Repentance and Faith - First Fruits
Repentance and Faith - First Fruits
We have to repent of our sins if we want to be saved.
Faith and
repentance—two sides of one coin—are the
fruits of the salvific event.
No unbeliever will ever believe nor repent
before God acts upon them (Jer. 17:9; Mark 7:21-23; Eph. 2:2; Eph. 2:4-5; Titus 3:5; John 3:19; Rom. 3:10-12; 5:6; 6:16-20; Eph. 2:1,3;1 Cor. 2:14). Their "participation" in that instantaneous act by God is wholly passive. Once so acted upon by God (Eze. 36:26),
faith and
repentance immediately follow, as
faith and
repentance are the first fruits of God's action, an act by God we commonly refer to as being
born again or
regenerated.
The statement "If we
want to be saved" presumes a
want is possible in
each and every person where no universal power of the will exists. It is a contradiction in terms. It is a view not found in properly understood Scripture, for it assumes man, not God, is in charge, able to thwart His redemptive plans determined before anything that was made existed.
Our
inclinations drive what we
desire (want). We
choose according to our
greatest inclinations at the moment we so choose. If we have no inclinations to choose, we deny the very inclinations that led us to not choosing. So even "
no choice" is a choice, by these terms. To be genuinely bereft of inclination is to be wholly arbitrary, truly random, independent of reality, and anything we would "choose" would be of no consequence and meaningless. It would be the mule standing before two buckets, sweet corn and sweet apples, unable to choose, ultimately starving to death in a frozen pose. This is not what Scripture teaches us about man's constitution, which serves but one of two masters (Matthew 6:24).
The unbeliever possesses no inclinations (
desires,
wants) to seek after God, for unbelievers quite literally
hate God. Their inclinations are but to not
not sin, never to glorify God in all that they think, do, or say.
How then can we be saved? Do not neglect the ordinary
means of salvation. The ordinary
means are the hearing (Rom. 10:13-17) of the Word of God. It is from the Word of God—
if it be the will of God to give ears to hear, eyes to see—that those for whom God the Son came and died (John 6:37; John 6:39; John 10:29; John 17:11-12; John 17:9; John 17:22; John 18:9), a great multitude no man can number
from among all the peoples of the
world (Rev. 7:9),
will be saved.
AMR