The Gospels usher in Christ’s reign with the words:  “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”  These days however, repentance on those seemingly rare occasions when it is preached at all, tends not to include reference to Christ’s Kingdom.  This article asks whether it remains relevant to couch our preaching in “Kingdom” terms and further, ponders whether repentance is a command or a grace gift.

The article offers application, in terms of:

• the needfulness of setting Christ as King of kings in our lives and our preaching.
• the relationship between Christ as King & Judge and Christ as King & Redeemer, and
• understanding repentance in light of the seeming incongruity of man’s accountability and God’s sovereignty.

The Gospels open with John the Baptist preaching “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 3:2).  We then find Jesus preaching:  “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 4:17).  Peter opened his apostleship by preaching that the men of Jerusalem needed to repent because they had crucified their Lord and King (Acts 2:36-38).  Paul approached the philosophers in Athens with a message of repentance telling them that God had now ceased to overlook the times of their ignorance, since Christ had now been appointed to judge the whole world (Acts 17:30).

In one way or another we see that repentance was commanded in the New Testament because the times have changed.  The kingdom of heaven and its King were at hand.  But does this message have currency today? Do the words:  “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”, still hold true?

These words remain applicable, not because the kingdom is at hand but because the King now reigns.  As Paul tells us:

“Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  ~  (Phil 2:9-11)

Every person, whether in heaven, on earth or under the earth, has been brought under the sovereignty of Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev 17:14 & 19:16) and any denial or repudiation of this truth is an act of treason against this King.

Is it not significant that Jesus’ cross was meant for Barabbas, an insurrectionist, a real political enemy of Rome (Mark 15:7). By his death Jesus paid the price for a man in revolt against a kingdom.  Similarly, no matter our sins as moral failings or breaches of the Ten Commandments, everyone of us, by our unbelief or rebellion, is guilty of failing to acknowledge Christ as King.

Christ’s suffering and death did two things.  On the one hand it secured his entitlement as King over the whole creation.  Heaven sings:

“ . . .  “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing!”  And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever!”   “  ~  (Rev 5:12-13)

The Lamb abides at the right hand of God’s throne to possess and exercise all power, wealth, wisdom, might and honour because he is worthy.  He warrants and deserves all worship and obedience.

On the other hand, it demonstrates Christ’s readiness to atone for those who are in rebellion against his kingship. 

“And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”  ~ (Revelation 5:9-10)

This same worthy Lamb has by his blood ransomed a mass of people for God.

Let me state it simply.  I set before you two implications to The Cross;

• Christ is King and as King he has the entitlement to all worship and obedience.
• Christ is King, and as King he and he alone has authority to grant grace to those whom he chooses.

Repent and Believe are commands

If this is so, then we do well to know where we stand in regard to the authority of this King.  Consider again Paul’s words to the Greeks on Mars Hill:

“God   . . .   now commands all people everywhere to repent.”  ~  (Acts 17:30)

In its simplest form ‘repent’ means to change one’s mind.  Paul was not urging his Greek hearers to repent of sins that they had committed in the flesh.  He was telling them to change their thinking as to the gods that they worshipped. Paul’s preaching is consistent with the apostle John’s assessment:

“And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ   . . . “  ~ (1 John 3:23a)

Scripture commands us to believe in Jesus, the Son of God.  The impact of The Enlightenment (1680-1815) on Western culture has been to give primacy to reason and rational thought.  Matters of faith and believing have been deemed largely irrelevant and have become matters of personal preference, personal choice.  Therefore, to the common man of today, it seems outrageous that belief in Christ should be commanded.  Surely belief is a matter of choice?

The Scripture verse John 3:16^[i] is so well known that it suffers the disregard, almost contempt, which comes from familiarity.  And yet the same section of Scripture which holds out the offer of eternal life for those that believe in the Christ, moves on to say:

“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”  ~  (John 3:18)

and concludes:

“The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand.  He who believes in the Son has eternal life; and he who does not believe the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”  ~  (John 3:35-36)

Please note, John’s gospel doesn’t suggest that unbelievers will come under the wrath of God.  It says that they are already under the wrath of God because they are unbelievers.

Repentance and Faith are gifts

The fact that Jesus is Lord and King imposes on us the necessity to repent and to believe in Him and yet Scripture tells us that repentance and faith are gifts?

Repentance

When the brethren in Jerusalem heard how Cornelius and his household in Joppa had turned to Christ during the apostle Peter’s visit, they were amazed that Gentiles should receive God’s grace of repentance, for it is recorded:

“When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”   ~ (Acts 11:18)

Not only Gentiles, but Jews too were granted repentance as a gift.  In a speech to the same Council which condemned Jesus, the apostle Peter explained that his preaching of Christ had been effective because Jesus had come to grant repentance to Israel:

“God exalted him at his right hand as Ruler and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.”  (Acts 5:31)

For this had been Peter’s experience.  Repentance followed in consequence of Christ’s resurrection and was a blessed fruit and gift of that most glorious event:

“God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.” (Acts 3:26)

The need for repentance is commanded more than 600 times in the Old Testament prophets and it cannot be said that repentance as a gift is necessarily evident in each case. However, the prophet Zechariah makes clear that repentance unto Christ would be a work and gift of God’s Holy Spirit:

“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.”  ~ (Zech 12:10).

Faith

Faith too is a gift.  When laying out the precepts of salvation to the Ephesians, Paul writes:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God”  ~  (Eph 2:8)

This notion that faith doesn’t come from ourselves but “is the gift of God” is a modest continuation of what Paul had asserted at the opening of his letter to the church at Ephesus.  At that point Paul explained that his prayer was that they would know:

“   . . . what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” ~  (Eph 1:19-20)

The Ephesians believed according to, or in line with that same might which raised Christ from the dead.  Of this statement one commentary says:

“The same superhuman power was needed and exerted to make us believe, as was needed and exerted to raise Christ from the dead.” ^[ii]

Here and in other places Scripture tells us that faith in Christ is not an inherent human capacity. For it “comes” by hearing the word of God (Rom 10:17) and is assigned to us according to God’s measure for each person (Rom 12:3).

