 Hello again and welcome back to the series. So in this video what I want to talk about with regards to salvation is repentance and it's understanding what what this word actually means and what it actually entails. Now his historically when I've done this series I've tried to go through a chapter at a time you know John chapter one chapter two chapter three and so on to keep things simple and to keep things in a necessary order but in this particular video I'm actually going to have to dance around and go to lots of different parts of the Bible because it's a subject that shouldn't actually be very complicated but something has got lost in translation somewhere and it's become a complicated topic when it shouldn't be. Now if you've been following this series when we looked at John particularly the first six chapters we're seeing Jesus use quite simple language whoever believes on me he who believes and so it sounds like it should be quite simple but then when it comes to repentance there's so many extra layers of what that's supposed to mean that gets added on to it that it makes a topic that well it should be simple actually becomes a very complicated topic and then people aren't actually sure what is it and you know how do I repent for salvation and so today we're going to actually study what repentance is and how it's used across the Bible. So before we begin to study what it means and what it is there's just a few things that I want you to think about what you currently believe and what you have usually heard about repentance because this issue does cause a lot of controversy and confusion. So think about these things first of all do you believe that repentance is necessary for salvation? So just ask yourself that question yes or no do you think that repentance is absolutely necessary for somebody to be saved and have eternal life? With that being said let's assume that you think the answer is yes then the second question I would ask you is how do you define repentance? What exactly must somebody do to repent for salvation? Okay and then the final question I would ask you is have you ever heard this phrase you must repent of your sins to be saved? Okay maybe you've heard that phrase quite a few times from a number of different preachers and so they're just a few things that I want you to think about going into this topic. Okay now something that's super important and I cannot stress this enough is that to benefit from this study video you need to remove any preconceived ideas that you may have about repentance. Okay so just because you've had a definition of repentance that's being shaped by well-known or respected preachers or is shared by many Christians that does not make your definition correct. Okay what we need to allow is for the Bible to be its own dictionary let the Bible define what repentance for salvation actually means. So it's super important that you take away any preconceived ideas that you've already developed because otherwise you're going to see something that challenges that and you're just going to think well that's wrong but that's because you've already got a preconceived idea of what it is. So you know it's really important that we start from a blank for this study. Now there are a few important facts that I want to get across to you first just to help sort of set the premise for what we need to look at and what we need to resolve. So the first fact that I want to make you aware of is that repentance appears multiple times throughout the Bible okay and sometimes the context is salvation so getting saved into eternal life sometimes that is the context of repentance but it's important to understand that not always it doesn't always mean salvation and these are just two examples. So in Mark chapter 114 to 15 it says now after that John was put in prison Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying the time is fulfilled the kingdom of God is at hand repent you and believe the gospel so that that verse is about salvation that has to do with eternal life getting saved whereas this first in Revelation 16 and 9 and men were scorched with great heat and blasphemed the name of God which has power over these plagues and they repented not to give him glory that that verse is not about salvation that's not about people getting saved and so that's just one important fact about repentance it's not automatically about salvation sometimes it is sometimes it isn't important fact number two is that the verb repent does appear multiple times in the Bible but this phrase repent of your sins notice I've underlined those three little words there is never found once the Bible never says that verbatim now one exception to this is the new living translation this is one notable exception which does say repent of your sins in several verses including those that related to salvation so for example we we just read Mark 1 14 to 15 in the previous slide well in the nlt that actually says repent of your sins and believe the good news it doesn't just say repent and believe look chapter 13 is another one where it says repent of your sins and turn to God whereas most Bibles would just say repent and then finally the last example that I've chosen acts 319 and it says now repent of your sins and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped away and again most Bibles would would just say repent there they wouldn't say repent of your sins and so you see most Bibles don't translate these verses this way because this appendix of your sins it's not found in the underlying Greek the new living translation has added this but it's a doctrinally biased paraphrase it's not it's not actually an accurate translation okay now there are passages about turning from our wicked ways which is is similar wording not not quite worded the same way but you know similar meaning we will explore that later in the video to understand what that actually means and why the Bible says that okay but the phrase repent of your sins is never found it the Bible just says repent in all of the verses where the new living translation would include those three words there the third important fact that I want to get across to you is that the Gospel of John is the one book specifically written to tell you how to have eternal life and never mentions repentance once okay so there's kind of opposing arguments there on one side you might say that well the word repent is never found in John's Gospel which is written to tell us how to have eternal life so therefore we don't need to do it for salvation but then the flip side on the other side people will say that the word repent is used as a requirement for salvation in other Gospels and in Acts so therefore it must be required then okay well we can resolve this argument if we define repentance correctly all right if we define repentance incorrectly one of these arguments has to be thrown away it falls apart whereas if we define it correctly we can actually bring both of those arguments together so throughout this video I am actually going to assert that repentance absolutely is required for salvation but only if we define it correctly can we properly justify why the Gospel of John never uses the word now if we understand what it means then we can we can justify why he never mentions this word but the Gospel of John is still sufficient okay but if we define incorrectly one of these arguments has to go okay and then important fact number four is that Reformation era Bibles such as for example the King James used the word repent far more frequently the modern translations do particularly in the Old Testament so I'm going to give you some example a couple of examples here so in Jonah 3 10 in the King James it says that God saw their works that they turned from their evil way and God's repented of the evil that he said that he would do unto them and he did it not whereas in the ESV it would say that God relented in Genesis 6 7 it says in the King James that the Lord said I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth both man and beast and the creeping thing and the fowls of the air it repentance it repents me that I have made them in ESV it doesn't say that it repents God it just says that God would say I am sorry in the ESV there so this causes controversy with how repentance is actually defined and how much emotional weight this word actually carries what you will find is that modern Bibles tends to replace almost all instances of the word repentance with another word or another phrase where that passage could prove that repentance doesn't always mean turning from sin so we'll explore that a little bit more later but the thing is as well notice here in the King James that it actually said God repented and so people would have a problem with that because people would say well God hasn't got any sin that he needs to turn from but that's my point exactly that repentance won't always mean turning from sin and this proves it but because of all this emotional weight and baggage to the word modern Bibles end up using different words so we will explore that in a moment and so this leads me on to the next point which is what is the dictionary definition of repentance and you'll find that religious bias has actually shaped the definition as well so I got this from the Miriam Webster dictionary it seemed like the one that offered the best of the two there so the first definition then we have is to turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of one's