Grace Church Roseville is not a church characterized as issue-oriented.
Some churches become best known for their stands against or in favor of certain issues,
be those issues political, social, or religious.
It's not that we don't talk about current affairs, but we don't major on them to the
point that people identify our church with those issues, and frankly, I feel comfortable
with that.
But tonight we are going to talk about an issue.
My purpose in doing so is to address an issue that is becoming increasingly controversial
and divisive in the body of Christ.
And I think that it's important to address this because of the vast confusion on the
subject that is being generated by tapes, radio broadcasts, books, papers, and debates
on the subject.
The central focus of the question is the one that's the title of the message tonight and
which is found in the book of Acts chapter 16.
You need not look at it because you'll recognize the question.
It's the question the Philippian jailer asked of Paul in Silas, "'Sir, what must I do to
be saved?'
Now that's the question.
What must I do to be saved?'
It was a question asked with urgency and it was answered in simplicity.
Paul simply said to him, "'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.'"
Now one would think there would be no argument about the answer to that question as to what
to do to be saved, but in fact there is argument, questions like, well, what does it mean to
believe and what is the nature of faith that saves?
Or others pose the question, must Christ also be Lord in order to be Savior?
Two sides have polarized in this debate and names familiar to all of us are on both sides
of it.
Their positions are usually labeled by the opposition.
There are those who are said by their opponents to teach easy believism.
On the other hand, those people say of their opponents that they teach lordship salvation.
It is a dangerous thing to try to define these terms briefly, but I'm going to do that for
the sake of some who may be totally unfamiliar with what these terms represent.
Easy believism is said to be the teaching of cheap grace, the teaching of superficial
faith, that all that one has to do is to intellectually believe in Jesus Christ and He is saved and
it makes no difference about His life after that, whether it gives fruit or whether there
is obedience to Christ.
In fact, one writer even says that a person can totally deny God and become an infidel
and an apostate, but yet if he at one time prayed a prayer and believed in Jesus, he
is still a Christian.
And so that is something of a caricature of easy believism.
And then there are those who are said to teach lordship salvation, which is said to be the
adding of repentance to faith, making repentance a human work and thus mixing works and faith
together and perverting the gospel.
Those who teach what is called lordship salvation are said to preach that one must surrender
everything in his life when he trusts Jesus Christ for salvation and that if he does not
do that, he is not truly a Christian.
It's unfortunate that each of these groups is somewhat guilty of misrepresenting the
other and has encouraged the taking of sides and the calling of names.
Christians have been hurt, churches have been divided, and fellowship has been broken as
this issue has been made the test of one's orthodoxy.
If in fact the gospel is genuinely being undermined and compromised, it is a matter of grave concern
to us and it is an issue that is worth fighting about.
But frankly, my conclusion is that the two groups are a lot closer to each other than
they are willing to admit, especially to each other.
Under the guise of arguing for truth, the debate I think has degenerated into one of
personality and pride and not unlike that spirit that was among the Corinthians when
they were guilty of having what Paul called a party spirit.
I think we need to ask two questions to begin looking at the matter before us.
The first question is this, what is the gospel?
Actually there is not too much debate about that simple question from the two sides.
Both sides would agree that it is the good news of salvation from sin, which is based
upon the historical unique work of the Lord Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection.
And both sides would correctly go to 1 Corinthians 15 verses 3 and 4 and point to those verses
as a definition of the historical gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ
for our sins.
And indeed that is the message.
By the way, that is the message, but particularly in our culture we have to be careful because
in that simple message that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and was
buried and rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures, there are some presuppositions.
One has to understand who Christ is, for example.
One has to have some understanding of what sin is.
One has to understand what Christ's death for our sins means.
And one needs to understand the fact of the resurrection.
Now I mention that because we cannot presume that those to whom we witness today regarding
this simple gospel understand what those terms mean.
We cannot merely presume they understand who Christ is or what sin is or the concept of
His death for our sins or the resurrection from the dead.
And so in presenting the simple gospel, we must be sure that people understand those
truths.
