The Command to Repent and Believe

Acts 17:30-31
“Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”

My dad sent me an e-mail the other day, and at the end he said this:

“By the way, in the course of yesterday's sermon, our associate pastor said that with Jesus seated on His throne, the gospel message is not an invitation to ask Jesus into one's heart but is instead a command to repent and believe. How often do you hear that in the pulpit these days?”

I’ve been thinking a whole lot about that ever since. I do believe it, but when you really start thinking about it, you realize that the focus is entirely, completely different from what it typically is in many churches I’ve been involved with. I don’t know if I had ever actually sat and thought about the implications of the fact that Jesus isn’t just sitting there anxiously hoping we will invite Him to be a part of our lives. And while I do not think that most of the pastors I’ve known intend to convey that, this is what comes across many times when we focus too much on felt needs and the typical “seeker sensitive” approach to preaching, or put too much emphasis on personal experience over and above the revealed Word of God.

Though I’ve thought a great deal about the fact that Jesus is on the throne, I don’t really recall taking the time to seriously think about all that that means in the context of how we present the gospel to people. He isn’t wringing His hands and saying, “Why don’t you let me come in?” to paraphrase a Baptist invitational hymn, but, because His atoning work is completed, He is issuing the command to repent and believe. And in His mercy and patience He continues to extend that call through the preaching of His Word and the working of the Holy Spirit during this time before the final judgment.

When the apostles went out and proclaimed the message of the gospel, their invitation was not raise your hand, pray this prayer and be really sure you mean it, sign a card, check a box, we don’t want to embarrass anyone so every head bowed and every eye closed no one looking around….. The answer they consistently gave to the question, “Men and brethren what shall we do?” was to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And they called people to be baptized, a public sign of inward repentance and the new life God has given them and a proclamation of their unity with Christ.

This isn’t just a matter of approach or semantics. This is a matter of how we view Jesus Himself. Do we really, truly believe that He is Lord? If we truly get it into our thinking that He is on the throne now, shouldn’t that devastate us enough to revolutionize how we pray and live? All this talk, talk, talk going on about contemplative prayer and seeking to feel something when I pray and complaining about how boring it is to read the Bible and study and pray so why can’t we just have “practical application” and focus on our relationship with Jesus and forget all this doctrine stuff, pales into empty talk when you really start thinking about what it means that the Creator of the Universe, the Redeemer of men’s souls, is on His throne and commands our repentance and belief. It is not about me and my little self-centered felt needs. It is about His glory! You want to talk about revitalizing your prayer life? Think about the fact that when you kneel to pray and offer up your praise and petitions, He is Who you are addressing. And by His mercy and grace we who once were blinded in our sin are granted, by faith in Jesus Christ, an audience with the Most High God and a covenant relationship with Him. And He hears our prayers.

Too often we offer Jesus to people like the whole reason for asking Him into their hearts is to give them a better life or make them feel better about themselves and they end up thinking of Him as a kind of cosmic buddy or genie to fulfill their desires – the focus is all wrong, it’s all on us and our feelings or what we think we want to get out of all this. What we need to be teaching is that coming to Christ is a total surrender to His Lordship. It is a recognition of our spiritual poverty and inability to measure up to His holy standard and our desperate need for His salvation. It is repentance – turning from our sin and agreeing with God that we are sinners who need salvation. And the glorious truth is that Jesus came to earth, veiling His glory in human flesh, lived a sinless life completely fulfilling the Law of God, bore the full force of temptation and never yielded to sin, died on the cross and bore the full weight of our sin, atoning for our sin, was buried and raised to life on the third day, and ascended to be seated at the right hand of the Father, where He is ever interceding for us who repent and believe on His name. This is the gospel. Amazing grace!

The more I focus on Jesus as seated on the throne, Lord of Lords and King of Kings, Almighty, Most Holy Lord, the less I am able to seek after my selfish desires. The joy of the Lord is my strength. It is the joy of knowing Him and His righteousness and it is the joy of knowing that I am made right with Him, forgiven, and at peace with Him by His grace and through His blood shed for me. Because of all of that, I can have a relationship, growing and vital, with Jesus. And, yes, my life is better because of this, but the world may not necessarily agree that I am successful according to its warped standard.

Without doctrine, the study of God’s Word, and the Holy Spirit bringing me to life, I wouldn’t have known this truth. Knowing this, believing this, resting my faith on this, and living for this, of course my emotions get involved. Of course I want to shout for joy and sing His praise and bow before this King of all kings, at times so undone that all I can do is weep before Him. He alone is worthy of our praise. This faith in Who He really is fills my soul. All the longing for a subjective mystical experience and emptying the mind and seeking our best life now by focusing on worldly, temporal pleasures and riches and all the other stuff that is masquerading as truth today, that’s just not what we’re to be about. We are to be about the business of knowing Him in spirit and in truth, loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, seeking His kingdom first, and being a willing and obedient witness of His grace to the ends of the earth.

And writing all that just now, I realize how far short I fall, and once again must confess that I know what I believe – Lord, help my unbelief! Help me live out what I know is true!

Oh, Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name! More love to Thee O Christ, more love to Thee, that is my humble cry. Let me learn to love You and worship You in spirit and truth and to live like I believe You are Lord. For You are Lord. You are the great I AM, and worthy of all praise.