life and then the second definition was either to feel regret or contrition or to change one's mind and you'll find that the differences between these two definitions is what causes the most controversy and confusion on this issue and so that's really what I want to address is the difference between those two and putting them in their their proper place. Now repentance is not a word that's typically used in a non-religious vernacular so to a large extent its definition has been shaped by religious doctrinal biases particularly of Catholic persuasion but occasionally the word repentance can be used in other contexts such as in a political context not necessarily talking about religious matters and so I've got one example of repent being used in a political context here. So the Japanese general Iwani Matsui this was in reaction to the Nanjing massacre which was an atrocity committed by Japanese forces in China during World War II so this is a quote from him. I now realise that we have unknowingly wrote a most grievous effect on this city when I think of the feelings and sentiments of many of my Chinese friends who have fled from Nanjing and of the future of the two countries I cannot but feel depressed. I am very lonely and can never get in the good in a mood and to rejoice about this victory I personally feel sorry for the tragedies to the people but the army must continue unless China repents. Now in the winter the season gives time to reflect I offer my sympathy with deep emotion to a million innocent people and so this was his reaction to what was basically a horrible event committed in Nanjing by Japanese forces and he made this statement that he believed China needs to to repent or change course. Now no context is given in this statement as to what he actually expected China to repent of. It's unlikely referring to sin or regression or hostility because Japan was the attacker okay China was the defender so he you know he couldn't have said that they needed to repent of the invasion. It could not exactly mean changing one's mind because China is a country it's not a person and so what he was likely referring to is that he felt that the Chinese republican government should change political course or stance in some way in regards to to the war so this is repentance used not talking about someone turning from sins it's just showing that it can just mean to change your mind or change position or change course from one course towards another. If you search repentance or repent on a search engine an overwhelming majority of results will be of a religious nature but you can search political repentance to find it used in a in a non-religious context. Now as an appendix to that point about repentance used in a non in a non-religious context I've decided to add a little bit of extra stuff to the original recording on this issue because I really need to help get this point across to you about how something should be a simple word but is made complicated in the Christian world. So just in response to in in reaction to that that the Japanese thing about you know the Japanese general said that China needs to repent well this is an example of China saying that Japan needs to repent but this is a more modern example so this is a Chinese news and current affairs site and there's this it's not really an article I think it's just it's just a political cartoon that they've given some context to so the title is unrepentant okay and again this is this is about the war and what what this cartoons caption is saying that the the Japanese government has approved textbooks that remove terms such as the the comfort women that were accompanying the army because the Japanese army would essentially force some of the local women into prostitution and also forced captivity as well so with the whole Nanjing massacre and all of that horrible stuff done in China by Japanese forces even to this day the Japanese government has tried to downplay it or deny it and you see here that the releasing textbooks where we seem to conveniently not mention some of those horrible things so history is essentially being omitted and you know we have the same problem with this kind of thing happening in the western world where people try and hide stuff from history and so this is where the the Chinese government is although well the Chinese news site rather is accusing the country of Japan or at least the government of Japan of being unrepentant now they're not asking the Japanese government to turn from all of their sins and go through self-reformation because this was you know this was like 78 to years ago this this was a long time ago now this was a generation ago so long that a lot of people that would have suffered these things aren't alive anymore Japan isn't still going around the world doing these things so the context of repentance isn't that they need to turn from all of this stuff that they're doing because they already turned from it at the end of the war and again later we'll talk about the distinction between turning and repenting but the context is that all they're asking the Japanese government to do is you know apologize for what happened or be sorrowful about what happened be regretful about what happened and just recognize that it happened and stop denying it that's the context of repentance it's not turning from something and stop doing it they already did that at the end of the war without you know without China asking them to do so it was because Japan lost the war but this is a change of mind it's just recognizing that you've done wrong and this will be very important when we recognize about what it actually means for sinners to you know Jesus calling sinners to repentance for example it's not always you know stop doing stuff so much as it is recognize that you have done something and that will prompt you to change change your mind or change course and we will explore all that all that later on but I've decided as well to show you a few more examples of repentance used in a non-religious context because although I don't speak any Asian languages you know fluently I know a couple of phrases and words in Cantonese but I don't speak Oriental languages however sometimes more you know more than once I have seen English translations of you know things that would originally be written in Chinese or Japanese where repent is used far more frequently in a non-religious context that we don't really use in English today so let me just show we'll be really quick on this but let me let me just show you a couple of stuff here now I mentioned just a few minutes ago that if you search repentance in a search engine almost all of the articles will probably be of a religious nature usually Christian sometimes Muslim but but typically it's a very religious word we've very very seldom use it outside of a religious context now I've searched for the repent in the Chinese words here okay and again I mean you know most of you reading you won't read Chinese so you won't know what most of this is saying but again if you were to check all these links and if you open it in google chrome you can right click on a page and translate it into English but if you if you would just check out some of these articles again a lot of them are religious that that does dominate a lot of results in the search engine but if you were to search it in the Chinese characters you would probably find it used in a non-religious context more frequently and more easily than you would in English so the first result that comes up this this Baidu website this is I guess this provides a dictionary so the original is in Chinese I've just I've just run it through the google translate to turn it into English so it looks like an English page but what the original is in Chinese so it gives a simple definition of repentance it's a very simple definition as with most things in the dictionary you would want to find just a simple definition okay but then it says it also means a confession to God and a new beginning well well that definition has obviously been shaped by predominantly Christian understanding okay that that's not natively the meaning of repentance that's obviously Christian layers of built upon top of that so then when you go down a little bit it just tells you what the word means and it gives you an example this is not used in a religious context so notice that the non-religious definition of repentance like any other word in the dictionary would have a very simple meaning but then when you go to the Christian definition of repentance we don't just have a simple meaning anymore now we have a very you know big article about what it means and it does quote to be fair it does provide some Bible passages for reference but the thing is some of these verses that are quoted the Bible just says repent or it just says repentance that doesn't mean that there's all this overloaded hidden meaning behind it because only the context can tell you what is being repented of or what that repentance is and you'll find with this Christian definition becoming far more complicated this is going to be a problem that crops up and I will talk about that a little while from now but what this does show you it's not uniquely a problem in the English language this is a worldwide problem where in any language repentance is translated into that language and then we add all these layers of complicated meaning behind it when if we just took the word on its own you know before a religion even