Is Repentance Necessary For Salvation?

[LindaR]

This is part of an article by John R. Rice: What Must I Do To Be Saved?

WHAT ABOUT REPENTANCE?

Does not the Bible say that we must repent? Yes, the Bible plainly says that "God ... commandeth all men every where to repent" (Acts 17:30), and again, "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish" (Luke 13:3, 5). This was the preaching of John the Baptist, of Jesus, of Peter and of Paul, that men should repent. And certainly repentance is God's plan of salvation. The trouble here, however, is that men misunderstand what repentance means, and there has grown up an idea that repentance means a period of weeping and mourning over sin, or sorrow for sins. This idea comes from the Douay Version of the Bible which instead of "repent" says "do penance." So the place of inquiry, where people should be taught the plan of salvation from the Bible, in revival meetings, became "the mourner's bench" and thousands of people have been taught that God would not hear their prayer nor forgive their sins until they went through a process of sorrow and mourning over their sins!

Do not misunderstand me. God is anxious for you to have a penitent, broken heart over your sins. You have gone away from God. You have trampled under foot the blood of Jesus Christ, wasted years of your life which you can never live over again. You have served your father, the Devil. There is plenty for you to weep over, and I am not surprised if you feel deep shame and sorrow in your heart that you have so mistreated the God who made you and the Saviour who died for you. I am not surprised if you cannot keep back the tears! But what I want you to know is that tears or no tears, however much sorrow you may have in your heart, or not have, those things do not save you.

You ought to be sorry for your sins and ashamed of them. "Godly sorrow worketh repentance" (2 Cor. 7:10)--the right kind of sorrow leads to immediate repentance, but mourning is not itself repentance.

"Could my tears forever flow,
Could my zeal no respite know,
These for sin cold not atone;
Thou must save, and Thou alone."

To repent literally means to have a change of mind or spirit toward God and toward sin. It means to turn from your sins, earnestly, with all your heart, and trust in Jesus Christ to save you. You can see, then, how the man who believes in Christ repents and the man who repents believes in Christ. The jailer repented when he turned from sin to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

http://www.wayoflife.org/whatmust.htm

Biblical repentance means much more than just remorse--true biblical repentance results in a change of life. The topic of our sermon this morning was: "What does it take for someone to confess 'I have sinned'." There were four men mentioned in today's message that said 'I have sinned'--Pharoah (Exodus 9:27; 10:16); Achan (Joshua 7:20); King Saul (1 Samuel 15:24,30; 26:31); and Judas Iscariat (Matthew 27:4). Of those four, I think Achan was the only one who was truly repentant---but that might be questionable. The other three were simply remorseful--it wasn't godly sorrow (2 Cor. 7:10-11). Just would like your thoughts on this topic.

[Madeline]

Thanks for sharing! :smile

[ltl]

:amen:

[Samer]

Sad how Curtis Hutson and SOTL strayed from this foundational truth.

[orvals]

Sad how Curtis Hutson and SOTL strayed from this foundational truth.

Samer,

Please explain this statement?

orvals

[Samer]

From http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/repentancelordship.htm:

THE ERROR OF DEFINING REPENTANCE MERELY AS A CHANGE OF MIND

Another man who has widely influenced the doctrine of repentance held by independent Baptists is the late Curtis Hutson, former editor of the Sword of the Lord. His 1986 booklet

[BroJesse]

Curtis Hutson also removed repentance from the lyrics of some of the hymns in the 2nd edition "Soul Stirring Hymns" that was edited by him. The 1st edition was by John R Rice and was fine.

We've had to go back to the 1st edition and since it is out of print, we're showing the words on a LCD projector instead of using the edited hymnbooks.

A repentance-less gospel is very much a feature of Hutson's soul winning methodology and I have found this to be so in some of the tracts written by him that are reprinted and used by various IFB churches.

[kevinmiller]

What hymns were edited? :huh:

[BroJesse]

What hymns were edited?

Here's one list, I think I've found others online if you use Google: http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/changesin.htm

One of my song leaders found enough subtle changes and he made comparisons between the 1st and 2nd edition and decided it made him uncomfortable enough with the theology that was changed pertaining to Salvation that he just went back to the 1st edition and pumped out the Powerpoint slides for those instead.

For me the most vivid was "The Old Account Was Settled" where one stanza said "repent of all your sins" and it was changed to "be cleansed of all your sins".

