Pt. 19 LBCF Chap 15 Of Repentance Unto Life and Salvation

Repentance Unto Life and Salvation in the 1689 Confession

All right, we're up to chapter 15 of the Confession of Faith. And this chapter is of repentance unto life and salvation. Now, there's five paragraphs in this chapter. It's a relatively small. Each of the paragraphs is actually on the small side as well.

But it's divided into four parts using Sam Waldron's outline. Now, this chapter has been problematic for many Christians. In fact, the wording that is used in the first two opening paragraphs, the first one in particular, has raised many questions.

And we're going to raise some of those questions and hopefully answer them as we go through. All right, we'll address these questions as we proceed. All right, in fact, even before I put the confession up there, there are a lot of theologians, Reformed Baptist theologians, who believe that this is one of the chapters that would be helpful to actually revise.

So far, most people have resisted that. But I think you'll see why. But I'm ambivalent on it as it stands right now, whether it should be revised or not. Paragraph one, part one, is the recipients of repentance.

Paragraph one is those converted in riper years. Now, look at this first opening paragraph. Such of the elect as are converted at riper years, having sometime lived in the state of nature and therein served diverse lusts and pleasures, God in their effectual calling gives them repentance unto life.

All right, now notice, this is one of the phrases that troubles people. Why does the confession start with talking about those who are saved at older years? You know, it's a question. That's a rhetorical question.

I'm not looking for an answer. But that's what a lot of people say. And that raises a lot of other questions. And it continues. Having sometime lived in a state of nature, in other words, in the natural state of things, which is a sinful state.

And obviously, if somebody is living in the natural state of things, they're serving their lusts and their pleasures. Is that? Something was buzzing around. I was just hoping it wasn't my eyes. God in their effectual calling gives them repentance unto life.

Now, that's the first paragraph. And again, the wording, it's important that the wording is consistent with the Westminster Confession. Now, one of the things that makes this so controversial is those people who say that it should be worded because they think it's misleading.

This is one of those chapters that we know John Owen was particularly involved in using the wording in both the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration. And this is identical with the wording of those two confessions.

So this is not something unique to Reformed Baptists. All right, so it is consistent. That would be undecided. Why would we change it? But the question arises, why start with this group of people? Why start with this group of believers?

And we'll answer that question hopefully as we go through a little further. Another question that is raised, is it only this group that is granted repentance? Well, if it was to end right here, if this was the only paragraph, the answer would seem to be yes.

But this is why we have to read through the entire chapter. So one of the questions that arises is, are only those converted white believers given repentance? Now, the mere fact that this question may be asked, that's what signals the problem.

And that is a question that people ask. And so that's why some pastors have said, they don't like the wording of it. Some would say the confession needs to be revised. But a thorough reading of the entire chapter makes it clear that all Christians need repentance.

And that's why the move to revise it has stalled in most cases. Because if you read through the entire paragraph, it doesn't contain heresy. It doesn't contain error. It's just subject to more misinterpretation because of the way it was put together.

Does that make sense? All right. So here's a quotation that might help. The confession makes this distinction out of a desire to distinguish repentance as a crisis experience from repentance as an ordinary grace.

All believers are marked by the ordinary grace, but not all believers will know or need to know repentance as a crisis experience. That's from Sam Waldron's Modern Exposition of the 1689. Now, the point that he's trying to make, and the point that the theologians made in the confession was there are some people who have fallen into such great sin that their conversion and repentance is somewhat of a crisis.

You know, they're in the middle of a crisis. Whereas somebody who has grown up in the church, was saved at an early age, and has never fallen into gross sin and all, they still need repentance, but it's somewhat of a different nature than those who find themselves in a big crisis.

All right. And hopefully we'll see that a little bit more as we go through, because I'm actually, this chapter is very short. Like I say, it's only five paragraphs, four parts. We're gonna only spend the time on this one tonight though.

I'm not gonna go into a second chapter because I wasn't sure how much discussion there might be on this. So I'm leaving it open. So we may just close early, but the next paragraph, I'm sorry, the next chapter is of good works.

Both of them together would take more than one session. So we may be a little bit under time, but I think it's important that we spend as much time as needed on repentance because repentance is such an important doctrine.

The Recipients of Repentance Include All Believers

Okay. Paragraph two, allays any fears that it's only those who are saved in older age, because you'll see that it includes pretty much all men. All right. See the first several clauses indicate all men need repentance, whereas there is none that do good and sin not.