comes along just like any other verb in the Bible it really has a very simple definition it's not a complicated word at all we've made it complicated and that's why Christians are so confused on what what this actually means now forgive me for laboring this point I promise you we will get back to the Bible in just a couple of minutes but I really want to get this point across to you so again just while we're on the Chinese language this is a Chinese comedy TV show it's comedy which is why his head looks like a mushroom in case you're wondering there's the name of the show there and so in this particular episode a student is falsely accused of copying another student's work so obviously because it's a false accusation he does not accept the blame so although you can't see the teacher in this particular scene the teacher is talking so you can see the English captions and the original Chinese subtitles for what the teacher's saying behind the camera and so you've not only copied the work of another student but you won't admit you're wrong and repent your actions so again if we if we didn't have all of this Christian layers of overloaded stuff added to the word repent you would look at that statement and just mean you haven't turned from your actions or you're not sorrowful about your actions or you know you just haven't confessed it's quite a simple word okay when the teacher says you won't admit your wrong repent of your actions the teacher's not saying you know go down in sackcloth and ashes and turn from all of everything that you've done wrong and you know go through this journey of self-reformation you can't get all that from that word it's just a simple verb and the surrounding context just tells you what the context of that verb is okay and this so this is a good example of repentance used in a non-religious and in a non-political context like any other word in the dictionary he could have said you know you won't admit you're wrong and apologize your actions or you won't turn from your actions it's just a simple verb and we're going to you know we're really going to harp on to that when we get back to the Bible and then really really quickly I'm just going to very quickly show you two articles from the search engine results that we looked at earlier so if I just run an English translation on this so we're talking this is a forum here abandoning the deed of repentance now in you know in Christian terms that would be some really complicated thing but these guys they're just talking about a video game and it's just you know some some characters you know qualities or all things that's all they're talking about it's just you know since some people say that repentance is used this is not talking about Catholic confession or doing penance it's not talking about turning from all of your sins and being sorry about all of this stuff and never doing it again there's no dramatic stuff in this meaning they're using it as just a simple word and and you're expected if you were reading this forum article you would already know what that word means you don't need a complicated Christian theological understanding of the word like any other noun in the Bible you would already know what that means and you you would just see that as a simple statement and then the last thing this is some Chinese YouTube I guess let's just run translation of that mother forced her son to that that's amazing that you can force somebody to repent that's incredible isn't it mum forced her son to repent after breaking the family but unfortunately it can't be done anymore again nothing to do with all this overloaded religious stuff about salvation and turning from everything and living a new life it's just a change of action or you know changing something that you've done this has happened now we need to go on a course correction very very simple word so let's let's get back to let's get back to the Christian world let's get back to the Bible so then in terms of what the word repentance actually translated from so in the Old Testament it's translated from variations of the Hebrew word nachem I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right and in the New Testament it's translated from variations of the Greek word metanoia people are a bit more familiar with that translation of the underlying Hebrew and Greek can vary considerably in English and this is because the Hebrew and the Greek languages have a lot of different forms and prefixes and suffixes to verbs that we don't have in English because in English we instead rely on using a wider vocabulary of words and so to someone who doesn't really understand linguistics or how to translate a concordance might make it look like the Bible's not translated consistently you might wonder well how come one Hebrew or Greek word means so many different things in English but you know it's because the languages are different and so just as a disclaimer I don't actually speak Greek or Hebrew so I'm not on authority on how best to translate the Bible but I will show you what's in the concordance just so you can get an idea of how it's translated differently in English in various different passages so we'll just take a look at that now so having a look at the Hebrew first this is reference 5162 in the Strong's on the bible hub.com website you can see all the verses containing this word or a variation of it in some way and how it's translated in English either in the New American standard or in the King James there so you can see it in the 520 Genesis 529 this shall give us comfort or give rest Genesis 6 and 7 we have repented in the King James and we have sorry in the New American standard there further down again we have repented or we have I am sorry we have was comforted we have is consoling or is touching lead us comfort again comfort comfort time of mourning has come to an end or was comforted or changed their minds or repent changed your mind repent changed his mind repent there it's just repenting in both of those translations having compassion repent moved pity for it repented and so just going down here you can see how it becomes so many different things in English that there's another one regret and repent or change repent so you can see how this one Hebrew word becomes different things in English or you know it's very different when it reads in English depending on which bible you use and what which is the verse in question and you'll notice that in bold the Hebrew form changes many different times across these these different words so that's the that's the Old Testament that's the Hebrew now in the Greek you've got more variations in strong so 3 340 is the entry for metaneo like the the verb and then you've got 3 3 4 1 is metanoia that's the noun and then 3 3 3 8 is metamelemy and that that's a different form so what you'll find is that metanoia metanoia are more consistently translated as repent or repentance so if we just have a look down at metaneo first you've got you know repent for the kingdom is there of god is at hand they did not repent or they repented not repent repent so you can see that it's more consistently translated as repent in both the king james and the new american standard and then you know the surrounding context says what's being repented of or who's repenting as you just keep working your way down there and then when you've got metanoia that's again quite consistently translated as the repentance so obviously you have to use the english definition and apply that to the word repentance there so it's more consistently translated as repentance in the greek than the uh hebrew but this form metamelemy that that does have more variation so just have a look at some of these we've got repented in the king james but we've got remorse or feel remorse in the new american standard again we've got remorse or repent or you know regretting um i did not regret or i do not repent um i did regret i did repent and then this last one will not change his mind so a bit like the um hebrew in in this particular form of group we've got a bit more variation as to how that word is is translated you know when it when it's into english so then we have our possible definitions of the hebrew in english it can mean to feel sorrow or regret or grief change one's mind it can also mean to console oneself or to be comforted but that's that one's not really applicable because repent doesn't share this definition in english or greek or if it does share that definition in greek the bible never uses it in that way in the greek so uh you know it never comes across that so we can discount that one but then we see in the greek it can mean again to feel regret or remorse or to change one's mind so consistently repent can mean one of those two things as a verb so we we do see that it can carry emotional weight to it because obviously sorrow and remorse imply some emotion behind that uh behind the verb but it doesn't have to do that because notice it can just mean to to change one's mind we saw versus where that that's all it meant one good example of the new testament quoting the old testament uh using this word in such a context this just proves that the greek and the hebrew are directly equivalent so in psalm 110 4 it's the lord has sworn and will not repent you are a priest forever after the order of milk is it ac and then in hebrews 7 21 obviously that's the greek quoting the the hebrew so it uses the greek word for the word repent and again it says the same thing the lord