentimental way but in all truth, he smothers repenting sinners in forgiving and redemptive love.
But note, the father did not throw his arms around the Prodigal when he was still in the hog pens and in the arms of harlots. Do I speak to some whose hearts are wedded to the world, who love the world’s ways? Perhaps in your personal life, or in relationship to your parents, or in your social life where you take so lightly the sanctity of the body, you show what you are. Maybe some of you are involved in fornication, in heavy petting, involved in looking at the kind of stuff on television and in the cinema that feeds your lust, and yet you name the name of Christ. You live in the hog pens and then go to a house of God on Sunday. Shame on you! Leave your hog pens, your haunts of sin. Leave your patterns and practices of fleshly and carnal indulgence. Repentance is being sorry enough to quit your sin. You will never know the forgiving mercy of God while you are still wedded to your sins.
Repentance is the soul’s divorce from sin but it will always be joined to faith. What is faith? Faith is the casting of the soul upon Christ as he is offered to us in the Gospel. Forsaking All I Take Him. That is faith! ‘As many as received him, to them gave he the right to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his name’ [John 1.12]. Faith is likened to drinking of Christ. In my soul-thirst I drink of him. Faith is likened to looking to Christ. Faith is likened to following Christ, fleeing to Christ. The Bible uses many analogies and the sum of all of them is this, that in the nakedness of my need I cast myself upon the Saviour, trusting him to be to me all that he has promised to be to needy sinners.
Faith brings nothing to Christ but an empty hand by which it takes Christ and all that is in him. And what is in him? Full pardon for all my sins! His perfect obedience is put to my account. His death is counted as mine. And the gift of the Spirit is in him. Adoption, sanctification and ultimately glorification are all in him, and faith, in taking Christ, receives all that is in him. ‘But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, whom God has made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption’ [1 Cor 1.30].
What is a biblical Christian? A biblical Christian is a person who has wholeheartedly complied with the divine terms for obtaining the divine provision for sin. Those terms are repentance and faith. I like to think of them as the hinge on which the door of salvation turns. The hinge has two plates. One that is screwed to the door and the other screwed to the door jam. They are held together by a pin and on that hinge the door turns. Christ is that door, but none enter through him who do not repent and believe, and there is no true hinge made up only of repentance. A repentance that is not joined to faith is a legal repentance. It terminates on yourself and on your sin. A professed faith that is not joined to repentance is a spurious faith, for faith is faith in Christ to save me, not in but from my sin. Repentance and faith are inseparable and except you repent you will perish. He that believeth not shall be damned.
