Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Can One Be a Christian if Jesus is Not Their Lord? (Part 3 - Acts)

Last time, we looked exclusively at Jesus' teaching of what we have been calling "Lordship salvation", which basically says that a person has not truly been regenerated/converted/saved if they have not yielded their life to the Lordship of Jesus. Ultimately, this lack of submission to His sovereign reign & authority evidences the fact that such a person has never received a new heart or the new birth from above, since the OT promised that the lives of those who would become the "new creation in Christ" (2 Cor. 5:17) would be characterized by obedience (e.g. Jer. 31:33; Eze. 36:25-29; Micah 4:1-2, etc.). Those whose sins have been forgiven by the blood of Christ, will out of love for, and reverence to Him, long to obey what their Savior has commanded His new covenant community. On the contrary, those who have received what Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace"; such people have not received not the Lord Jesus, and thus mock the efficacy of His atoning death by living a life of willful sin & unrepentant disobedience.  Such people "preach" a Jesus who can only save sinners from the penalty of sin, but not the power or presence of sin.

However, as we have already asserted in our previous posts, Jesus came not only to save sinners from the eternal consequences of their sin against the Holy One of Israel, but also to transform such sinners into His image by the promised Holy Spirit.  To state it starkly, the Bible teaches that those whose lives evidence no sanctification have no right to claim that they have been justified; that is, the fruit exposes the root.  Those whose lives are characterized by unrepentant sin betray the fact that they have never been born again, for their desires are not those that come from a God-given heart that has God-given desires for God-like things such as holiness, godliness, purity, obedience, self-control and the like (i.e. the fruits of the Spirit that Paul explains in his letters). No. Their desires are still earthly, which flow from an earthly, natural heart.

Let us then look at the apostolic witness to see if the rest of the NT was in agreement with what Jesus Himself taught regarding this issue. In our next two posts, we will deal exclusively with the book of Acts, which chronicles the spread of the gospel through Jesus' newly formed church.

Before Jesus was crucified, He repeatedly reminded His disciples that following His triumphant resurrection & ascension, He would subsequently pour out upon His fledgling followers - in fulfillment of OT Scriptures - the Holy Spirit of promise, who would enable this little flock to carry out & accomplish Jesus' great commission to the ends of the earth.

According to Acts 2, the promised Holy Spirit is poured out upon the disciples on Pentecost, and the church is officially born when Peter, filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit, boldly preaches the gospel of Jesus in Jerusalem. The result: 3000 people, primarily Jews, are converted, baptized, and added to the church (2:41).  For our purposes, however, I would like to focus on the content of Peter's message. More specifically, I want to look at what Peter's gospel required of his listeners in order for them to be truly saved.


In a nutshell, Peter convincingly proves the Jesus was indeed the longed-for Messiah of the OT, who as God Himself would set up His reign in the kingdom of God over His elect people. The only problem was that neither the Jews nor Gentiles realized this, since all humans by nature are blind to this truth (cf. 1 Cor. 2:6-10). After definitively declaring Jesus is the Messiah, Peter goes for the throat, reminding his audience that the God-man was violently murdered, though He committed no sin. Yet, God, in His faithfulness, raised His Messiah on the third day, and thus vindicated Jesus to be the Son-of-God-in-power (Rom. 1:4).


Though all these truths must be faithfully explained in our gospel presentation, our gospel presentation is incomplete if we do not call forth for a response from our audience.  This is precisely what Peter does. What is the response that God requires? "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (2:38).


So we see that repentance is absolutely necessary to one's sins being truly and fully forgiven. Unfortunately, the doctrine of repentance has fallen on hard times in the majority of 'evangelical churches' in our day. Not only is this fundamental prerequisite neglected and ignored, it is also defined improperly, resulting in many 'Christians' having a very unbiblical notion of what repentance truly is.


Put literally & simply, repentance is essentially the changing of one's mind. Instead of hating God & His rightful rule over us, we lovingly submit to His reign; instead of spurning His Messiah, we gladly receive Him as Lord; instead of loving & cherishing our sin & rebellion, we now see it as a noxious offense to God; instead of seeing the cross as foolishness, we now see it as the wisdom & power of God; the throne of our hearts is now occupied by Jesus and not us; His will is now desired above ours. In a nutshell, repentance is basically a radical change in the direction & course of our lives.


When we realize what repentance truly is from a biblical perspective, we see that this is inherently not natural to the natural man.  Repentance, like true & saving faith, is a sovereign gift that God gives to His elect (cf. Acts 5:31; 11:18; 2 Tim. 2:25; Eph. 2:8-9).  As Paul writes elsewhere, there is indeed a worldly 'repentance', that is, a natural sorrow for sin, that does not save.  What sinners need is a "grief given by God that produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret" (2 Cor. 7:10).  True repentance, which Paul elaborates upon in the following verses, is one that is indignant towards sin and despises anything that brings shame or reproach upon the glorious name of Jesus and His cause.  This kind of repentance is evidenced in concrete fruit, which indeed includes obedience (7:15).


This idea fits very well with God's promise to give His new covenant community (Eze. 37) a new heart (Eze. 36:26). When we understand that the Hebrew word for heart refers primarily to the volition & will of the mind, we see that that the gift of saving repentance/faith is the fulfillment of this promise.


Only the regenerated heart willingly bows to the Lordship of Christ, receiving Him as Lord of all. On the contrary, the unregenerate heart is willing only to receive Jesus as Savior, since the natural person looks out for his interests above and beyond any others, Christ's included.  Such people receive Jesus only to have their sins forgiven, since they don't want to be uncomfortable in Hell.  Such people are content to have the penalty of theirs sins removed, but not the presence of their sins, since they are still in love with them, due to their natural, sin-inclined hearts.  Those who are granted a new heart, however, begin to see sin the way God does: they themselves realize that they are guilty of participating in the murder of God's dearly-loved Son; they abhor it & run from it, hating even the thought of it. And when such a heart does commit sin, it is broken & destroyed, the way David was in Psalm 51. These are impossibilities for the "natural man".


This is why we make repentance the prerequisite to salvation.  Only the elect will repent. And so to prevent our churches from becoming predominately goat-centered, we preach repentance, knowing that the sheep will indeed hear - and respond to - the voice of the Good Shepherd (John 10:3, 16, 27).


Since this blog has unexpectedly gone on longer than I originally anticipated, I will end it here.  Next time we will look at the rest of the book of Acts to see if this is indeed a consistent & central theme that was faithfully preached by the first church.

In the Lord Jesus, and for His glorious reign to the ends of the earth,
Pastor Ryan

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