swear and will not repent so the king james will translate that as repent modern bibles will usually translate that as uh what the lord will not change his mind but you can see that repent at least in the king james translation doesn't have to have emotional weight to it doesn't have to carry any connotation of feeling really upset or really full of sorrow or you know it can do but it can also just mean changing one's mind with with no particular emotion behind it so essentially the difference between reformation era bibles and modern translations is that modern translations will typically substitute repentance with another word so i just mentioned that the psalm 110 4 that's quoted in hebrews the king james will say repent but the esv or the new american standard will say changed his mind second carinthians 7 8 again the king james says though i did repent or i do not repent whereas modern bibles like the esv will say regret and then in genesis 6 7 when it when it repented the lord that he made the earth modern translations god will say something like i am sorry that i made the earth so they'll they'll substitute that word with a different word in english and you get a bit more um variation there and so because modern translations and because christian vernacular has substituted this word repentance with other words in these different passages the the few passages that still retain this word now people think it has a lot more dramatic emotional baggage attached to it so suddenly repentance no longer means to just change one's mind or feeling sorrow and so this has given rise to phrases such as repent or turn from your sins to be saved with a dramatic emphasis on self-reforming one's character regarding salvation so some christians when they say this they may mean well but what they fail to realize is that this does create kind of a secret back door where work salvation can kind of creep its way back in but it still masquerades as faith alone and so that's what i'm going to have to unpick and and really explore that and so allowing the bible to define itself by you know comparing all of those different verses on bible hub where you know the underlying hebrew or greek is translated into english though the this definition is consistent with the bible across its scope so you know to feel regret or contrition or just to change one's mind sometimes it has emotional weight behind it but sometimes it doesn't we can see the bible employing the word repentance in that particular way we can see that that's how the bible uses that word all right now as for this first definition to turn from sin and to dedicate oneself to the amendment of one's life well this definition is religiously and doctrinally biased okay this definition cannot be proven by the word repentance alone if that is the true definition of repentance specifically for salvation then that word repent or repentance must have additional context in all of the verses containing this word so in other words what i'm trying to say is a passage can't just say repent and then that means that you've got a turn from sin and you know amend one's life it can't just say repent and mean that it's got to have additional context to have that definition applied to it so a passage can't just say repent it's got to be you know repent of all your sins and clean up your life it's got to have context that that's what repent means if it's going to have that definition if it doesn't have that context it simply can't have that definition that that definition has been put on to the word repent just because of doctrinal biases or you know christians making that assumption but it doesn't automatically mean that word because it is just a simple verb or a simple simple noun okay and this really is going to be the crux of the matter in defining what repentance for salvation actually is so as we progress through this study you know we need to accept the true definition of repentance we can't just have this preconceived idea that that's what it is now the bible may say that but we've got to find a verse where that is given as the definition of repentance and so you know we're going to explore all the different passages where the bible uses repent or repentance it's not absolutely all of them but we'll cover enough to really have a firm grasp on this on this topic so i want to show you an example of how people are adding doctrinal bias to the word repentance okay so in mark chapter one i already read this earlier we'll read it again 14 to 16 now after that john was put in prison jesus came into galley preaching the gospel of the kingdom of god and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of god is at hand repent to you and believe the gospel now as he walked by the sea of galley he saw simon and andrew his brother casting a net into the sea for they were fishes so verse 14 sets the situation for verse 15 uh jesus came preaching and then in verse 15 jesus tells us repent so that's all he says he says repent you and believe the gospel okay just says this word repent that's the call for repentance in verse 16 it's then another situational change he now walks by the sea so then in verse 16 the context has changed so this is very short dialogue that mark chapter one is given we've got this very very short statement in verse 15 it's just this standalone statement jesus is preaching the kingdom of god with a simple instruction repent and believe the gospel all right so then with this simple statement in mind we saw earlier the dictionary definition and what the Hebrew and the Greek can mean the word repent can mean to feel sorrow or feel remorse or regret or it can mean to change one's mind so given that that's what it can mean let's substitute the word repent with one of those definitions to see how this verse would read if we did it that way okay so if it meant change your mind then the verse would say and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of god is at hand change your mind and believe the gospel so if we substituted repent with that alternative definition change your mind that's how that verse would read you see that there's no additional connotation to this it's just it's just a very simple statement change your mind and believe the gospel okay what if we took the sorrowful definition well then the verse would read and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of god is at hand be sorrowful and believe the gospel so again it's not this really dramatic definition of turning one's sins and changing one's character we just have this simple statement be sorrowful and believe the gospel or change your mind and believe the gospel now you might wonder you know well what about all the other passengers where repent talks about this that and the other well we will get there you'll just have to be patient with me okay but we'll start we're starting with something simple and then we can progress on to the more difficult passages but what you can see though from this is that this alternative definition if it's either change your mind or be sorrowful it doesn't really tell you very much does it okay if it just said change your mind or be sorrowful with no additional context you're going to wonder well change my mind about what be sorrowful about what those words need context to understand what you're changing your mind about or what you're supposed to be sorrowful about so the continuation of this statement believe the gospel is the only context given as to what it means to repent in this particular passage so if we didn't have repent anywhere else in the bible this is the only verse in the whole bible where the word repent appeared let's just say for the sake of argument well this is the only context of what it actually means you know changing your mind or being sorrowful and turning to believe the gospel that's the only context that we've got to go on and so repent is a verb it needs context to understand what's being repented from or towards so then if we are to say that repent means change your mind well then the only context that we've got from mark 115 is that it means to change your mind from not believing the gospel to believing the gospel that's what you've got to change your mind about okay alternatively if we're to say that repent means to be sorrowful then what we can take take from mark 115 is that the context is to be sorrowful about this not believing the gospel to compel you towards doing this believe the gospel when you you know realize that you're sorrowful about this okay so if that's what repent means either be sorrowful or change your mind the context tells you what's being repented of and that's all that we've got to go on from mark chapter 1 verse 15 so if somebody wanted to take mark chapter 1 verse 15 and say that repentance means to turn from sin and you know dedicate oneself to the amendment of one's life you would have to conjecturally add that definition onto the word because you've already got a preconceived idea that that's what repentance means but you can't prove that from mark 115 the context doesn't actually give you that to say that that's how it's defined so I'll show you a few examples of how people do this so I'll show you this this article first this first article here so in this article it's titled what does it mean to repent and mark 115 that we've just read is the reference verse okay and he has to explain what repent means in this verse this is an article written by this Kurt Michelson guy here