All right. Well, there you have it. Do we have any such thing as a sinless person? No. All right. And the best of men may through the power and deceitfulness of their corruption dwelling in them with the prevalency of a temptation fall into great sins and provocations.

All right. So there again shows that who fits into this category? All of us. All right. So it kind of counterbalances the idea that is it only those that are saved at an older age? No. It includes everybody.

And then God provides repentance for all in the covenant of grace. And this is what we see in the last part of it. God has in the covenant of grace, mercifully provided that believers so sinning and fallen be renewed through repentance unto salvation.

There's a couple of things that are important to look at even in the wording. Now notice, God has in the covenant of grace, mercifully provided that believers so sinning and fall be renewed. Who's the author of repentance?

Okay. Let me just pause right here. There are certain segments of the evangelical church today that preach that repentance is only something that the believer does in response to conversion. That's not true.

Repentance is also a product of grace. Okay. In other words, even repentance is a gift from God. All right. Now, does that cause you to do something? Yes. And we'll get to that a little bit later. But notice even the wording of the confession, God has in the covenant of grace, mercifully provided so that believers so sinning and falling be renewed through repentance unto salvation.

All right. So who are the recipients of repentance? Of repentance? All true believers. Without repentance, there is no eternal life. That's why the title of the chapter of repentance unto life and salvation.

Okay. So that brings us now to part two, which is paragraph three. And that is the nature of repentance. All right. Now notice, this saving repentance is an evangelical grace. Okay. That's an important phrase.

Again, that really refutes a lot of the poor theology. For example, Lutherans in their theology teach that repentance is a result of fear of the law of God. Now, the law of God, as of course, we're Reformed Baptists, we understand that the law brings us, shows us the need for repentance, but the law itself doesn't bring us to repentance because a lot of people are confronted with the law of God who never repent.

All right. That's why it's important. This saving repentance is an evangelical grace. All right. What is grace? Exactly right. It has to be given to you. Can you buy grace? Can you secure it with any good works?

No. All right. So the nature of repentance is firstly, it's an evangelical grace, whereby a person being by the Holy Spirit made sensible of the manifold evils of his sin. Notice, what is an absolute necessity for repentance?

The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit must regenerate the heart. You follow? The Holy Spirit must regenerate the heart. So the Holy Spirit made sensible of the manifold evils of his sin does by faith. In other words, it's not repentance and faith and adoption, effectual calling are all working together, but they're all gifts of God apprehended by faith.

And what do we see that repentance looks like? That's what we're talking about the nature. There's a humility. The person humbles themself for it with godly sorrow, detestation of sin, self-abhorrency.

That's very politically incorrect these days. You don't ever wanna say that you hate anything about yourself. Praying for pardon and strength of grace. Notice again, the work of the Holy Spirit in all of this.

Repentance is impossible without the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer. And then with a purpose and endeavor by supplies of the spirit to walk before God unto all well-pleasing in all things.

Notice the two sides of repentance. You can say one negative, one positive. What's the negative side? Turning from sin, repudiating sin, hating sin. What's the other side of repentance? Turning to God.

And we're gonna see, I'm gonna just gloss over that right now because I have a chart a little bit later I wanna show you. So that's paragraph three, the nature of repentance. Part three is the continuation of repentance and this is what's given in paragraph four.

As repentance is to be continued through the whole course of our lives. Notice, continual repentance is necessary. Repentance is not just a one-time deal. All right, and there's different. And again, if we understand that there's different aspects to repentance, that just makes all the more sense.

All right, the reason for continual repentance upon the account of the body of death and the motions thereof. When you're converted, you stop sinning. Oh, thank you. I was beginning to doubt myself. I'm here to testify.

Okay. All right, no, and repentance is a continual thing. All right, and the duty and particularity of it. So it is every man's duty to repent of his particular known sins, particularly. All right, and this is one of the things that's important.

This is why if somebody is mired in sin, a believer we're talking about now, and they're wrestling with sin in a certain and a particular way, okay. When they come in for counseling, there may be some very specific things that the person is counseled to do.

Asking for forgiveness, making restitution. There's a lot of things involved that show the fruit of repentance. All right, okay. Leads to paragraph five, the provision of repentance. The reason for the provision of repentance, such as the provision which God has made through Christ in the covenant of grace for the preservation of believers unto salvation.

