It may be easy for you see how repentance has been eliminated from our modern-day gospel message. And for some it may seem as if I have added a work called repentance to the Gospel. Of course you can only come to that conclusion if you take a semi-Pelagian* view and believe that somehow out of man’s own perceived inherent goodness he is capable of stirring up a repentant heart. But on the other hand if you see repentance as a gift from God (Acts 11:18; 2 Timothy 2:25) and tied directly to God’s gift of faith (Ephesians 2:8-9), then there is no work involved but rather God’s grace effectually working in the life of the sinner. As I mentioned in the last article, repentance and faith are often used interchangeably. This kind of saving faith is the instrument in which we embrace Christ. So then it is by grace alone, though faith alone, because of Christ alone.
The problem though in our western culture is arriving at a Biblical understanding of saving faith. The importance of this cannot be understated, as true saving faith is the foundation of our justification. It answers the question; “How can an unjust person possibly survive the judgment of a just and holy God?” Unfortunately, in today’s world, all-to-often, our gospel presentation addresses a salvation from bad habits, social failure, addictions, failures in personal relationships, and failure to achieve personal happiness and success, instead of salvation from the wrath of God due to our sin which demands justice (Romans 2:23-26) and satisfaction ( 1 John 2:2; 4:10) from a just God and holy God. The faith that is required for this kind of gospel is deficient because it doesn’t require repentance, sees no need for satisfying the justice of God, no need for reconciliation since it fails to teach that we in sin, are alienated (Colossians 1:21) and at war with God (Romans 5:10-11; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19; Ephesians 2:16), but rather views God as obligated to bring personal happiness and fulfillment of felt needs to the one seeking this kind of salvation. It is a gospel that feeds on the baseness of human narcissism and utterly fails to lift the Gospel to the heights of the character and glory of God. It is all about man, his desires, or the filling of the “god hole” of the heart, instead about the greatness and glory of the grace of God toward an undeserving sinner. It is a reductive gospel.
Justifying faith in Christ looks to the holiness and justice of God and addresses the need for propitiation and reconciliation. Often when we share the Gospel we are quick to quote John 3:16 which goes to the revealed motive why God sent Christ to the cross (also 1 John 4:9) as we camp on the love of God for mankind. But we fail to go further in the text to verse 36 where we read that the wrath of God abides on the unregenerate. The Scriptures clearly teach that because of our sin, we have offended a holy God and He is “angry with the wicked every day” (Psalm 7:11). God’s anger with man’s sin, which is a response of His justice, demands satisfaction. Christ’s substitutionary death places the wrath of God for the sin of men on Christ. God the Father vents or propitiates His wrath on Christ on our behalf. This was not done to meet some felt personal need on behalf of the sinner but rather to satisfy the very real need of satisfaction in order to meet the justice of God. Christ was that satisfactory sacrifice (Hebrews 2:17; 1 John 2;2; 4;10) and the place, the “mercy seat” (Romans 3:25), where satisfaction was made. We have settled for a gospel message that does not place the sinner in “the hands of an angry God” as Jonathan Edwards once preached, so that there is “no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:18).
It is because of the fall and personal sin that God and man are in a relationship of hostility. We are enemies of God (Romans 5:10) and by nature the “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3; Titus 3:3). It is God through the sacrifice of Christ that reconciles us to Himself (Romans 5;10; 2 Corinthians 5:18-21). Propitiation and reconciliation go hand in hand. The need for reconciliation lies in God’s wrath and anger against sinful man. It is He who reconciles us to Himself not the other way around. There is no give and take in this exchange and no sinner comes in to a saving relationship with God until he is justified and therefore reconciled to God through the blood of Christ (Roman 5:9). When we ignore or replace the need of reconciliation from the Gospel message, we in essence remove the real need of salvation and reduce it to a message of self improvement in the name of Christ.
The doctrine of justification stands at the heart of the Gospel message. To be justified means we have been declared righteous before God (Romans 5:18-19; 3:26). There is no justification without satisfaction and reconciliation. No one can be declared in a right relationship with God unless satisfaction for his sin and reconciliation has been put to the sinner’s account. If one seeks to come to Christ with no realization of the consequences of his or her sin before God, the sinner will see no need to repent and fall short of saving faith in Christ.
We have settled for a gospel that extols the love of God but has not brought the sinner to an end of him or herself. What need is there for reconciliation in the mind of the hearer who has not been confronted with his or her sin? What need is there for satisfaction if the sinner doesn’t understand that he or she has offended a holy God? Instead we have settled for a reductive gospel and a “new birth” that merely means some kind of spiritual reawakening and a relationship with the god of their imagination that has not been crushed, by the clear testimony of the God of the Scriptures.
*Pelagian heresy: Pelagius (370 A.D. – 440 A.D.) was a British monk who taught that Adam’s sin only affected himself, and that every human soul is created by God in a state of innocence, free from depraved tendencies, and able to obey God as Adam was, and that God only imputes to men those sins that they actually and personally commit. By “semi- pelagian,” I mean a form of Pelagianism that may hold to the fall of all humanity but believes that man still has some inherent righteousness and is capable on his own to repent and believe apart from God’s grace, or with the help of God’s grace, not as a result of God’s grace.
-Michael Holtzinger