so immediately he opens this article stating have you ever had trouble explaining what it means to repent of sin now we've just read mark 115 it didn't say repent of sin it just said repent and believe the gospel so immediately upon starting this article he's already forcing that definition onto repentance already even though that that's his reference you you cannot get it from this reference verse okay now we could discuss other verses which we will look at those later in the study but we've already got a bad start here we're already injecting our own interpretation onto the text you know before we've even got there so then he introduces you know what we normally think of confessing us in someone and so forth he then explains you know the greek word is to think differently or to reconsider which is similar to you know the definition that we found he then goes on to quote this guy john gill in his article so he uses a quote from this guy as his way of demonstrating what repentance means so we have this statement repent to you and believe the gospel he then quotes john gill is saying he called them to repent not only of their former sins and vicious course of life but their bad principles and tenets concerning a temporal kingdom of the messiah concerning merit and free will justification by the works of the law and salvation by their appearance obedience to the ceremonies of it and the traditions of the elders these he exerts them to change their sentiments about and to relinquish them and give into the gospel scheme which proclaims liberty from the law peace pardon and righteousness by christ and salvation and eternal life by the three great greats of god so suddenly this guy has got all of that out of this tiny little word repent okay and so this is an example of what people do with this work they just take this word on its own and then they add all of this huge amount of conjecture and he goes on then to quote another commentary so this is matthew henry's commentary by repentance we must lament lament and forsake our sins and by faith we must receive the forgiveness of them by repentance we must give glory to the creator whom we have offended by faith me must give glory to our redeemer who came to save us from our sins and it goes on you know blah blah blah blah that this is all what repentance means but they've not justified this definition by showing anywhere in the bible where repentance actually means that okay they've just written something they expect you to just accept that that's what it means and then they read a simple verse like repent you and believe the gospel and they get this huge definition from it okay but and believe the god there is obviously more behind that but that's all we've got to go on and what the word repent means it cannot mean any of all this other stuff it's just a definition that he slapped onto it and then this guy writing this article has quoted those two people and notice there's no more bible quote here there's no like well here's where access repent and here's where you know it means this thing about giving glory and then here's another bible verse where you know repentance means lamenting and forsaking our sin and then you know here's another verse over here where it means this other stuff they've not justified this definition they've just slapped that definition on and all we're doing is we're just quoting everybody else's commentaries that that's what it means well a million preachers could write commentary that repentance means all of that stuff it doesn't mean that that's what it means it just means that people copy and repeat this commentary and then we all think that repent means this because everybody else is saying it so I hope you kind of see the point that I'm trying to get across across to you here but let's look at some other examples as well so the second article that I want to show you this is this is the second link from the slideshow presentation that I've been using is this uh there's living waters how to preach repentance so living waters is Ray Comfort's ministry you've probably heard of him he's well known for approaching people in the street and talking to them and he always says this you must there's two things you've got to do repent of your sins and believe in Jesus okay so he always puts those two things together now this article wasn't written by Ray Comfort himself it's written by one of his uh senior members Mark Spence and this article will will pretty much go on to do the same thing that the previous article did but in a much longer length and we're going to get a lot of contradictory statements from this article so he starts off he introduces the word repentance it's a positive word in Christian vocabulary and he starts off by saying it refers to turning from a destructive path and moving instead to God's plan for your life and that that's how he's going to introduce this article now just like with the previous article he's then verifying this by quoting other people make these very emotionally over dramatic over sensationalized statements like this Thomas Brooks guy saying repentance is the vomit of the soul I have never heard of anybody who when they repented vomited their heart out and I don't even know what that means really but again we're doing the same thing we're just quoting people make emotional dramatic sensationalized statements we haven't yet quoted the bible on what the bible actually defines repentance and it's going to do this in great detail before we actually get to what the bible says so then he goes so what is it so he starts off by saying it's a change of mind regarding so I want you to remember that it's a change of mind that that's what it is that's how he starts off by defining it so just just remember that because you'll need that in a moment so and inward turning from sin to God okay and hating what you once loved loving what you want etc etc so again making these sort of dramatic hyperbolic statements and goes on to quote another preacher it's turning from the sins you were loved to the holy god you're called to love Mark Mark diva so again not not showing how the bible defines it we're just quoting somebody make a dramatic statement about what it means or or pre-defining it for us it then goes on to say is repentance necessary well it's required it says in order to have a relationship at with God and go to heaven so repentance is necessary to go to heaven so however he defines it you've got to do that to go to heaven it's essentially saying now it says here it does not mean achieving perfection we don't clean ourselves up by our own efforts and try to get God to accept us but it's just it's choosing a different attitude towards sin now I want you to remember this thing we don't clean ourselves up this is another thing I want you to remember about how he's defining repentance here it we're turning from sin but for whatever we're not we're not achieving perfection though okay he'll then quantify that he'll say we will still sin on occasion until God calls us home to heaven we have to ask forgiveness of sin until we're down there there are scriptures that we can back that up but but God gives his children power and strength to battle against it and I'm not I'm not actually too alarmed about that bit to be honest but then he'll go and do the same thing again quoting more people to define repentance and notice that this quote here this doesn't even contain the words repentance it doesn't mention repentance at all sin forsaken is one of the best evidences of sin forgive but that's not defining repentance because he's not saying anything about repentance that the word does not appear we then quote more preachers now I mentioned a moment ago I want you to remember that he said that repentance was a change of mind he said that said that there okay it's a change of mind regarding sin and God but now we're quoting somebody this D. A. Carson person saying repentance is not merely an intellectual change of mind or mere grief but a radical transformation of the entire person a fundamental turning around involving one's mind and action and including overtones of grief which results in these fruits in keeping with with repentance so it's a change of mind oh but it's not just a change of mind there's all this other dramatic stuff so you see quite quickly how the contradiction starts to emerge here now I don't know what it means first it's a change of mind then it's not just a change of mind so is it a change of mind then we'll know because there's all of this other dramatic stuff around it then again quoting another preacher repentance as we know is not just moaning and remorse but a turning and a changing so there's all this emotion behind it but it's not just that emotion there's all of this turning and changing as well and then look at the honestly these articles look look at this what it says here so we saw earlier he did say that we don't we know we don't achieve perfection okay Christ isn't asking us to clean our lives so you don't clean your life up but then it says he's commanding us to lay our life down there's a world of difference and it's putting this in an article about repentance for salvation now correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the gospel was Christ laying his down his life down for us I don't lay my life down for Christ for me to get saved Christ laid his life down for me and what life could I possibly lay down I was dead in sin I didn't have a life to lay