We are coming into a culture that's not unlike the cultures that many missionaries face where
there is really no knowledge of the biblical God and biblical terms, biblical truth.
And it's going to be nearly impossible for a person to really take the four spiritual
laws or some of the simple tools that have been used in the past and to go through those
and to expect the person who's hearing it for the first time to understand what it means
because we are in a secular culture that is post-Christian.
And that's one reason I'm comfortable with our evangelism strategy here that says that
one of our key tools in getting the gospel to people is to use home Bible studies where
we can build up to the simple gospel and lay a foundation for it going back to Genesis
and building from there to be assured that when people hear that Christ died for our
sins and rose from the dead, they understand what that means.
You see, now what has all this got to do with lordship, salvation, or easy believism?
Well, maybe not a whole lot, but it has what to do with the gospel.
We need to be sure people understand those simple terms that we take for granted because
of our background.
But that brings us to a second question, and this is the heart of what we want to talk
about tonight.
What does one have to do to be saved?
What is required so that that message of the gospel that we just talked about is genuinely
applied to one's personal life?
That's the question.
I think all of us would agree that salvation is not a matter of doing, but of responding.
For salvation does not originate with man, but with God.
Salvation is of the Lord.
Eternal life is not something we do to get, but we respond to the gospel, to the work
that God has done so that we can be saved.
But that brings us to this point then, what is that response that is necessary on our
part?
There are two words that seem to be used interchangeably in the New Testament to describe that necessary
response within the heart of the sinner so that he can be saved by the death, burial,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ for his sins.
And those two words are believe and repent.
I repeat, it seems that these two words are used interchangeably.
Let me show you what I mean.
Listen with me to the gospel of Mark, chapter 16.
I want you to compare the Great Commission as Mark records it with the Great Commission
as Luke records it.
It begins here in the last part of Mark 16.
Look at verse 16, which says, He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved, but
he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.
Now we are introduced here to a whole other topic and that is the relationship of baptism
to belief.
I just want to simply point out to you that if baptism were essential to salvation, then
it seems to me that Mark would have concluded by this kind of a statement, but he who has
disbelieved and has not been baptized shall be condemned.
But I don't want to get into that subject tonight.
I just want to point out to you the fact that Jesus said, He who has believed and has been
baptized shall be saved.
The emphasis here is on belief, believing.
But then compare what is said in Luke, also attributed to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Luke chapter 24 and verse 46, and He said to them, thus it is written that the Christ
should suffer and rise again from the dead on the third day, and that repentance for
forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all the nations beginning from
Jerusalem.
And so in the two accounts that we've looked at of the Great Commission, in one place believing
is used and in another place repentance is used.
So my point is that those words are used interchangeably, that they bring you out to the same point,
the forgiveness of sins.
I'd like you to look also in the book of Acts chapter 2 and verse 38.
And once again, we could get sidetracked on the issue of baptism, but that isn't my purpose
tonight.
I want to talk about what Peter says here and in another place.
In verse 38, Peter says, and repent and let each one of you be baptized in the name of
Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins.
So here Peter says on the day of Pentecost as he preaches to the Jews listening to him,
repent.
And if you'll just look in chapter 3, you'll find that he says it again in the verse we
looked at this morning, verse 19.
On another occasion preaching on Solomon's porch at the temple, he says, repent therefore
and return that your sins may be wiped away.
Now the same Peter, a little bit later, preaches the gospel again.
Let's look in chapter 10.
In verse 43, here he is preaching to Cornelius and those gathered in his household.
And he has recounted certain things regarding Jesus Christ.
And he says in verse 43, of him all the prophets bear witness that through his name everyone
who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins.
And so now when Peter is preaching, he uses the term believes before the word repent.
Again I say the word repent, the word believe can be used interchangeably and bring you
out to the same point, forgiveness of sins.
And I want to point out to you one other example of this and it's Paul and we quickly go on
our way.
But Acts chapter 13 and verse 39 where Paul is here preaching to the Jews and he says,
and through him everyone who believes is freed or is justified from all things from which
you could not be freed through the law of Moses.
