The order of Salvation: Repentance
Our English term conversion is not often used in our translations of the Bible. But lest we commit a word-concept fallacy, we should not conclude from this that the concept captured by our term conversion is infrequently found in Scripture. Far from it. Peter in his sermon recorded in Acts 3 expresses the idea of what is meant in Christian theology by the term conversion. There we read that Peter told the men of Israel in v. 19, “Repent therefore, and turn, that your sins may be blotted out.” And again, in verse 26, Peter affirmed that God had sent his Son first to Israel in order that he might bless them “by turning” them from their wickedness. In other words, conversion to the Christian faith and life is about a decisive break from a life of sin, and turning to God so that one faithfully thinks and acts in accordance with God’s word.
Easy enough. Well, there’s actually nothing easy about this, other than perhaps stating it. In point of fact, what we are dealing with in conversion is a supernatural act of the living God whereby he replaces our sinful and stone-hardened heart with a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). God alone does this, but this does not nullify the human proclamation of the gospel calling people to repentance. It is why the summary of Jesus’ preaching (Mark 1:15), which was also a summary of John the Baptist’s preaching, was: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” The acts of repenting and believing are not envisioned here as once-for-all-time actions that never need repeating. On the contrary, the exact opposite is conveyed. Repenting and believing are ongoing, perpetual activities for the one genuinely converted. Which is another way of saying that one of the ways we can tell whether we or anyone else has truly been converted to the Christian faith and life is whether they demonstrate repentance from sin as a way of life.
Does not the Christian’s experience in seeking to live the Christian life, and the Scripture’s themselves not confirm this? After all, why would the apostle John tell us that “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1John 1:8)? Moreover, why would he then tell Christians that if they are faithful to confess their sins to the Lord Jesus that “he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1John 1:9). Both statements affirm that the individual Christian and the church as a community must recognize that their conversion to the Christian faith is all about a life-long struggle against sin. We would be correct to say, then, that conversion is not merely a decisive break with sin, but that this decisive break is the beginning of a fight against sin. Conversion to the Christian faith is about switching sides in the fight for God’s kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven (Mt. 6:10).
Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10), the Samaritan cleansed by Jesus (Luke 17:11-19), the woman of Luke 7, who anointed Jesus’ feet while he dined with the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50), are all examples of people converted. In each case we read of a response indicating a profound change in them, a changed life.
On one hand, we know from Scripture that such a change is the Holy Spirit’s work. Yet, those of us who rightly recognize this are perhaps prone to overemphasize it, and fail to do justice to the biblical revelation that mandates that we pay attention to what this change looks like from the horizontal dimension of human living. Scripture is certainly filled with affirmations regarding the transcendent perspective of God’s sovereignty, but it equally confronts us with the truth that a person genuinely converted from darkness to light, from the way of the world to the way of God, from unrighteousness to righteousness repents and keeps on repenting of their sin. Their life is not marked by perpetual indifference to sin (1John 3:8-9; 5:2, 18).
Such a person’s loyalty is to Jesus and their primary concern is to please their Lord. Their life is full of prayer seeking Jesus’ strength through the Holy Spirit to live rejecting the “things of the world,” “the desires of the flesh,” “the desires of the eyes,” and “the pride in possessions” (1John 2:15-16). They take inventory of the words they say knowing that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. They recognize that there is a way of thinking and living that Jesus calls them away from and a new life in him to which he calls them. And all these things are true not merely for individual Christians but entire congregations. Have we truly been converted to the Lordship of Jesus? If so, we repent of sin.
David P. Smith (Ph.D.) is the author of B. B. Warfield's Scientifically Constructive Theological Scholarship (Wipf & Stock) and co author with Ronald Hoch of Old School, New Clothes: The Cultural Blindness of Christian Education Wipf & Stock). David is Pastor of Covenant Fellowship A.R.P. Church in Greensboro, North Carolina.