down because I was dead in sin Christ laid down his life and gave me eternal life freely that's what the Bible says but this lay down our lives thing um you know a lot of Christians say things like you must surrender your life to Jesus you must lay your life down for Christ that's the opposite of what the gospel says you were dead in sin Christ laid down his life and he gives you eternal life freely and abundantly so we're going to you're going to find this a lot in this article we're going to be saying contradictory things you know he says one thing and then he says something else and I'll get on to that in a moment but let's just let's just keep reading them so we then we then get into this header here isn't this lordship salvation and they're the reason that they're um asking that hypothetical question is that people in in my crowd not me personally but people in my crowd often we often accuse people like Ray Comfort and these kind of people have been lordship salvationists and what people essentially mean by that when they make that accusation against Ray and his ilk and Calvinist as well is that we can't the kind of being accused of sneaking works into the gospel but masquerading as faith alone and I'll get into that later when I sort of summarize my views on this article but he's obviously got to to back out of that and answer that and cover for himself so uh now this bit I do actually agree with okay we don't make Jesus Lord he is Lord now I do agree with that because Christians not not necessarily I've never heard Ray Comfort say or any his ministers but I guess people in his circles say it people do say things like you need to make Jesus the Lord of your life to be saved I do agree with that we don't make Jesus Lord he already is Lord okay what what we do is recognizing for who he really is now I agree with that I don't have a problem with that statement at all and again we're doing the same thing we're quoting another preacher to define what repentance means we haven't defined it from the bible yet repentance needs to be as loud as the sin was John MacArthur and again yet another sensationalized statement repentance is not a sound okay if it's a change of mind or a transformation of that that's not loud I don't know what that means maybe somebody else knows what that means maybe you think I'm nitpicking if you do I'm sorry but I don't know what that statement means we're just making dramatic statements again now of all the bit of this article that I've read so far it's quite a long thing going on here this is now the first time we're actually going to mention the bible now notice how the preachers get some space on this page the bible verse doesn't get a space it's just a pop it you have to hobby him out to get the pop but we can't just have a space for it you know here and just quote it like we quote these preachers we have to like hide it as a pop up I find that really bizarre you know again maybe you think I'm nitpicking I just I find it really bizarre but the first time that we mentioned the bible here so in in this pop up now this is not the bible translation I use but that doesn't matter for now we're quoting this verse and it says here if God what perhaps will grant them repentance so that they may know the truth okay so we finally have a bible verse we're finally using the bible for repentance but but the problem with verses like this is it doesn't actually define what this means you have to already know what that means so if God grants you repentance that's not telling me what repentance is it's just saying that God gives it me okay whatever it is we haven't defined it from the bible we're quoting verse that doesn't define it so when he says repentance is turning from sin and changing your mind and all this kind of stuff we've quoted a bunch of people make hyperbolic statements and then as soon as we see the word repentance we've now injected all of that into this little word the bible hasn't even done that yet okay it's just these men that are doing it so tells us that God grants repentance don't have a problem with that because that's what first says obviously um was to be gentle and patient blah blah blah this statement here people need to repent of their lack of repent I mean that's just a redundant statement that you could have just cut that sentence out because it says nothing I don't even know what to do with that it's just it's a non-statement and again quoting more preachers tell it for us making these uh you know big dramatic statements here repentance now it says here that this is funny repentance is simply it doesn't really sound very simple if i'm perfectly honest but we'll revisit that perhaps simply being sorry enough to stop so so I now have to stop now earlier I didn't have to clean up my life now I have to be sorry enough to stop I hope you see I hope you see it and I'm sorry if you think I'm nitpicking but I hope you see why people are getting confused people are getting mixed messages maybe some of these people who write this stuff mean well but we're giving people mixed messages okay and again we're quoting somebody we're not quoting the bible again we're quoting somebody else tells what it means and again this doesn't even mention the word repent or repentance yet it's being used to define repentance and this is this is why we get all of this overloaded over sensationalized over emotional hyperbolic stuff about what repentance is and then it says here the person who truly repents so changes their mind turns from sin blah blah blah does all this dramatic stuff and trust in christ alone so we've now got a contradictory statement if he started the article by saying that I wouldn't have a problem with this repent and trust christ alone but because now we've got all of this dramatic stuff about all this different stuff that repentance means about turning your life you know being sorry enough to stop and changing your mind and laying down your life I've got to do all of that and trust christ alone well how can I trust christ alone if this word right here that I've also got to do has got all of this dramatic stuff behind it I'm not just trusting in christ alone then am I I'm trusting in whatever I have to do in this overloaded word right here so I'm very confused now I'm being given mixed messages and again quote we're quoting the bible again it doesn't get any foot space on this article to actually quote what it means I have to hover my mouse to see what it means this doesn't even mention the word repent we just assume that it means repentance for some reason so again we still can't define repentance from the bible because we're quoting parts of the bible that don't mention the word specifically um I mean I don't I don't disagree with that statement it's a true statement but it that that's for someone if anyone is in christ well you have to have already repented for this to apply so it doesn't apply to the definition of repentance okay should we preach repentance and again we'll say well only if we want to be biblical well yes if the bible says the word repent or repentance obviously you have to preach it for whatever it means so we're going to have we're finally going to have some bible verses here I've finally got four bible verses to go and still don't have any floor space to actually quote the verse I've got to hover my mouse but at least we've got some bible now so we've got mark here and it says repent and believe the gospel notice it doesn't say repent of your sins and believe the gospel it doesn't say repent of your lack of repentance it doesn't say repent by turning your life around blah blah blah blah and believe the gospel it's just repent and believe the gospel but we've already put all of this overloaded over sensationalized stuff into the word repent so now when we read a verse like mark 115 which by the way does actually define repentance for you it's not just that because we've already put all these predefined definitions of repentance into that verse so people will will read that and say well see you have got to lay down your life for christ and you have got to turn from your sins and you have got to do this and do that because the bible says repent yeah but but that's a verb folks it needs context as to what it means and I'll get on to that you know in a few minutes we'll we'll come back to that when I get back to my slideshow and then you know quotes other verses where it says to repent so we've got luke 13 I tell it unless you repent you will perish we'll find okay I understand I have to repent or I'll perish but again what does it mean this verse on its own is not defining it for me we haven't defined it from the bible we've defined it from a bunch of quotes by a bunch of people I don't care about and again acts too and it says repent and let everyone be baptized but again it doesn't define what this word means unless you use the rest of the verse for context we've already preloaded the definition into the word already we've then got this one acts 20 repentance towards God so again the the bible tells us what it means here but we didn't use any of that to define it he's quoted a bunch of people saying it so now this is a really overloaded word with all of this hidden meaning behind it that that verse simply doesn't say we're not defining repentance from the bible we're defining it from preachers and then putting it into the word repentance and then we've had all this spiel about all of this stuff that I've got to do for