Luke 24:44-49 (ESV)
44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
(47) “…repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations…”
I was 7 years old when I walked the aisle of First Baptist Church in Snellville and told them I wanted to be baptized. My parents were thrilled. The problem was that I did not have saving faith in Christ. I was what some have referred to as, “a false convert.” It would take me another 14 years before I experienced real faith in Jesus, and my life was changed forever.
So, how did that happen? How did I convince myself and the adults in my life that I was a Christian when in reality I didn’t know Jesus? That question takes quite some time to unpack, but I want to, at the very least, get you thinking about the most central issue for me. That is, I didn’t understand the nature of genuine saving faith. If you were to ask me the standard questions one typically asks a child who professes faith in Jesus, I would have been able to answer your questions satisfactorily.
“Do you know that you are guilty of sin before a holy God?” Yes.
“Do you believe that Jesus is God’s Son, who came to earth as a man, to die on the cross in order to pay the penalty for your sins?” Yes.
“Do you believe that on the third day, God raised him from the dead?” Yes.
The gospel seemed logical enough to me. I believed the essential facts about who Jesus was and about what Jesus had done 2,000 years ago. Furthermore, I had no desire to spend eternity in hell, so why not say a prayer to ask Jesus into my heart and get dunked on a Sunday? So I did.
It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college at the University of Georgia that my life of rebellion left me feeling so empty that I decided to open the Bible and read it for the first time. It was a decision that changed the course of my entire life. As I read through the New Testament for the first time, verses like Luke 24:27 would stop me dead in my tracks. Why did Jesus say that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed” as the proper response to the good news “that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead?”
What did repentance have to do with anything? Another passage that shook me to the core, was in Acts 2 after Peter preaches the gospel at Pentecost and the crowd asks him what they should do in response. I couldn’t figure out why Peter would tell them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins…” (Acts 2:38). Why wouldn’t Peter lead them in a sinner’s prayer? Or why wouldn’t Jesus have commissioned his disciples by saying that “faith for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed?” I was so very disturbed by all the verses that seemed to imply that repentance was the proper response to the gospel because I knew that I had never repented. I knew I hadn’t turned from my sin. In fact, in the 14 years since I’d professed faith in Jesus and was baptized, I’d only gone deeper and deeper into sin. The bottom line was that if repentance was important, I was in trouble.
At the same time, I was reading very clear verses such as Ephesians 2:8 (ESV), which says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” And Mark 16:16 (ESV), “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Or again, Romans 10:10 (ESV), “For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”
I did not doubt that faith alone in Christ alone saved a person. I just couldn’t figure out where repentance fit into the whole equation. It was the search for answers to that perplexing mystery that ultimately led me to see Christ for the treasure that he is, and I learned what true saving faith in him looks like.
Reading James 2, I learned that the demons have an intellectual “belief” in the facts about who Jesus is (James 2:19) and what Jesus accomplished at Calvary. After all, they would have seen him resurrected! Reading Matthew 7:21-23, I learned that many people would come to the Day of Judgment totally convinced that they were Christians, when in fact they were not and never had been. I was beginning to awaken to the possibility that I might not be a Christian at all.
Finally, one day after nearly a year of reading the Bible, the gospel became so clear and so compelling to me that I couldn’t help but run to Christ. All at once I saw with crystal clarity what running to him would look like. I suddenly saw the truth, that to come to Christ with genuine faith, I had to leave my life of sin behind. In other words, I saw that genuine faith in Jesus involved repentance. Alone in my bedroom in Athens, Georgia, I got on my knees and cried out to Jesus to save me. I held my hands in the air in surrender and released the sins that I had held so dear. And right then and there, in that holy moment of repentance and faith, he saved me.
My testimony illustrates just how important it is to “proclaim repentance for the forgiveness of sins” as the proper response to the saving work of Christ for sinners on the cross. As we go and tell people the good news being offered to them through Jesus, those who are cut to the heart will inevitably want to know what they are to do in response. Let’s do all we can to help them to see that genuine faith involves the whole heart of a person, and is more than a mere assent to a list of facts. Real faith involves treasuring Christ, and trusting him with our lives. Those who believe the gospel, should repent of their sins and run to him for forgiveness. But how will they know unless, “repentance for the forgiveness of sins [is] proclaimed in his name to all nations.”