The problem of repentance in the face of modern preaching is a serious one.
Look at the meaning of the word that was used by Peter on the day of Pentecost: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).
The Greek word for repent means being in union with God, His thoughts flow into our mind, which causes us to live accordingly.
It will be necessary for us first to notice the actual condition of the natural man.
THE REAL CONDITION OF NATURAL MAN
But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)
Why is it impossible for the natural man to understand the things of God?
Ephesians 2:1–3 will give us the reason.
And you He made alive, who were DEAD in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were BY NATURE children of wrath, just as the others.
The natural man is dead in trespasses and sins. What does that mean?
John 5:24 “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has CROSSED OVER FROM DEATH TO LIFE.
What does Jesus mean by death?
There are two kinds of death mentioned in the Word—physical death and spiritual death.
Spiritual death is the nature of Satan, just as spiritual life is the nature of our heavenly Father.
1 John 3:14 We know that we have PASSED FROM DEATH TO LIFE, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in DEATH. 15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has ETERNAL LIFE residing in him.
Here we have the contrast of death and life. Life is the nature of the Father; death is the nature of the enemy, for the natural man is spiritually dead.
He is a partaker of the adamic or satanic nature that was given to him when he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden, and down through the ages, spiritual death has been passed on and dominated man.
Romans 5:17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
Spiritual death seized the control over the human race in the garden and man served as a slave under its dominion.
Paul unveils to us, in Romans 5:12–21, the whole drama of spiritual death.
12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned (Romans 5:12)
Then, verse 14: Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.
What does he mea. That physical death “passed upon all men”? Yes, but also the death of our spirit that gives us God-consciousness.
It had reigned without interference until Moses came.
What did Moses give?
Moses gave us THE ATONEMENT in the blood of bulls and goats ( a type of Jesus). Sins were covered, but they were conscious of God outside of them in the cloud and pillar of fires.
Atonement means to cover.
The priest took a garment of animal life (not literally) and spread it over spiritually dead Israel. That garment of blood covered the broken law and the priesthood.
Spiritual death lost its complete sovereignty if Israel walked in the first covenant, but when Jesus came, the combat was between life and death.
Not physical life nor physical death, but the new kind of life that Jesus brought was at war with spiritual death operating in our flesh.
In John 10:10, Jesus says, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
The Greek word translated as life is zoe, which means God’s life, God’s nature, God’s substance, God’s being, just as spiritual death means Satan’s substance, Satan’s being.
Out of eternal life have sprung all the beautiful graces which adorn a Christian life.
Out of spiritual death, the garden with the tree of sin, have grown all the sins that have ever been committed.
Man is united to Adam after the fall spiritually.
When Adam and Eve partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That tree represented the nature of Satan. And Adam willingly partook of his nature. The tree of life was the nature of Jesus, divine life, which they did not partake of.
When they had twins, Abel’s father and mother were Adam and Eve, because she was deceived and her nature was mixed, But Cain’s father was the devil, Satan’s seed that Adam willing partook of when he ate of the nature of the serpent. Was more prominent in his firstborn Cain. This is the serpent seed. Satan is described as a man in Isaiah.
Isaiah 14: 16 “Those who see you will gaze at you, and consider you, saying: ‘Is this the MAN who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms.
And this began the seed wars.
Genesis 3: 15 And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman. And between your seed and her(woman) Seed; https://glorytogodministries.site/blog/the-seed-of-the-woman/
Perhaps the most awful words that Jesus ever uttered to the Jews are recorded in John 8:44–45:
44 You are of (motion out of) your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me.
This is a heart-searching Scripture.
Satan was a murderer and a liar. He was a murderer by nature. The very substance and being of Satan are the very opposite of what we see in the man Jesus, the son of man.
Jesus is truth. He is life. He is love.
Satan is spiritual death. He is a hater, a sin-producer. He is everything that is bad.
Jesus was everything that was good, eternal life.
1 John 3:10 carries us a step farther in this unhappy drama: “10 In this the children of God and THE CHILDREN OF THE DEVIL are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.”
Here we have the two families in contrast—the family of God and THE FAMILY OF THE DEVIL.
Ephesians 2:11–12 gives us one of the saddest pictures of the natural man. The Spirit, through Paul, is speaking: “11 Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands”-that is why, the Jews called the Gentiles the “Uncircumcision.” Why?
Because the circumcised man was in the first covenant and had covenant rights and covenant privileges, but the Gentile man, the uncircumcised, was outside the covenant.
The Jew would not eat at the same table with the Gentile, as he was considered unclean. The next verse explains it: “12 that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”
All of God’s blessings are wrapped up in Christ. The Gentile is separated from Christ.
Second thing is he is alienated even from the commonwealth of Israel, the covenant people who have covenant claims on God, and he is a stranger from any covenant relationship with God or contract with God.
He has no hope; he is without God, and he is in the world. Notice his condition now: he is spiritually dead, united with Satan.
Jesus calls him a child of the devil.
John the Baptist, you remember, called them “vipers.” (Matthew 3:7.) By that, he meant, children of Satan, serpent seed. That is why Satan is called a man in Isaiah. (Isaiah 14: 16)
The Pharisees and Sadducees had no covenant claims on God, even though they were the Jewish leaders of the day. The were without hope, and without God-consciousness, here in the world.