repentance but now it says repentance is so he's now redefining it here God's required response to sin so first it's all of this dramatic stuff I've got to do now repentance is it well that's a different thing how God responds to my sin is different from what I've got to do about my they're different things this is so confusing folks this is really confusing and then once again we're just quoting people make statements statements that don't even mention repentance but we're mentioning it in an article about repentance you know here's the definition that I'm replying then here's my proof even though that doesn't mention repentance and this this Charles Spurgeon guy I'm going to get on him next after I finish with this living water's made because he's from you know several decades ago or over a century ago this will give you some this guy will give you some history as to where this dramatic repentance of his sin stuff is coming from and there is more to this article that you know goes and say what does preaching repentance look like if you are putting your trust in anything other than Christ well what like including all of that long list of stuff you've said I've got to do you know and then again the word means to change your mind but then it well it was change of mind then it wasn't just a change but now it does mean a change of mind this article I'm not going to read anymore because I'm very bored with it now but let's just summarize then in this article from what we've read how has he defined repentance well we first started off turning from a destructive path then it's from it in our soul out apparently then it's repenting from not repenting and then it's a change of mind regarding sin oh but it's not just a change of mind then it's turning from sin and being sorry enough to stop but not completely turning from everything and not being perfect then we don't clean up our lives oh but we lay down our lives and then it's God's required response to sin but then it's me turning from my own sins and then it's be sorry more than being sorry trust in Christ alone lay down my life and stop sinning and and folks this is why his ministry gets accused of being lordship salvation is because it's all of this it's a free gift but dot dot dot it's by faith alone but dot dot dot it's not by works but dot dot dot we don't do anything for our salvation we trust in Christ alone but we must turn from our sins and you see why people are getting so confused and his ministry probably took is probably the biggest ministry out there preaching the gospel quote-unquote and yet I still bump into Christians all the time who don't understand the basic gospel plan because their preacher church is probably just regurgitating all of this same really wearing stuff so I'm going to get on this Charles Spurgeon Gynnex because again you'll see the history of where this stuff is is coming from so this this thing here this is the Charles Spurgeon wrote a book called The Sol Winner okay and I can't remember when he wrote this book but this is a preacher from the the 19th century so obviously you know that was over 100 years ago so this stuff this has been going on for a long time this isn't something new there's nothing new under the sun and we'll look at the history later in the video but but this has been going on okay this is not new so um he talks about salvation in this book I mean the author if you call it The Sol Winner I suppose and then he goes on to give this tidbit here about repentance now he was quoted in an article that you know that previous article we read that he trust alone in Christ salvation but dot dot dot and all this other stuff so watch this just watch how this paragraph here starts out by saying together with undivided faith in Jesus Christ there must also be Christ alone there must also be alone also be again this is why people are getting confused there must also be so as well as it's not my faith alone folks because there must also be whatever's coming next unfeigned repentance and then watch this of sin we're tacking on those words to repentance there repentance is an old-fashioned word not much to use by modern revivalists well that's not true today because everybody says repent of your sins today I'm sick of hearing about it we constantly hear repent of sins so I don't know if that was the same in his day perhaps but you know it's it's certainly a much used word today just in the wrong context and then he quotes this conversation I guess he had oh said a minister to me one day it only means a change of mind this was thought to be a profound observation only a change of mind but what a change exclamation mark a change of mind with regard to everything and then watch this watch what he says here instead of saying it is only a change of mind it seems to me more truthful to say it is a great and deep change and there it is well it's a change of mind but it's also not a change of mind because it's all of this extra stuff even a change of mind of the mind itself again slightly dramatic but but watch this what watch what comes next whatever the literal greek word may mean repentance is no trifle you will not find a better definition of it than the one given in the bible no in the children in this children's hymn repentance is to leave the sins we loved before and show that we in earnest grieve by doing so no more so again we're not defining repentance from the bible we're not using the bible to show what it means we're basing it on what a hymn says now I thought the whole point was that you write hymns based on the bible you don't base doctrine on on a hymn but what do I know I'm not the prince of preachers like this guy was and notice again this is all uh stuff that he said there's no bible quotes here there's no proving from the bible we're just writing a big long boring article and then when we do quote something to base our doctrine on it's based on a hymn despite what the greek word actually means and folks this is where it's coming from this ought to show you where it's coming from we have this simple little word but then we're adding all of this overloaded stuff that's not from the bible it's just people regurgitating previous preachers that did all of this same stuff who regurgitated previous preachers who did all of this stuff just making statements and so you know years and years and years after charles burgeon has long gone and everybody still thinks he's the prince of preachers and everybody studies him and everybody reads his stuff and we're just copying and repeating quoting him say stuff as if that somehow makes it what it is then we're just quoting other people make dramatic statements and it's really really frustrating because all we're doing is confusing people you may mean well but you're not doing your job properly as an evangelist you are confusing people by doing stuff like this so to round off that long rant what what what we're basically doing here we have this one simple little word repent or repentance not a lot of syllables the simple words all right but then what we're doing is we're adding these huge doctrinal implications wrapped around it not because it's proven from the bible but because preachers just regurgitate and just copy and repeat from other preachers doing the same thing we've got all of this for one simple little word and so then people are made to believe that repentance is is this really complicated doctrine that we have to gain mountains and mountains of theological understanding to grasp what what true repentance is now i'm going to submit to you that this is simply not the case at all repentance is a simple word and it actually represents a relatively simple concept now i'm going to show you what i mean about how people make it this fancy word and it's really just a simple word i'm going to show you what i mean so in christianity we have certain fancy words that that not every average joe christian and certainly unsafe you know most unsaved people will understand that they're generally reserved for people who have studied the bible you know on a greater depth of of certain issues so people who've studied end times or people who've studied theology or people who have studied salvation or whatever subject so like we have eschatological fancy words i mean even that's a fancy word you know pre-millennialism post-tribulation rapture dominionism preterism idealism all this kind of stuff we have satirical fancy words and even that's a fancy word and anti-nominism and legalism and conditional security eternal security lordship solar fide get all this kind of stuff you know we have uh transubstantiation consubstantiation blah blah blah now most of these words not necessarily all of them but most of these words aren't actually in the bible okay they're not bible words but if you're speaking to somebody else who has also studied these categories they are useful words because it's a lot it's a much quicker way of explaining to a learned person what you believe so if i was talking about end times for example that's what eschatological means if i said well i'm post-tribulation rapture well then i've already explained to somebody what i believe without having to explain it all but that only really works if somebody else has studied eschatology and knows what that word means so you know we do have these fancy words but if you were trying to give the gospel and you were trying to explain this stuff to unsave people that that would just go over their heads and even a