All right, in other words, as you continue to repent, it keeps you in that right relationship with God. Because remember, unconfessed sin, what happens with unconfessed sin? There's consequences for that.

Not wrath, you're never cut off, but what are some of the consequences of sin that we are told to talk about or that we're told about in scripture if we're not confessing our sin? That's not a rhetorical question.

What does the scripture teach? What are some of the consequences that a believer can suffer if he has unconfessed sin? Sickness, every Sunday when we do the Lord's table. If you're living in persistent sin, you come to the table, you could be sick and or die, all right.

What else? What happens if you're mistreating your wife? Your prayers are hindered. I'll just bite my tongue on that one. I'm not gonna. Okay, so the reason for the provision is the preservation of believers.

This ties in with the perseverance of the saints, right? God has made a way so that we are continually in a right relationship with him, all right. Preservation from damnation. Look, that although there is no sin so small, but it deserves damnation, all right.

Any sin, if it were possible, you only commit one small sin, that one little white lie throughout your whole life, you're still down, you're still damned. Oops, yet there is no sin so great that it shall bring damnation on them that repent, okay.

And the necessity of preaching repentance, which makes the constant preaching of repentance necessary. That's why repentance has to be a part of the consistent preaching of the word, consistent teaching in Bible studies, et cetera.

All right, now that's the general outline, all right. I wanna go, I have two other slides that I wanna show you, which one comes from Sam Waldron's book and to show that repentance is, it's not really so simple as saying, I'm sorry.

You know, there's more to it. Not even, I'm sorry, will you forgive me? That's part of it, but that's not true. That's not full repentance. So what Sam Waldron did in his book on an exposition, and this comes pretty much from the Puritans, all right.

The Puritans used this analogy. It's the analogy of a tree, all right. So if you look at it, this is the tree looking at this as though this is repentance. Now notice the soil, saving grace, regenerate heart, all right.

There can be no repentance without a regenerate heart. So that's where the work of the Holy Spirit comes in. First and foremost is that there's no, you're not gonna be sorry for your sin or anything else until the heart has been changed, okay.

So you have the saving grace, regenerate heart, all right. Moving up a little bit closer to the surface, a true sense of sin. You have to actually see your sin for what it is, okay. Because let's face it, what did Paul say?

You know, he says, until I found out that coveting was a sin, how did he know? And that's why gospel preaching is so important because a person has to know what sin is. That's why the law of God needs to be preached, all right, working in conjunction with the gospel.

The law of God identifies what sin is, and then the gospel is what gives you the grace. Moving up, apprehension of mercy, understanding that though you were a sinner, when you repent, God actually extends mercy to you.

Moving up, turning from sin would be like the whole trunk. There's the essence. That's where, that's the meat of repentance. Isn't that what repentance means, especially in the Greek, turning from the sin, all right.

And then going up, turning to God. It's not enough just to turn from sin, but you have to turn to God. Remember, there's both a negative and a positive side to repentance. And then up at the top, you see the fruit of repentance.

What's the fruit of repentance? Obedience. If you're not being obedient to the scriptures, can you really say that you're truly repentant? All right, so this is a little bit helpful to show the various aspects of repentance.

Now, I just have one more slide, and I wanted to go through this because this is right from The Doctrine of Repentance by Watson. And I just love, he breaks it down. He calls them, I call them elements.

He calls them the ingredients of repentance. This is from his book, The Doctrine of Repentance. If you've never read this book, it's a small paperback. I would highly recommend this to you. All right, it's available through Banner of Truth Trust.

All right, first thing is sight of sin. You have to be able to see sin for sin. If you don't see sin for sin, what are you gonna repent? If you come to me and tell me, hey, you did this and so, and I say, so?

Well, that's wrong. Well, no, I don't think so. How are you going to repent if you don't think you've done anything wrong? All right, what shows you what you're wrong? The law of God. So you have to, this is why preaching the law of God is so crucial.

I've told you the story before of, where I was interviewing a hitman for organized crime. And he justified every, he didn't think it, we knew for a fact that he'd done about 34 hits. And as I looked at him and I talked to him, he says, no, every one of those guys deserved, I didn't do anything wrong.

No heart change. In fact, if he got away, he'd do it again. I made sure I stayed on a good side of him. We actually did hit it off pretty well, which is a scary thing. Sorrow for sin. It's not enough just to see your sin and identify it.

