Repentance is an ongoing process, by which we mean that, as Col. 2:6 says, “as you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” Throughout our lives and walk with Christ, we are living by faith in Christ, a faith that cannot, by definition, be joined with being stiff-necked and in rebellion against the Lord. Where one exists, the other cannot exist.
Repentance is a gift; it is given from
God. “Him God has exalted to His right
hand to be Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and
forgiveness of sins” (Ac. 5:31). “When
they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, ‘Then
God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life’” (Ac.
11:18). “Correcting those who are in
opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may
know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of
the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will” (2 Tim.
2:25-26).
Repentance is a choice men make. “Truly, these
times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent”
(Ac. 17:30). The Lord is “not willing
that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pt.
3:9). “The goodness of God leads you to
repentance” (Rom. 2:4b). Jesus said, “I
tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Lk. 13:3,5).
Paul joined “faith” and “repentance” in Acts
20:21: “testifying to Jews, and also to Greeks, repentance toward God and faith
toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” In
Hebrews 6:1 the writer does the same, speaking of “repentance from dead works
and of faith toward God.” What are these
“dead works” he speaks of? The term is
again used in Heb. 9:13-14. The context
of Hebrews concerns the sin of going back to the temple worship, a worship that
no longer has meaning or substance in light of Christ’s once-for-all
sacrifice.
You might think that all sin is “dead works.” But we believe he has in mind “works” that
are designed by the worshiper to gain favor with God in some way. Richard Charles Henry Lenski, the wonderful
Lutheran German/American Biblical scholar (not to be confused with Richard
Elmer Lenski, the evolutionary biologist from Michigan State Univ., or Gerhard
Lenski, the evolutionary sociologist from Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill) put it this way: “Some think that ‘dead’ means ‘sinful works in
general. These certainly would be a dead
weight on the conscience. Yet here ‘dead
works’ are scarcely crimes and flagrant breaths of law but rather all formal,
empty, false legal observances and self-invented works whereby men would seek
to stand before God.”
Now why make a big deal about this? Because that was the sin that Hosea
confronted in Israel in the years leading up to Hezekiah, and the message that
Hezekiah was responding to. To restore
the temple and the worship under the leadership of the priests and Levites who
had previously been a part of the problem rather than leaders in holiness would
have the possibility of leading to hypocrisy.
They could do works that that did not profit, because they were not mixed with faith (Heb.
4:2). That is why Hosea reproved the
people in what he could see were “dead works”: “For I (the LORD is speaking
through Hosea) desire mercy and not sacrifice and the knowledge of God more
than burnt offerings.”
We need to be mindful of this. It’s not just the Catholics that are wrapped
up in “penance.” We good “evangelical” types can have the same problem, doing
our works to be seen by men but not done out of a heart of repentant faith! There's nothing like Christmas, or Easter, for putting on a show of "dead works." Consider this warning.
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