Maybe you’ve read enough to be confident in what you’ve heard, and you want to know how to take the next step. Maybe you’re like me and you want to peek at the end before you’ve finished the intro. Maybe you just want to check out the tutorial before you get started. Fair enough, then. Let’s talk about the good news.
But where to begin? How to package a narrative that spans thousands of years, a theme that transcends words, and a doctrine that has acquired mountains of interpretation? I think what I want to do is carve away everything but the essentials, lay it out there, and leave it to you to clothe as you like. That minimum, then, might be something like this: believe and repent. Except that requires a bit of an explanation, doesn’t it? Believe what, exactly? And why? Repent how? I think I can do a little better than that.
Let’s go back and start in the beginning.
BACKGROUND
God established Creation, the heavens and the earth and everything between. Of all that He created, we are His masterpiece. We were made to be in relationship with Him and with the rest of creation. God’s design for us entails that we have free will, which we used to rebel against Him. Our relationship was fractured, and we were separated from His presence. As you might predict, we quickly established that we are incapable of doing what is right and good. If left to our own devices, human beings are just not very cool. This is the sin nature that Scripture talks about.
Thankfully, God cares about us. He cares so much, He spent the rest of human history teaching, guiding, and sometimes kicking us back in line and closer to Him. We’re stubborn, so it’s taken a long time, but that time means nothing to God.
Along the way, God chose a people through which to demonstrate His righteousness and bless the world. He created, rescued, and made covenants with this nation, which became Israel. It was through those covenants that He delivered His law, His commandments, and His presence. He offered blessing for obedience and punishment for rebellion.
God established early that He is a just and righteous God as much as – and because – He is a loving God, and that there will be accountability for our sins. Always. The mechanism that He introduced to address this was the sacrificial system, which was ultimately fulfilled in Christ. It is not critical that you understand everything about the history of Israel, but without a grasp of the basics you will miss most of the framework upon which the Gospel stands.
So then, you have God as the Creator, us as the Created, and a free will nature that can’t help but rebel. You have a just and righteous God who requires accountability, and a system that was designed to show us the gravity of our error while being incapable of fully settling the debt. But God is also loving, and desires our company. How, then, do we reconcile these things?
The answer is Jesus Christ.
Setting aside His Divine nature for a time, Jesus came and lived perfectly as a man so that He might be presented as the worthy Lamb, the only possible sacrifice able to cover the sins of the world. For the world. For you, for me, for everyone. Here at last, payment in full for our rebellion. God’s offer for salvation and restored relationship.
BELIEVE
When we say believe, this is what we mean. Not just that Jesus Christ was a man who lived and died two thousand years ago, but that Jesus Christ, the Son of God and God Himself, came and died to atone for a rebellious, sinful nature that we cannot fix on our own. We believe that the same God that authored creation – and is Sovereign over it still – loves you and me enough to offer Himself in payment for our wayward behavior.
This is a critical concept: We are sinful by nature and incapable of fixing it. We are lost and without a hope for rescue except through a savior. That savior is the Lord Jesus Christ, who lived perfectly, died terribly, and rose from death in victory before returning to His seat on high.
REPENT
Repentance is not a confession of sin. It is not the acknowledgment of sin. That’s like saying that changing your car tire is taking off the lugs. Close, but not quite. No, repentance is turning away from sin and the world and turning towards God. If repentance could happen in a closet, everyone would be a Christian. It isn’t that easy.
By going back to the original languages, we can see this more clearly. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew can literally mean to turn, or return. An about-face, if you will, physically or spiritually. The New Testament Greek seems more aptly defined as a change of heart, or mind. It is a change that results in a new self. It means acknowledging that God alone writes the rulebook, that Christ alone is Lord, and that you receive His free gift of salvation through your faith in Him alone.
Here, then, is the critical concept of repentance: You must deliberately choose to take your entire life, turn it around, and aim it towards Jesus Christ. All in. Full send.
Let me put it another way.
A prayer does not lead to salvation. Neither does baptism. It doesn’t need to happen in a church or as a ceremony. No priest or pastor required. You do not have to give a verbal confession of sin. You don’t have to give a verbal confession of anything. There are multiple examples of this in the New Testament.
Belief and repentance leads to faith, and faith in Christ leads to salvation.
Do not mistake me. I’m not saying that any of these things are bad. In fact, they’re great. If you want to start your journey off with a prayer, great! If you want to take your next steps with someone at a local church, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you put a punctuation mark on the entire thing by getting baptized at the same time, praise God!
I’m saying don’t handcuff your salvation to these things, because you might miss the most important part. Saying some version of the Sinner’s Prayer with someone at the back of a church is just fine, but it is not what gets you there. What does?
Belief and repentance.
Believe and repent. Everything else will follow.
