You Don'T Need to Repent to Go to Hell — E.A. Johnston

Repentance as the Gospel's Nonnegotiable Demand

The language of the gospel is, except you repent, ye shall all likewise perish. The word ye referred to in the passage means you. You must repent. And if you don't repent, you shall perish. What does perish mean?

It means to be damned to hell. Our text says ye shall all likewise perish. That word all is an all-inclusive all, meaning all men shall drop into hell unless they repent. God requires repentance to get to his heaven.

You don't need to repent to go to hell. And that's the title of my message this evening. You don't need to repent to go to hell. You see, the problem is, friends, the church in America decided years ago to no longer preach the doctrine of repentance.

The Church's Abandonment of Repentance

Instead, they replaced it with an only-believed gospel, which is a no-gospel. Like I said, you don't need to repent to go to hell, but you do need to repent to go to heaven. Now, many seminary professors will disagree with me on that one.

I have a fight on my hands. Many pastors will disagree with me on that one, and many evangelists will disagree with me on that as well. But I don't care if you disagree with me, because I am not in charge of your eternal destiny.

But if you disagree with the words of Christ Jesus, then you have to take it up with him on that day. I believe the reason why churches no longer preach the need for repentance is that they teach that man is not so bad after all.

He doesn't need to repent. He just needs to clean up a little to become a Christian. And on top of that, it's not politically correct to tell a person they must repent. If you do that, then you have to tell them what a big sinner they are.

And if you do that, then you have a fight on your hands with the chairman of the deacons. You tell him he needs to repent, and his face will turn blood red in anger. We don't preach repentance in America anymore because we don't want to offend anyone.

That's why we've turned our churches into nightclubs and entertainment halls, so we won't offend anybody. After all, everyone loves to be entertained, right? Like I said, you don't need to repent to go to hell, but you do if you want to go to heaven.

I believe the church changed its message about 40 years ago. I've sat in churches for the last 40 years in different denominations, and I've never heard a sermon on the doctrine of repentance. The one time I did was when I heard my friend Richard Owen Roberts preach it.

But he's the only one I've ever personally heard preach on the doctrine of repentance. I know there were some faithful pastors who preach on repentance in America. I'm not saying nobody does, but few do.

When was the last time you heard a sermon on the doctrine of repentance with a call for you to repent? You see, if you don't believe in the depravity of man, then there's no need to preach up repentance because man is not that bad after all.

He just needs to reform himself somewhat. If you believe you become a sinner when you sin, then you don't need to preach repentance. But listen, friends, I'm not a sinner because I sin. Rather, I sin because I'm a big sinner.

Repentance in the Preaching of Mark and John the Baptist

But today, we preachers don't preach what they preached in the New Testament. We have our modern version of the Bible that has omitted the necessity of repentance to be saved. But in the Gospel of Mark, in chapter 6 and verse 12, it tells us what the followers of Christ, His disciples, actually preached.

It reads, and they went out and preached that men should repent. That's it, plain and simple. Men should repent. But you don't have to repent if you want to go to hell. John the Baptist's message was, repent.

In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. When John the Baptist came to town, he preached repentance and it cost him his head.

We preachers today won't preach on repentance because we're afraid we'll lose our heads or our 401k plan, which would be even worse. When Jesus came into His public ministry, the very first sermon He preached was on how to become wealthy as a Christian.

Isn't that what He preached? That's what we think He preached. Let's read the Gospel of Matthew and see what it really says. From that time, Jesus began to preach and to say, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Paul's Call for All People to Repent

When the Apostle Paul preached, he preached on repentance. When he preached a sermon in Athens on Mars Hill, he told the Greek philosophers gathered there and the times of this ignorance, God winked at, but now commanded all men everywhere to repent.

And when Paul was speaking to King Agrippa, we see the following content of his sermon. Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but showed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and works meet for repentance.

Listen friends, the Bible declares that to be saved, one must exercise repentance toward God in faith in Jesus Christ. But you don't have to repent to go to hell, but you do if you want to go to heaven.

You will have to repent or perish into everlasting burnings. We don't preach on repentance because we don't want to preach on sin, and we don't preach on sin because we don't want to run anyone off from our church campus.

False Conversions and the Lordship of Christ

So we don't mention sin, and we don't mention repentance. We will say, God loves you, and all you have to do to go to heaven is accept Jesus as your personal Savior. And to do that, all you have to do is walk this aisle and make it public.

Welcome friend, you are now a Christian. And we put their name on our membership roll, and we tell them that they're Christians, and they think that way, and they live the same way, and they stay in their sins.

And when they die, they drop into hell because they never repented of their sins. And we fill our churches with individuals who walked that aisle and repeated a prayer, and they've never been awakened to their lost condition.

They've never been convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit, and never have been objects of grace through the supernatural act of regeneration. And we make sure that we preach nice little messages that won't upset anybody, because you don't need to repent to go to hell.

And the smoldering issue beneath all this is the fact that if you preach on repentance, the crowd will scream and holler, we will not have this man rule over us. Your average church member wants to rule his own life, so we divide Jesus up into two people, a Savior and Lord, and most take the Savior half and leave the Lord part alone.

The Lordship of Christ is not a message preached in this nation anymore, so there is no need for repentance. At least that is what the pulpit of our day states, but we live in a day of great spiritual declension, and many are unsound in their theology.

Joseph Alleine on the Unsound Convert

But listen, friends, let us return to a more wiser time and listen to the words of a Puritan pastor by the name of Joseph Alene. Let us hear what he has to say to us today about the unsound convert. Here now are his words.

The unsound convert takes Christ by halves. He is all for the salvation of Christ, but he is not for sanctification. He is for the privileges, but does not appropriate the person of Christ. He divides the offices and benefits of Christ.

This is an error in the foundation. Whoever loves life, let him beware here. It is an undoing mistake of which you have been often warned. Jesus is a sweet name, but men do not love the Lord Jesus in sincerity.

They will not have him as God offers to be a prince and a Savior. They divide what God has joined, the king and the priest. They will not accept the salvation of Christ as he intends it. They divide it here.

Every man's vote is for salvation from suffering, but they do not desire to be saved from sinning. They would have their lives saved, but still would have their lusts. The sound convert is willing to have Christ upon any terms.

He is willing to have the dominion of Christ as well as deliverance by Christ. I highly recommend Joseph Alleyne's book, A Sure Guide to Heaven. It will surely help you get there. I can guarantee it won't resemble anything you hear in our pulpits today.

Historical Awakenings and the Necessity of Regeneration

The theme of the Great Awakening in 1740 was, You must be born again. That's what the great British evangelist, George Whitefield, preached. And the theme of the Second Great Awakening in America was, Man's duty of repentance.

That is what Asahel Nettleton preached. God honored the preaching of those doctrines by attending them with great power and spiritual awakening that shook this nation. But in our churches today, we have deadness everywhere because our preaching is lifeless.

It has no power because we fail to preach up the doctrines of the duty of repentance and the necessity of regeneration with unction from on high. There's not been a spiritual awakening in America since 1858 to 1859.

I wonder what would happen if the majority of the pulpits in our land began to preach on repentance and regeneration. Would it not set our nation ablaze with power from on high? But you cannot preach on man's duty of repentance without mentioning how big a sinner man really is.

And you can't preach on the necessity of regeneration because then you take salvation out of the hands of man and put it in the hands of God. So instead, we tell jokes and funny stories on Sunday mornings and we do our best to entertain you for an hour and a half before it's time for lunch.

Like I said, you don't need to repent if you want to go to hell.