A Quote on Repentance

   It is not uncommon to find in some an understanding of the gospel wherein repentance is understood in terms of works. Repentance is understood by these as a halting of wickedness and a commencement of righteousness. While this is a fair description of what repentance looks like, it fails to describe with any precision, the holy nature and origin of repentance.

   A practical description of repentance isn't focused so much on the visible outworking of that repentance, but rather on the internal mechanism that produces the external action. Repentance is therefore more precisely understood as being the very opposite of what it means to resist the Holy Spirit. It is no carnal work that a man does, but a work that is done to the man by God who grants it.

   The Apostle John reminds us in the sixth chapter of his gospel that it is the Spirit who gives eternal life. Yet there remains in some a confused understanding of the nature of repentance - a confusion wherein a person imagines that they may receive life from the same Spirit whom they are actively and unceasingly resisting! This notion of receivingly life while resisting it steadfastly is as preposterous and contrary to reason as it is heretical! Who can receive faith while resisting the Spirit?

   A man cannot receive life from the Spirit unless that man stops resisting the Spirit. One cannot receive faith in one hand while rejecting God in the other, that is wherever God grants that a man yield himself to God's Spirit, that is, wherever a man is found who has stopped resisting the Holy Spirit - in that place, and only in that place, faith is found. The ability to stop resisting the Holy Spirit, which we have named "repentance" and the faith that is received the moment the Spirit is no longer resisted - these are both granted by God, not a work of the flesh that will perish, but a work of the Spirit that will continue.

   Have you come to faith without repenting? You are deceived! Some vaporous doppelganger has been presented to you as the authentic Christian faith, but it is a faith that presumes too much upon the ability of man, having never understood what it means to repent. This faith has never stopped resisting the Holy Spirit, and therefore has never received life. It is a dead faith that is entirely powered by self. It is sufficient for cleansing of the outside of your cup, yet like a sepulcher, inside you are full of dead men's bones.

   Faith happens when the Author of all faith - our Lord Jesus Christ, in response to God's decree, and through the Holy Spirit grants this first grace to us - a grace so entirely contrary to our nature - He strengthens our spirit so that in a moment, in an instant of time, we are able to stop resisting the Holy Spirit! The moment we stop resisting faith is poured in, but not until. Faith comes into us through the Spirit, and cannot come into us so long as we resist Him. When God opens our heart to receive the Spirit, faith is poured into us. Faith is never produced by us, but received into us the moment we stop resisting God. Repentance can be said to precede faith only in this sense (for they surely come in the same, single stroke) unless a man is given grace to stop resisting the Holy Spirit, he will by no means come to saving faith.

Do you agree?

Genuine Grace

by Reid Ferguson

Walk in Wisdom - Gleanings from the Scripture
1 Tim. 1.14 - “and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”

Genuine grace, when operating on the souls of men and women, invariably produces two main things: Faith in, and love for, Christ Jesus.
If either is missing, so is salvation.

’nuff said.