How then do we reconcile these two perspectives on faith and repentance?  Are they ours to perform or God’s to grant?  Augustine of Hippo (354-430) set God’s commandments firmly within the context of God’s grace with the prayer “God, command what You will and grant what You command”.  In this way every act of obedience becomes beholden to God for the impartation of grace to perform it.  So, even believing and repentance, the first acts required for entry into the grace of Christ are themselves an act of grace by God toward sinners.

Where do we start?

Where do we start to understand this paradox?  Let us return to the two opening propositions of this article:

• Christ is King and as King he has the entitlement to all worship and obedience.
• Christ is King, and as King he and he alone has authority to grant grace to those whom he chooses.

The grace of effective faith and effective repentance belongs to King Jesus. He alone has the right and the means to apportion them.  Who better to look to?  Who better to rely on?  Surely there is none more loving, more able or more desirous to grant faith and repentance than the King who demands such faith and repentance.  So, the first and best place to start is by obeying him as King. We come to the exalted Jesus by believing in him and repenting of our rebellion and treason against his dominion, which is a dominion of grace and mercy.

This as starting place is important, but it is not the end-point.  American pastor Dr Charles Stanley (1932-2023) is quoted as saying: “We are either in the process of resisting God's truth or in the process of being shaped and moulded by his truth.”  To be moulded by the truth of Christ as King sees our faith and repentance go through a progression.

• Initially we may repent for the sins that we have done. We see that we have failed to honor Christ as King.  We become aware that we have sinned against God and others.  We are ashamed of what we have done.  Such repentance treats the symptoms not the cause.  Such repentance can often come with genuine remorse and may lead to moral reform by self-effort.  But such self-effort inevitably fails, and we return to our former attitudes and behaviours.  Indeed such self-effort is offensive to God because at root it argues that Christ’s sacrifice and the ministry of the Holy Spirit are irrelevant and unnecessary.
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• Next, recognizing that what we do comes from within, from our sinful nature and desires.  We find that repentance is not about repenting from the sins that we do but about repenting of the sinners that we are.  At this point we begin to make progress because we see the need for a new nature and we begin to recognize that it is only God who can provide that new nature.  We have moved from faith in self to faith in Christ!
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• But both these stages are tinged with self-interest.  If repentance has been preached in terms of “turn or burn” our focus is on what we do or who we are, and on where we are going.  It is not until we see our sin in the light of who God is and who it is that we have offended, that valuable headway can be made.  Therefore, it is when we see Christ as both an offended King & Judge AND a loving King & Redeemer that repentance becomes a mixture of the fear of Christ’s judgment and the shame of rejecting Christ’s love. We become sorry for who we are because of who Christ is!
   

If as Dr Stanley says, we are in the process of being shaped by God’s truth, we will not stop at “Christ the King who warrants our faith and obedience”, we will progress toward “Christ the King whose grace grants faith and obedience”.  Knowing that all things are of God, we will nonetheless ask ourselves:  ”How can I prepare my heart and mind to be recipient of Christ’s grace?”  This fact of Christ’s grace invites action so that we will receive the word of God to full benefit.

Lastly

I have said earlier that faith and repentance are commanded of us AND that the grace of effective faith and effective repentance belongs to King Jesus, since He alone has the right and the means to apportion them.  In my opening references to New Testament preaching we do not find Jesus, Peter or Paul including both of these two truths in the same gospel presentation.  However, there was a day more recently, when preachers would call people to repentance as a commandment and in giving the call, tell them that unless Christ aided them, that they would be unable to repent. Consider the following account of preaching in antebellum USA. ^[iii]

“At a time of revival in Savannah in the early 1840s a young man was attending B. M. Palmer's church and eventually with considerable annoyance and irritation he complained to the preacher of the teaching he was hearing:

“You preachers are the most contradictory of men in the world; you say, and you unsay, just as it pleases you, without the least pretensions to consistency.  Why you said in your sermon that sinners were perfectly helpless in themselves utterly unable to repent or believe and then you turn around and said they would all be damned if they did not.”

On hearing these words, Palmer tells us that he judged it best to reply in an offhand sort of way, and with seeming indifference so as to cut him off from all opportunity to coquette with the gospel.  So according to his biographer he responded:

“Well my dear Sir, there is no use in quarrelling over this matter, either you can or you cannot.  If you can, all I have to say is that I hope you will just go and do it.”

As I did not raise my eyes from my writing, which was continued as I spoke, I had no means of marking the effect of these words, until, after a moment's silence, with a choking utterance, the reply came back:  “I have been trying my best for three whole days and cannot.”  “Ah!” responded Palmer, raising his eyes and putting down his pen, “that puts a different face upon it; we will go then and tell the difficulty straight to God.”

We knelt down and prayed as though this was the first time in human history that this trouble had ever arisen; that there was a soul in the most desperate extremity, which must believe or perish, and hopelessly unable of itself to do it; that, consequently it was just the case for divine interposition; and pleading most earnestly for the fulfilment of the divine promise. Upon rising I offered not one single word of comfort or advice   . . .  So I left my friend in his powerlessness in the hands of God, as the only helper.  In a short time he came through the struggle, rejoicing in the hope of eternal life.”

I offer this account as encouragement to those who find this article contradictory in its two premises, and I offer it as encouragement to those who may be conscious that their repentance has not rendered the change of nature and the hunger for holiness that it should.

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