There has to be genuine sorrow, not crocodile tears, you know, but a genuine sorrow from the heart that, you know, what I've done is wrong. And there could be weeping involved here. All right. But it's an absolute essential.

All right. And then confession of sin. That's where you're saying agreeing with the scripture, so to speak. Yes, I see that what I've done is wrong. And I'm confessing that. All right. Now, again, I'm not talking about confession as going to a confessional or whatnot, but confession needs to be done to those people to whom you have offended.

So confession first and foremost is always to God. But if I have sinned against an individual, confession is also necessary to go to that person and confess. All right. Because remember, part of repentance, part of the fruit of repentance is to confess.

And part of repentance is setting things right. Remember, there's a scriptural mandate for how do you set things right. If you're a thief and you've stolen something, what do you have to do? You have to not only pay for what you've done, but make restitution.

Shame for sin. This is something that is missing in our society. There's no such thing as shame anymore. When was the last time you ever saw somebody go like this? Everybody know what that means? All right.

When I was a little boy, if we did something that was wrong, I remember my grandma used to say, shame on you. There's no such thing as shame anymore. There has to be shame and a genuine shame that what I have done is wrong.

I have sinned before you and before man and before God. Hatred for sin. Can you honestly say when you've been confronted that you hate your sin? This is why it's so crucial that when somebody comes in for true biblical counseling, that we walk through the elements of what they've done to see is there truly hatred for sin?

Or is there merely guilt or shame because you got caught? All right. This is the case with most criminals. You arrest some young kid, he's been breaking into houses and he's, oh, I'm so sorry. What are you sorry about?

You're sorry you got caught. If there's no true repentance, no hatred for sin, it's only gonna recur. And then the last part, according to Watson, is turning from sin. And turning from sin means turning to God.

All right. If there's no turning from the sin, if it's just confession over and over and over again, I'm doing the same thing over and over and over again. Can't say that there's been true repentance.

The Elements and Fruits of True Repentance

Thoughts, comments, or questions. So you can see why some Reformed Baptist theologians don't really like the way the confession begins because it starts you off thinking in one way. I think it brings you back.

I think as a whole of confession, this chapter is okay. And I would not be one of those who would push for a revision. I think it's all right the way it stands, as long as you look at the whole chapter.

Yes. Yeah. It's a good possibility. And again, remember, this follows the wording of the Westminster Ennissavoy almost verbatim. I think it is verbatim. And when you have somebody of the stature of John Owen, who we know is very orthodox in his view of what repentance is and whatnot, there had to be reasons.

And sometimes it's hard for us to put ourselves in the context of when the confession was written. Because remember, all of these confessions were written somewhat in response to the era of Roman Catholicism, all right?

And so there's usually reasons that, when you see how well-constructed this whole document is, there could be a reason that we're not even thinking of why they chose to lead off with that paragraph. So, but I think your comments are as good as any I've heard.

Yes, Ted. Other writers have put phrases. I think in depth, and I hate that sin, yeah, I can't stop doing it, or whatever it is. But if you have a godly sin, then you fall on the cross, what God thinks of.

Sure. So the godly sorrow, for example.

Well, yeah, I think what you're saying, by definition, if you have a godly sorrow, that can only come from a truly repentant heart. Because you can't have a godly sorrow if the heart isn't truly repentant, because repentance, true repentance, is an evangelical grace.

Mm-hmm, sure. In my experience, and in the years of counseling that I've done, it's usually pretty simple to see somebody who is genuinely repentant of their sin, because they wind up repenting and confessing things that nobody knows about.

But as God is weighing on their heart, like I was asked to counsel with somebody who had been somewhat unfaithful to his wife. Don't ask me what somewhat unfaithful means, but I say it that way advisedly.

But anyway, and when he first time he came in with me, and we sat down, and we were walking through, and he was repenting, he started coming up with five, six other sins that nobody ever would have known about, and he was confessing them and asking for forgiveness, you know, from God for those sins and all.

That's kind of an indication of what you're talking about, that judgment day honesty, is that God has so moved on his heart that he knows these other things, and he knows nobody else knows it, but he's got to get them off his conscience, because he's truly gone through these.

He hates his sin and knows he has to turn from it. To me, that's one of the ways, and I've seen that. If I have to kind of, if I'm sitting in a counseling situation, and I have to kind of pull it out of the person, boy, it's hard for me to believe that that's somebody who's truly repentant.

You follow? Okay. Oh, I have to finish off. Thank you. Thank you.