So now we have the apostle Paul, he is preaching to the Jews and he says everyone who believes
is freed from all things.
So I want you to compare Paul on another occasion when he preaches in Athens chapter 17 and
verse 30 where he says, therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring
to men that all everywhere should repent.
And so the same apostle Paul, preaching on two different occasions, comes to the climax,
what do the people need to do with the message?
In one place he says believe, in another place he says repent, the words are used interchangeably.
And to underscore the relationship even further turn to Acts 20 and verse 21 where the apostle
relates his ministry to the Ephesian elders telling them what he was doing.
And he says in verse 21, solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks of repentance toward
God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
And so these two words are related.
I want to emphasize that they are not synonymous, they don't mean exactly the same thing, but
they are complementary.
They are like the two sides to one coin.
They belong together and to use one or to use the other makes really no difference in
the end if they're properly understood.
Louis Burkoff in his systematic theology says this, true repentance never exists except
in conjunction with faith.
While on the other hand wherever there is true faith there is also real repentance.
The two cannot be separated, they are simply complementary parts of the same process.
But how are they defined?
What is faith?
What is repentance?
To believe means, and you could fill in some of the words, to trust, to rely on, to commit,
to place confidence in.
Now we could look up a number of scriptures here where the word is used not necessarily
in a salvation context and we could see that that's the meaning of this verb.
It is used of Jesus for example in John 2 verses 23 and 24 where it says that Jesus
did not entrust Himself to the multitudes.
Literally it says Jesus did not believe Himself to the multitudes.
He did not commit Himself to them because He saw that they were of superficial faith.
The idea there in the use of the very same term believe is to commit oneself.
It is used by Paul in writing to Timothy when he talks about God entrusting to him the gospel.
In other words he says God believed to me the gospel.
That is He committed it to me.
He entrusted it to me.
He placed confidence in me giving it to me.
So that's the whole idea of believing.
It is to place confidence in, to rely upon.
When we call upon people to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ we are saying we want you
to do more than learn about Him, that there are some intellectual facts you must understand.
But we are saying you must rely upon Him.
You must commit yourself to Him in some sense.
You must place confidence in Him.
That's what it means to believe.
But let's look at the companion term to repent.
What does that mean?
Well the word literally means to change the mind.
Repentance is the change of one's mind.
John's dictionary says this about repentance.
This change of mind involves, listen, both a turning from sin and a turning to God.
And so the standard work that most of us use to define what biblical words mean says that
the word repent means more than an intellectual process again, but there's fallout from it.
It involves both a turning from sin and a turning to God says Vine.
If it's a change of mind, what is it a change of mind and heart about?
Well let me just be suggestive about this.
We don't have time to go into detail, but it means in the first place that I change
my mind regarding the basis of my hope.
No longer am I placing my hope in myself and in my works, in my merit to get me to heaven.
I change my mind about that and the basis of my hope is not my work, it's Christ's
work at the cross.
Not myself anymore, Him.
It's also a change of mind about Christ Himself, who He is, that He is God, not just a man.
Now there are some who want to limit repentance to just that thought, that it means acknowledging
that He is God, period.
The problem with that is when you acknowledge that He is God, there are certain implications
that cannot be missed or overlooked.
For acknowledging that He is God means that He is also worthy of worship, He is worthy
to be served.
And I believe we have an example of that in none other than the Apostle Paul himself when
he was saved.
We could look at the original account of that in Acts 9, but I'd like for us to look in
Acts 22 where he is testifying about what happened to him that day on the road to Damascus.
Look at verse 7 of Acts 22.
He says, I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, Saul, Saul, why are you
persecuting me?
And I answered, who art thou, Lord?
Now the word Lord can also mean sir, it's just a polite term.
Paul may have meant it in that sense.
It's difficult to argue that one way or the other, the term also means deity.
But he says, who art thou, Lord?
And he said to me, I am Jesus the Nazarene whom you are persecuting.
