The first step toward salvation is to repent—and that means forsake your way—the customs and traditions you have been following—the ways of man—the ways you have been living. Forsake your own way. Turn to God’s way—the way of His law! The way of His will! Yes, the way of success, achievement, doing good, of prosperity—the way of eternal life! Since the entire Bible contains the magnified explanation of God’s law, the Bible becomes our guide for righteous and successful living! That is why Jesus said “man shall live by every Word of God.” (Matthew 4:4)
True repentance means you give yourself to God. And the only kind of repentance that is prerequisite to the gift of eternal life is complete and unconditional surrender to God—to His will, which means to His law. You become His, literally, and wholly, with no reservations! Repentance is a complete change in your life—in your attitude toward—your purpose in life—your thoughts and your actions. It means forsaking some of your old friends and companions—if they are living the worldly life that seems right to man.
It means turning from and forsaking worldly social and religious customs, interests, pleasures that are contrary to God’s ways. It means the Bible becomes the supreme authority over your life—your guide to living—yes, to happy, abundant, gracious living, and successful and righteous living, henceforth and forever—to live your life from now on with God’s help, and by His power, according to the spirit and principle, as well as the letter and precept of His Commandments. You henceforth study the Bible—not just carelessly read, but study, to learn God’s way, and to live by every word of God!
How many people who profess salvation—who have “accepted Christ”—do you believe have really come to this kind of real repentance? Jesus warned “I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” (Luke 13:3, 5). And again, “Whoever says, I know him, but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.” (1 John 2:4). Yes, millions are deceived! But if millions are deceived about the prior condition of repentance, just as many millions are deceived today as to the kind of faith that really saves!
We are taught, and rightly, that we cannot earn our salvation—it is the gift of God. It is by grace—and “grace” means undeserved pardon and free gift. Yet, notice how inconsistent people are! They argue there must be no works—no obedience of the Commandments, or doing good—no recognizing of God’s authority over your daily living—because salvation comes by grace—God’s free gift. And yet they seem to believe that somehow we must supply the faith that brings salvation! If we work up, or if we supply this faith by which we are saved, would not that, in fact, amount to our producing our own salvation by the very works of supplying this faith?
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. (Ephesians 2:8) The faith that really saves is given to us by God—it is a gift from Him! You don’t supply it, or work it up. In Galatians 2:16, Paul explains a man is justified only “by the faith of Jesus Christ.” Notice, he does not say, by the man’s faith in Jesus Christ—he says by “the faith of Jesus Christ”—which means Christ’s faith—the faith He has and uses—the same faith with which He performed all His miracles—the same faith by which He lived—His faith, placed by a miracle, as a gift direct from God, into the man! Salvation is God’s gift. You do not, cannot, earn it. God gives it. But—and here is where people become mixed up, and stumble—God will give it only on condition! Yes, there are terms and conditions! God has set these terms, and you can’t alter them, and He won’t change them!
It is not your faith in Christ—a faith you supply by believing in Him as Savior—that saves you. It is Christ’s faith, which He supplies and places in you by His Holy Spirit, which actually imparts eternal life. Salvation is God’s free gift—it is by grace alone. Yet the very purpose of God demands two prior conditions on your part. First, you must repent! Second, you must believe in Christ as Savior. But you cannot believe in Christ unless you also believe His message—the gospel of the Kingdom of God (Mark 16:15-16). But neither your repentance, followed by your obedience, nor your faith earns any salvation!
They are merely prior conditions. But when you supply these two ingredients, then God stands bound by His promise to impart to you by His Holy Spirit His righteousness, and Christ’s faith—and these, supplied by God, are the ingredients that save and impart eternal life! Paul explains: “know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.” (Galatians 2:16). You must repent and believe in Christ, as a condition, a prerequisite, in order that you may receive, and be saved by the faith of Christ—by His faith placed within you!
All have sinned! All have gone the way that seems right in human eyes. And our sins have cut us off from God: “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.” (Isaiah 59:2). Now salvation—eternal life—comes from God. But your sins have cut you off from God. The connection is severed. You severed it! God will not give you his gift of eternal life until you are reconciled to Him! “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) The penalty of transgressing His law is death! Jesus paid that penalty in your behalf. If, and when, you truly repent, and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal Savior from sin and from sinning, then by and through Him you gain access to God the Father.
The two conditions of turning from sin, and accepting Christ, you must do yourself! That is not what saves you! It merely reconciles you to God—brings you into contact with God, so that God will then give you His Holy Spirit—and His spirit imparts the gift of the faith that saves—and is also the Spirit of understanding, of knowledge, of the love that fulfills the law and imparts God’s righteousness. Millions have been deceived, and falsely believe that they have a salvation that they do not yet have at all! God help us, then, to understand.
Just how shall you go about it? Must you go down the aisle in a church? Must you go to a public altar, and shed tears in front of others, and pray aloud before others? Being converted is not an initiation into a lodge or secret society! It is not a rite or ceremony! It is a matter of turning from the old life that was false, yet may have seemed right to you—of turning to a new and true way of life in Christ Jesus, living by every word of God, in and by the power of God’s Holy Spirit! When you understand the real meaning and the purpose, you’ll see that it is something that takes place down deep in your heart and not a matter of the place or the surroundings, or the presence of other people. What Jesus said about confessing or denying Him before men did not refer to a rite, or ceremonial form of being converted. Being converted is the receiving of the Holy Spirit—the very life—of God.
You can, of course, make this full surrender and consecration to God in front of others, at an altar. You can, also, make it just as sincerely and fully, in a private room at home, all alone with God! You can pray in church before others and do it sincerely from the heart. Yet Jesus said, “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:6). When you have really repented—repented of what you are as well as what you have done—when you come to this parting of the ways from the old life—when you come to the place of making this complete change—this total unconditional surrender to God—this complete consecration, giving yourself to Him, accepting Christ as your personal Savior—turning from your sins, and to God’s way of life as you’ll find it in the Bible, you’ll want to pray! Yes, you’ll want to throw yourself completely on God’s mercy, and ask Him through Jesus Christ to forgive you all your past sins and transgressions against Him.
The apostle Paul reveals how. He confessed: “For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:18-19). He saw human nature in its gruesome reality. He struggled with it—fought against it—only to find that it was more powerful than he! What could he do? Paul cried out, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” (Romans 7:24)
GOD WILL! “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature, a slave to the law of sin.” (verse 25). It is not, perhaps, of great consequence where you do it! But the important thing is to do it! The longer you put repentance off, the harder it will become. Why it should be difficult to just go and throw yourself on God’s mercy, and ask His forgiveness and give yourself to Him, is hard to understand—yet something in the human nature within you will keep tempting you to put it off. That temptation is not of God, you may be sure. If you are sick and tired of the empty, fruitless, materialistic life you have been living—if in your heart you do want to turn from it to the full and joyful life filled with God’s spirit, then why delay? This is just the start of the real Christian life. Don’t look for a certain feeling, but repent and believe.
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