In the first post in this series, we introduced the idea of the law in the New Testament by referring to Jesus’ statements in the Sermon on the Mount. Now that we are considering that the law was not discarded by Jesus but rather fulfilled so that God might accomplish through the law that which He desired to accomplish, we must address the issue of repentance. If you remember from the first post, the critical understanding that Jesus brought is that while the law given to Moses was primarily an external law, the law in the New Testament was to be an internal law. While this may appear to be a superficial point, it has deep implications for how we, as believers, live with regard to the law.
Defining Repentance
Repentance is a fundamental concept to the Christian faith. John Baptist and Jesus both began their ministries preaching repentance. With such a clear precedent, we can likewise expect that the church in our day should be preaching repentance as well. So, if the church has a requirement to preach repentance, and many churches do preach repentance, why is it that it seems to have so little effect? Well, a significant part of the problem could be whether or not we actually know how to define repentance.
When we define repentance in the church at large, what we generally have in mind is turning from sinful behavior to holy behavior. Different streams of theology would define exactly what that looks like in practice a little differently, but that is the essence of the understanding that commonly persists. The problem is that there is a fundamental error in this definition of repentance and that is that this is a distinctly Mosaic view of repentance and it is at odds with the New Testament directive regarding repentance.
New Testament Repentance
Remember now, that the critical issue is that the law in the New Testament goes right into the heart of man whereas the Old Testament law focused on external behavior. New Testament repentance then is not focused on external behavior, but on the inward life of the heart. If you do not understand this, you will never understand the ministry of Jesus. This understanding is crucial to seeing how Jesus could minister to tax collectors and prostitutues with greater success than He could minister to moral, religious individuals. When you can see outward evil in your life, it makes it easier to accept inward depravity. Conversely, when you believe your outward morals to be sound, it makes it harder to receive the message of inward depravity.
In light of this, a true New Testament repentance preacher will bypass externals and pierce men directly in their heart. This sort of preaching may well expose the life long church-goer as a man more in need of repentance than the town drunk because the root of iniquity can exist in a religious man just as strongly as it can in an irreligious man. In fact, at times it can persist even more strongly in a religious heart as it provides fertile ground for the sins of pride and self-righteousness.
The New Testament message properly sees external behavior as a secondary issue that is at best a symptom of sickness of the heart. The call to repentance is not primarily a call towards behavior modification, but rather the call to repentance is to dig deep within. It is a call like unto Abraham’s whereby each individual is called to take their own personal Isaac, which is their own inner morality, up the dark mountain of sacrifice. Once on that mountain, you must bind him to the altar, and allow God to replace your treasured Isaac with Himself. Once would think that this is elementary. Who would not want God’s rule over him? Who would not think that God is the most perfect one to rule and reign in a man’s heart?
Saints, if nothing else illuminates for you the depravity of man, let this one example illustrate for you the sickness of the human heart. There is no battle known to man, even to Christian men, that is akin to the battle one faces when God comes into take over. The very One we should welcome with open arms we resist with all our strength. This is the issue of heart repentance. This battle shows our inner animosity towards God no matter how moral our outward behavior. Praise God that He alone can conquer such a heart and fill it with His own Spirit.
Genuine repentance bypasses everything external and requires this sort of turning within a man. The call for repentance goes deep into the essence of the man, confronts him with the supremacy of God and the right of God to rule the individual and then calls for that man to turn whole heartedly from his own life, religious or not, to a life consumed by God.
This turning from a life where man is obsessed with himself, which may or may not be moral and religious, to a life where man is wholly given over to God is repentance in the Biblical sense. Many of the problems in our churches arise because we are dealing with individuals that have never truly repented and part of the reason they have never repented is because they have never heard a proper message of repentance that has the power to cut through their soul and their behavior to the essence of what God is after. If we are to see men genuinely repent, we must begin to proclaim a message of genuine repentance to them.
The Church in Crisis
There is a real crisis in our churches over this issue of repentance and many do not see it clearly. If you consider most of the content of our preaching, our books, and our conversations within the church you will see that we are completely preoccupied with outward behavior. We measure one another by outward behavior. So long as a believer can keep up appearances we consider them to be soundly in the faith. Whenever a believer falls into an outward sin, we immediately call him to repent. Now I am not saying we should not call one who has fallen outwardly to repentance, but the problem is for every one that falls outwardly, how many more are there who inwardly are unrepentant and yet believing that they are living genuine, Christian lives?
Is it not an indication that our gospel is sick that our bookstores are so crowded with books that resemble self help and spiritual psychology manuals more than they do the New Testament? We have to spend so much time trying to manage our behavior because we do not understand, practice, or preach Biblical repentance.
Perhaps you have heard that the law is a tutor to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). The problem is that when we use that phrase what we typically mean is that the inability of man to meet the requirements of the law, as typified by the Mosaic Law, reveals to man his own inability to save himself and thus he sees his own need of Christ. Again, we are thinking primarily in terms of behavior. While this is true, we must go on to an additional step and that step requires an understanding of the New Testament law. While some preachers know how to bring the law of Moses to bear that men may see their need of Christ, far fewer know how to bring the New Testament law to bear and it is just as, if not more so, necessary.
The Mosaic Law can bring a man to conviction as his heart is illuminated with the wickedness of his deeds. The New Testament law brings a man to conviction when his heart is illuminated by the indwelling wickedness of his heart. It is one thing to declare to a man that he needs to drop a few lousy habits. It is another to tell a man he needs an entirely new start because his present life is corrupt beyond rescuing. Both convictions are necessary, but only the second one can bring a heart to the place of genuine repentance, and sadly we often fail to go beyond the first.
Because we tend to preach a repentance rooted only in the violation of Moses’ Law, which is not even binding at this point, we have shallow believers who have seen some evil in their behavior, but have never looked deep into their heart to see the dramatic need of a change in nature. Jesus’ interactions with Nicodemus provide a wonderful illustration of this point. When Nicodemus came to Jesus, Jesus did not address the need to change any of Nicodemus’ behavior, but rather, he looked him in the eye and told him he needed a new birth.
The sad truth is that most of us, being familiar with Nicodemus’ exemplary morality, would have spoken kindly to him and assured him that the devil was behind his gnawing doubts and that he should be secure in his spirituality. Jesus, however, was adamant on the need for the new birth. Why did Nicodemus need a new birth? Because man is inwardly corrupt, irrespective of outward corruption, and must be re-born from heaven. His only hope is to be re-born of heaven’s perfection. He needs to receive the divine seed of God that alone can regenerate a man with a root of genuine righteousness. The goal of true repentance is a change in the very nature of the man and that is why it must result in a new birth if it is to be successful. Anything less is simply not New Testament repentance.
We have been preaching repentance that results in a decision to modify behavior. Those who try to come into the kingdom this way continue to struggle because they never went through the pain of having the root of iniquity pulled out of them and the seed of God implanted into them. They then create an incredible burden of maintenance for the church because while the church should be advancing and preaching true repentance and rebirth to the world, it is spending an inordinate amount of time trying to manage the behavior of church members that decided they wanted to change their behavior but were never truly reborn.
Saints, we must not lead men to behavior, but to Christ. We seek not to change what a man does, but rather we must change who a man is and this is a fundamental change. Churches are full of moral people that will go to hell and I fear how many more are languishing in their Christianity because the church affirms them in their good, faithful behavior, never presenting a message of Biblical repentance. Part of the reason that message is lacking is because of our lack of understanding of the New Testament law. Let’s ask God to give us revelation of this law that we might again see the life that comes on the church when it walks in New Testament repentance.
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