And then he says, those who were around him saw the light but didn't understand the
voice.
And I said, verse 10, Paul says, I said, what shall I do, Lord?
And the Lord said to me, arise and go on to Damascus.
My point is this, that at this time of believing and repenting on the part of the Apostle Paul,
he understood who was speaking to him and recognized him, calling him Lord.
And his very first response recognizing his lordship is, what shall I do?
And so when we define repentance as merely an acknowledgement that Jesus is God and not
merely man, we haven't gone far enough because to acknowledge that he is deity has some implications
including what my response to him as deity ought to be.
If Jesus is in fact God, there are ramifications that are immediately apparent in my life as
a sinner.
Ramifications dealing with worship and service.
Well, repentance means that I change my mind about the basis of my hope about who Jesus
Christ is and it also means I change my mind about my sin.
This cannot be overlooked in repentance and be biblical about it.
Repentance has to do with one's attitude about his sin.
Instead of desiring and loving sin, which is the natural state of the sinner, one who
is in the process of believing and repenting changes his mind and he says in that instant,
sin is wrong.
I no longer desire sin and I want to change.
And at that instant he is further willing to change as much as he has given light to
see where it is needed.
I want to emphasize that.
The sinner in coming to Christ is incapable of understanding how much of his life needs
to be revolutionized by Jesus Christ.
That is a lifelong process that all of us are still involved in.
But to some extent that sinner does understand what needs to happen inside of him.
Lordship is an issue at salvation to some extent because it is inherently present as
a result of conviction.
The spotlight of the Holy Spirit has hit that sinner at some point in his life and within
the circle of that light where he understands what his sin is and its rebellion against
God there must be submission to Jesus Christ.
The sinner cannot say to Jesus Christ, I believe in you, but I will not yield this to you and
be genuinely saved.
I cannot see that as biblical salvation.
I repeat again, he cannot give his whole life intelligently to Christ because he does not
know all that that involves.
He spends his whole life learning that.
But within the spotlight of conviction where the Spirit of God is bringing him to the point
of repentance there has to be a dealing with that sin and that does involve the Lordship
of Christ.
Now some have a problem with this because they understand repentance as a human work,
a human effort.
And when one talks about repentance they get upset and nervous because they see that here
you're adding something on to the simplicity of faith.
You're saying that the human being must do something besides believe.
And I believe that is erroneous for this reason.
Repentance is no more a work of the human being than faith is.
If repentance is a work of the human being so is his faith.
My point is that neither can be accurately termed human works because both faith and
repentance are the result of God's gracious work in the sinner's heart.
Faith and repentance are gifts that he gives to the sinner enabling the sinner to respond
rightly to the gospel under the saving of his soul.
All of us are familiar with Ephesians 2, 8, and 9.
Let's look at that just for a moment.
We'll come back to Acts in a second but I want you to look at Ephesians 2, 8, and 9.
There's no one more jealous of protecting the gospel from human works than myself.
And I think the Apostle Paul would join all of us in that for he writes here, by grace
you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God.
Now what is not of yourselves the gift of God?
Well it is the salvation which is through faith.
The whole ball of wax is in the Apostle's mind here.
It is the salvation and it is the faith to respond to it.
It's all lumped together and Paul says this whole thing is not of yourselves, it's God's
gift, it is not the result of works that no one should boast.
So here we see that faith is in fact the gracious gift of God within the heart of the believer
so that he can respond in trusting himself to Christ, relying upon Christ and his finished
work for his salvation.
But I want you to go back now to Acts with me again and notice, excuse me, let's turn
to Romans first.
I got ahead of myself.
I'll quite go back to Acts.
Go to Romans chapter 2.
And I want you to see here that not only is faith the gift of God but so is repentance.
Paul says in verse 4, do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and forbearance
and patience not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?
Do you see the point?
A person who is a sinner is brought to repentance by the kindness of God and the gift of repentance
is given to him just as is the gift of faith.
Now turn back to Acts and we look in chapter 11 in verse 18 to see an example of this.