While that statement is (still) biblical and that we can be truly cleansed of all our sins, it begs the question of why it was necessary to remove repentance as Repentance and Faith are the door to receiving that cleansing which was already provided for by God through the work on the Crosss. A good understanding of Curtis Hutson's teachings would make the answer to that question very clear as he does not believe in repentance being necessary for salvation.

[Samer]

Most infamous was "The old account," which is supposed to say "O sinner seek the LORD, repent of all your sin, for thus He hath commanded if you would enter in..."
Curtis Hutson's version says "O sinner trust the Lord, be cleansed of all your sin, for thus He hath provided for you to enter in."

Now, I don't see that as having to name every single sin and stop doing it before getting saved, but more like "Lord, my entire nature is sinful, and I'm turning to you from my sinfulness, and holding nothing back." Some might call it semantics.

There was a guy behind me once when we were singing "Victory in Jesus," who sang "Then I asked Jesus to save me and won the victory" instead of the actual words involving repentance, which he didn't believe anyway.

Interesting stuff.

100% agreed about Curtis Hutson's tracts. Extremely shallow. They still sell that at SOTL. 1-2-3-4 pray this now.

[BroJesse]

Sad how Curtis Hutson and SOTL strayed from this foundational truth.

Well it SOTL wasn't always that way, but Hutson did bring in those changes and it has become so mainstream among IFB churches that the average member doesn't know anything different to the point that anyone who holds to the biblical truth of repentance and faith is looked upon as a strange person.

[BroJesse]

Another article here also mentions how the words in Soul Stirring Hymns was changed:
http://www.johnnythebaptist.org/SermonO ... Repent.htm (see the subsection on Curtis Hutson).

[LindaR]

Here's an interesting quote by B.H. Carroll. From Way of Life Encyclopedia: Repentance

"The preacher who leaves out repentance commits as grave a sin as the one who leaves out faith. I mean he must preach repentance just as often, and with as much emphasis, and to as many people as he preaches faith. To omit repentance, to ignore it, to depreciate it, is rebellion and treason. Mark its relative importance: You may make a mistake about baptism and be saved, for baptism is not essential to salvation. You may be a Christian and not comprehend fully the high-priesthood of Jesus Christ (Heb. 5 :11), but 'Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.' So said the Master Himself. Repentance is a preparatory work. For thus saith the Lord: 'Break up your fallow ground and sow not among thorns.' I submit before God, who will judge the quick and the dead, that to preach faith without repentance is to sow among thorns. No harvest can be gathered from an unplowed field. The fallow ground needs to be broken up. The most striking instance on record of repentance as a preparatory work was the ministry of John the Baptist. He was sent 'to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.' He did it by preaching repentance, and Mark says his preaching was 'the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.' Here is the true starting point. Whoever starts this side of repentance makes a false beginning which vitiates his whole Christian profession. When true repentance was preached and emphasized, there were not so many nominal professors of religion. TO LEAVE OUT OR MINIMIZE REPENTANCE, NO MATTER WHAT SORT OF A FAITH YOU PREACH, IS TO PREPARE A GENERATION OF PROFESSORS WHO ARE SUCH IN NAME ONLY. I give it as my deliberate conviction, founded on twenty-five years of ministerial observation, that the Christian profession of today owes its lack of vital godliness, its want of practical piety, its absence from the prayer meeting, its miserable semblance of missionary life, very largely to the fact that old-fashioned repentance is so little preached. You can't put a big house on a little foundation. And no small part of such preaching comes from a class of modern evangelists who desiring more for their own glory to count a great number of converts than to lay deep foundations, reduce the conditions of salvation by one-half and make the other half but some intellectual trick of the mind rather than a radical spiritual change of the heart. Like Simon Magus, they believe indeed, but 'their heart not being right in the sight of God, they have no part nor lot in this matter. They are yet in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.' Such converts know but little and care less about a system of doctrine. They are prayerless, lifeless, and to all steady church work reprobate" (B.H. Carroll, Baptist, Repentance and Remission of Sins, 1889)

[Samer]

:thumb Very nice.

[jdunagan]

THE ERROR OF DEFINING REPENTANCE MERELY AS A CHANGE OF MIND

Another man who has widely influenced the doctrine of repentance held by independent Baptists is the late Curtis Hutson, former editor of the Sword of the Lord. His 1986 booklet