2 Corinthians 4:3–4 reveals more fully this desperate condition:
3 But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, 4 whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.
Here the veil is lifted.
This spiritually dead man or woman is mentally blinded, spiritually blinded.
I do not know how clearly you understand it, but all the knowledge that this spiritually dead man or woman has, comes through the five senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling.
There is no other way for natural man to get knowledge. His body has been his laboratory.
I sometimes think of it as just physical body knowledge.
That is all the natural man has.
Is it any wonder that Darwin gave us the hypothesis of evolution?
Sense knowledge can never find God.
Sense knowledge cannot understand spiritual things, and this sense knowledge man ruled by the senses, governed by the senses, is spiritually blinded.
If you want to know more fully about him, turn to Ephesians 4:17–18:
17 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.
This kind of man may be the head of a university, but he is lost, without God and without hope.
Now let us go back and look at repentance again.
The preacher is demanding that this natural man “change his mind and purpose,” or “change his principles and practice,” “change his mode of conduct,” give up his old habits; give up his rebellion against divine authority.
The question is: can he do it?
Will crying and weeping and praying change his nature? Understand, he is by nature a child of wrath. He can’t change his own nature.
He may change his mind for a moment, but that old nature will come back again.
What he must have is a new nature, and this must come from God. How can he get this new nature?
take a look at John 3:16–17:
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
What is it that the natural man needs?
It is eternal life, the nature of God, and he can’t get this by any effort of his own.
People cannot change their nature.
They may give up some of the habits that they have learned, but that does not save them.
Let us go back and notice it once more.
The natural man in himself has no approach to God.
He is an eternal being, but a hopeless one.
His nature is enmity toward God. Satan has blinded his mind. His senseless heart is darkened. Satan has ruled him through his physical senses.
Love has given Jesus to him. Love has done even more than that.
4 Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. 5 But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. (Romans 4:4–5)
What does Paul mean here?
Paul means one who does not attempt to make himself or herself better or who tries to give up their old habits and their old life but accepts the gift God has given to them without money and without price, receives eternal life. Their old habits lose their power and new habits take their place.
Romans 4:25, speaking of Jesus: “25 who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification”.
What does that mean? It means that Jesus suffered until every claim of justice was satisfied as far as the sinner was concerned.
And the second thing, when the claims of justice were met, He was raised to prove that He had paid the penalty of our trespasses, and now man or woman has justification, righteousness, and eternal life awaiting them.
Being therefore justified by faith or being therefore declared righteous on the ground of pure grace, God says to the sinner, take Jesus as your Savior, confess Him as your Lord, and I will give you eternal life and make you a new creation.
You see this is all of grace.
When you tell the unsaved person that they must have godly sorrow and repentance, you don’t know what I am talking about.
Paul told that Christian young man who had committed an unwholesome sin, that he needed godly sorrow that would work a repentance in his own life.
That message can be preached to the church today. The church needs to repent.
The unsaved man needs to take Jesus as his Savior and confess Him as his Lord.
The unsaved man needs eternal life and righteousness.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:10). When were we created in Christ Jesus?
After Jesus had been made sin on our behalf and was made alive. When the Father justified Him in spirit and raised him from the dead, the church was justified.
In His resurrection the church was made alive in spirit with Him or recreated in the mind of the Father.
Now the unsaved person who receives that eternal life and righteousness comes into the family of God.
What they need is the revelation of Jesus as Lord and savior. The work has all been done. The Father’s work in Christ is finished.
When Jesus sat down on the right hand of the Father on high, it was because Jesus had finished the work of redemption.
There was no more work to be done. Redemption was a settled and fixed thing.
When a person receives him, they come into the benefits of the finished work of the Lord.
You see, Jesus belongs to the unsaved person. The unsaved person must receive Jesus. He died for them. He put sin away for them.
Jesus has made the new birth a possibility for them, but the unsaved must accept Him.
Romans 10:9–10 tells us:
9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Now notice this carefully. Jesus belongs to them, but Jesus is of no value to a person until they confess His lordship over their life.
Eternal life belongs to them, but they never have received it.
They will never have any benefit from it until they accept Jesus as their personal Savior and confesses His Lordship over their life.
Then they become a new creation in Christ Jesus.
The old things pass away just at the moment eternal life comes into their spirit.
D. L. Moody used to declare that repentance meant “right about-face.” That is true.
The moment that the sinner accepts Jesus Christ, they do a right about-face.
But they can’t do it unless they accept what God has wrought for them in Christ.
The unsaved person can confess Jesus as Lord over their life with their mouth.
They can make the decision, to take Jesus as their Savior.
God’s hands are tied until they make that confession.
The Lord doesn’t ask a sinner to confess their sins.
That is a self-evident fact.
They are a sinner, but God demands that they confess the lordship of Jesus, and when they do that, they confess their faith in the substitutionary work that Christ worked on their behalf, then they are born again.
Now you can understand Ephesians 2:4–10:
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
We should make the message so clear and simple that the unsaved person can see Jesus as his Savior and Lord.
We should make the message so easy to grasp that they can see that all they need to do is to act upon the Word.
Do not tell them they need to believe.
Do not tell them they need to repent for that will confuse them.
If they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord their Savior and confess Him as Their Lord, that is repentance. That is all God requires.