Peter is here now back in Jerusalem.
He's recounting to the leaders what happened in the household of Cornelius.
Now in verse 18 it says, and when they heard this, they quieted down and glorified God
saying, well then, God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to
life.
So once more notice that repentance comes from God as a grant.
It is his gracious gift to a person to be able to respond correctly to the gospel.
You can look at repentance in other contexts and you will find that it upholds this same
idea, that it is the work of God in a person.
When one is saved, he repents and believes.
And then the evidence of his genuine salvation is in the works that follow.
And even those works themselves are the gracious outworking of God in his life.
Paul says in Philippians 2, for it is God who is working in you both the willing and
the doing of his good pleasure.
There is never a point when we can look up to God and say, I am doing this all of myself.
The believing, the repenting, and the good works that follow that are all the gracious
work of God in us.
But having said that and having emphasized the fact that after genuine faith and repentance,
good works follow, we have to also acknowledge this, that it is possible for a true believer
to experience worldliness, to experience carnal living, and to show in his life the works
of the flesh.
When that is the case, it is ugly, it is out of character, it is inconsistent with who
he is as a child of God, and it dishonors his Lord and Savior.
But the thing about a child of God is that he will at some point acknowledge and confess
his sins.
That's really what 1 John 1-9 is all about.
The child of God is characterized by the fact that he is willing to confess his sins.
Such a disobedient child, if he does not confess, may as well be disciplined by his loving Heavenly
Father.
Why is that?
Because God wants his children to walk with fullness of joy and purpose in this life.
And he wants the life to produce the glorious fruit of the Spirit so that Christ is glorified
in him.
And God will do what he needs to do with his child to see that that comes to pass.
But understand that the appropriate response on the part of the sinner in hearing the gospel
is to repent and to believe.
When he does that, he is saved and becomes a child of God.
I think it's important to tell people that when we witness to them.
We don't have to overemphasize one thing or the other, but I think that when we explain
to them what to do to respond to the gospel, we need to explain what it means to believe
and what it means to repent.
That they might know how to respond appropriately to the gospel message and become a child of
God.
Now there are some people who get very upset when they hear messages like this and they
say, well when I trusted Christ, I never even heard the word repent.
Now how do I know that I repented?
And am I really saved if I didn't repent back then?
And believe me, there have been people who have been to the point of suicide over that
thought.
Did I repent?
Well the fact is that if genuine faith was extended by you to Christ back at that point,
repentance was a part of that even though you may not have recognized it.
That was the work of God in you because repentance and faith go together.
So don't allow yourself to become alarmed about that.
When there has been genuine repentance and faith, your life will go on in some measure
to show that.
None of us become perfect overnight, but in the process of time, God begins to transform
us and to change the orientation of our lives and the Lordship of Christ begins to expand
and we see new areas that need to be yielded to Him and that goes on for the life.
And God is glorified.
Let's bow together in prayer.
So before we go tonight, I wonder if there might be one here who has not been saved.
Let me emphasize tonight that there is no hope in whatever you can do to try to impress
God, but your only hope is in Jesus Christ and His work at the cross for you.
Tonight, God calls upon you to believe in Him, to rely upon Him and not yourself.
And in that reliance, to change your mind about what you've trusted in, to change your
mind about your sin.
As you do that, a new desire is born within you, a new turning to God.
We would pray that you would do that tonight.
Father, thank You for the grace that saves us.
Sometimes we get so hung up on our part and what we do.
What man must do to respond appropriately.
When the greater part of the story is what You've done, the great mercy and grace and
love You have bestowed upon us in Christ.
Thank You for Him and thank You for the gospel.
Lord, make us good witnesses, good communicators of that gospel.
May we go out from here determined tonight that we might be faithful in approaching our
friends and those who will hear us about Jesus, that they might come to respond to Him and
be saved.
Now Lord bless us, I pray, in the fellowship time downstairs.
Thank You for the refreshments that we have and for those who have lovingly prepared those
for us.
We ask Your blessing on the time.
In Jesus' name, amen.