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 Ghost” (Acts 2:38).
The Greek word for repent means a “change of principle and practice,” “a mental change of attitudes,” “a change of mind,” or “a change of one’s mode of thinking or of one’s conduct.” Hold these definitions clearly in your mind as we study the Word.
It will be necessary for us first to notice the actual condition of natural man.
THE REAL CONDITION OF NATURAL MAN
But the natural man receiveth 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 a suggestion:
And you hath he quickened [make alive], who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
Now we will notice it more fully as we go on. Here we found first, that the natural man is dead in trespasses and sins. What does it mean?
Perhaps we may get a suggestion from John 5:24: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto 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 the Father.
First John 3:14–15 will throw more light upon this:
We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding 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 satanic nature that was given to him in the garden, and down through the ages, spiritual death has dominated man.
If you wish to see a vivid contrast, turn to Romans 5:17: “For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.”
Spiritual death seized the sovereignty 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.
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. (Romans 5:12)
Then, verse 14: “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression.”
What does he mean? That physical death “passed upon all men”? No, spiritual death.
It had reigned without interference until Moses came.
What did Moses give? Moses gave us the atonement in the blood of bulls and goats.
Atonement means to cover.
He took a garment of animal life and spread it over spiritually dead Israel. That garment of blood covered the broken law and the priesthood.
Spiritual death lost its complete sovereignty as long as 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.
In John 10:10, He 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 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 plot of sin, have grown all the sins that have ever been committed.
Man is united to Satan spiritually.
Perhaps the most awful words that Jesus ever uttered to the Jews are recorded in John 8:44–45:
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.
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.
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.
First John 3:10 carries us a step farther in this unhappy drama: “In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil.”
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: “Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands,” that is, 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 Jew would not eat at the same table with the Gentile, as he was considered unclean. The next verse explains it: “That at that time ye 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 fact: 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.” (See Matthew 3:7.) By that, he meant, children of Satan.
He has no covenant claims on God. He is without hope, hopeless; without God, godless, and he is here in the world.
Second Corinthians 4:3–4 reveals more fully his desperate condition:
But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
This Scripture hurts. Here the curtain is lifted.
This spiritually dead man is mentally blinded, spiritually blinded.
I do not know how clearly you understand it, but all the knowledge that this spiritually dead man 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:
This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.
A man may be the head of a university, but he is lost, without God and without hope.
This is a series of Love’s photographs of natural man.
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 it 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?
Turn with me to John 3:16–17:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not 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.
He cannot change his nature.
He may give up some of the habits that he has learned, but that does not save him.
Let us go back and notice it once more.
He 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 senses.
Love has given Jesus to him. Love has done more than that.
Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. (Romans 4:4–5)
What does he mean here?
He means one who does not attempt to make himself better or who tries to give up his old habits and his old life, but accepts the gift God has given to him without money and without price, receives eternal life. His old habits stop being and new habits take their place.
Romans 4:25, speaking of Jesus: “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.”
What does that mean? It means that Jesus actually 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 has justification, righteousness, and eternal life awaiting him.
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 I tell the unsaved man that he must have godly sorrow and repentance, I 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 He had been made sin on our behalf and was made alive. When the Father justified Him in spirit down there in the place of suffering and made Him alive, the church was justified.
There the church was made alive in spirit with Him or recreated in the mind of the Father.
Now the unsaved man receives that eternal life and righteousness and comes into the family of God.
They are awaiting him. The thing has all been done. The Father’s work in Christ is finished.
When Jesus sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, it was because He had finished the work of redemption.
There was no more work to be done. Redemption was a settled and fixed thing.
Now I accept it and come into the benefits of the finished work of my Lord.
You see, Jesus belongs to the unsaved man.
The unsaved man has Jesus on his hands. He died for him.
He put sin away for him.
He has made the new birth a possibility for him, but the unsaved man must accept Him.
Romans 10:9–10 tells us:
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
With his lips, he makes confession of his salvation.
Now notice it carefully. Jesus belongs to him but He is of no value to him until he confesses His lordship over his life.
Eternal life belongs to him but he never gets it.
He never has any benefit from it until he accepts Christ as his personal Savior and confesses His Lordship.
Then he becomes a new creation in Christ Jesus.
The old things pass away just at the moment eternal life comes into his spirit.
D. L. Moody used to declare that repentance meant “right about-face.” That is true.
The moment that the sinner accepts Jesus Christ, he does a right about-face.
But he can’t do it unless he accepts what God has wrought for him in Christ.
The unsaved man has the ability to confess Jesus as Lord over his life with his lips.
He has the ability to make the decision, to take Christ as his Savior.
God’s hands are tied until he does make that confession.
He doesn’t ask a sinner to confess his sins.
That is a self-evident fact.
He is a sinner, but God demands that he confess the lordship of Jesus, and when he does that, he confesses his faith in the substitutionary work that Christ wrought on his behalf.
Now you can understand Ephesians 2:4–10:
But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.
We should make the message so clear and simple that the unsaved man can see Jesus as his Savior and Lord.
We should make the message so easy to grasp that he can see that all he needs to do is to act upon the Word.
Do not tell him he needs to believe.
Do not tell him he needs to repent for that will confuse him.
If he accepts Christ as his Savior and confesses Him as his Lord, that is repentance. That is all God requires.