lot of Christians don't necessarily understand this stuff unless you've studied this in great great detail and even then there could be one or two words on here that you've actually heard before you know maybe you don't know what anti-nominism means even if you have studied a lot of salvation perhaps who knows so what you'll find is salvation words like justification or sanctification etc and including the word repentance that they're often treated like these fancy theological words or these fancy words so preachers treat repentance as if it's something really complicated with all this hidden deep meaning understand you know meaning behind it and then this leaves average geo really confused about what he must do to be saved i mean we saw that from the article and you see this from christian vernacular today first we're told we have to turn from our sins to be saved but then the problem of sin still dwells in our flesh and we're not perfect so how do we know if we've turned from enough of our sins or turned from our sins enough we're told that we must lay down our life for christ but the true gospel is that christ laid down his life for us we're told that we must surrender our life to christ but we were dead in sin we have no life available to surrender eternal life is a free gift it's freely given to us it's not something we surrender we're told to have a personal relation i mean rake comfort or anybody didn't say that but i have heard this from christians you know you have to have a relationship with god to be safe well the thing is relationships require work and we're not justified by works we're justified by faith so just like these fancy words and satirological fancy words and you know eschatological fancy words we're treating repentance like a really fancy word and folks it really isn't it's a really simple word now the word repentance all it is it's just the noun of the verb to repent okay just like for example i've put some examples on the screen for you amusement is the noun of the verb to amuse acceptance is the noun of the verb to accept consideration is the noun of the verb to consider persuasion is the noun of the verb to persuade modernity is the noun of the verb to modernize now some of these nouns do have a lot of syllables in them consideration okay that's you know a long word there few syllables in there but they're not really complicated words though folks you don't need some theological expert to write all this article and go into you know do a whole sermon on what amusement means or what acceptance means or what consideration of persuasion you already know what they mean because you already know what the verbs mean you already know what it means to amuse or to be amused you already know what it means to accept or to decline you already know what it means to consider to persuade you because you already know how to do those verbs you already know what the nouns mean it's just the noun of the verb so all you have to do is understand what the word repent means and then you already know what repentance is you don't need a complicated theological understanding of it you know so i mean this just repeats what i've just said you don't need an expert to write over sensationalized articles about what all of these nouns mean you already know what the nouns mean because you already know what the verbs mean so if you can just understand what the verb repent means and that that's what i'm going to help you with next you already understand repentance then it's just a noun it's not a complicated soteriological doctrine it's just a noun okay we just need to look at what the verb means look at how the verb is used and then we know what the noun is when the bible uses the noun okay so then i know i've already quoted mark 115 earlier in the video so i'm sorry to keep bringing it up there are obviously the other verses which we'll get to but it's a really easy verse to start with it's one simple verse that's just a really easy place to define it quickly so it says um and the time and saying the time is fulfilled the kingdom of god is at hand repent notice it doesn't say repent of your sins it just says repent you and believe the gospel okay so if we use mark 115 as a simple verse to explain what repentance for salvation is the instruction is to simply change our mind from not believing the gospel to believing the gospel we already covered that earlier that's a nice easy one to start with repent is a verb so a verb requires some context as to what how the verb is to be actioned if i just said to you turn full stop that's a useless word on its own you need context as to what you're turning you know turn left turn right turn from this towards this verbs need context this verb right here has context repent what does that mean believe the gospel right okay repent change your mind be sorrowful and believe the gospel that's our context okay now then where people might get confused then is um other verses in the bible like for example this one and this is perhaps a verse that people might use to justify repent of your sins so because now we have some works added to the context of repentance so this is acts 20 it's 6 20 so this is paul but show uh paul was just describing a historic event that you know something he'd done previously but showed first onto them of Damascus and at Jerusalem and throughout all the coasts of Judea and then to the Gentiles that they should repent and turn to god and if we just follow the mark example that's quite a simple statement really you know turn to god believe turn to god believe accept god repent towards belief but then here's where people get confused and do works meet for repentance and so then people will say well there it is you know there's all that stuff about the works that we must do for repentance turning from sin well the thing is we've just read articles that said it was christ alone so it can't be christ alone and do works because we're not justified by works we're justified by faith so here's where you need to pay close attention to what the bible says now first of all it still doesn't say repent of your sins you might want to say that that's what the works meet for repentance means but he doesn't say that you're just putting that in there it doesn't say repent of your sins and i'll get on repent of sins in a moment but notice what it says here do works and watch this word because one word can make all the difference it doesn't say do works for repentance it doesn't say do works of repentance it doesn't say do works to complete repentance it says do works meet for repentance now the way that it uses meet there is a bit arcade we obviously don't use that word for for this particular context but what it means is befitting or consistent with or appropriate or suitable for so do works befitting for repentance do works suitable for repentance or do works consistent with repentance do works appropriate for repentance okay so this will help illustrate you so first repent and turn to god well we saw what that means believe the gospel so believe the gospel turn to god okay get saved pass from death onto life believe the gospel and do works meet for repentance so first repent turn to god believe and then and you know and or then do works that are appropriate or befitting for people who have repented so we have the verb repent that's the action that you must take believe turn to god and then we have the noun repentance so that's just the category of person who has completed the action so first you repent and turn to god believe on christ get saved now that you saved now that you've repented do works that are appropriate for somebody who has repented okay you don't do works for repentance do works suitable for somebody who has already repented repent believe the gospel get saved now that you're saved do some works make yourself useful as a saved person do works that are appropriate for somebody who has repented and is saved so that you look like a saved person okay very very simple not complicated at all really easy to understand we're not adding a bunch of stuff that the verse doesn't say we're not quoting a bunch of random idiots we're just using the bible to define itself using the bible as its own dictionary so because people do take this statement turn for you know they interpret that as repent of your sins i'm going to get on repent of your sins next and then we can look at you know we can look at more bible as well as we come up so then with the whole repent of your sins thing so as we've seen from articles and as i've explained and as you probably already know anyway repentance is commonly defined as turning from sin in many christian circles including evangelical christianity so we've already seen this really but well known preachers and evangelists such as Charles Spurgeon like we saw and Ray Comfort like we saw and also Billy Graham actually said repent of your sins a lot as well pretty much just just like Ray Comfort does they defined it that way okay they always said repent of your sins or they defined it that way anyway so this creates various problems so we're going to explore what the problem is with repent of your sins to be saved okay so problem number one if the definition of repentance on its own is turning from sin then the phrase repent of your sins is redundant and also grammatically nonsensical because if repent means turn from sins then whenever you say repent of your sins you're saying turn from your sins of your sins it doesn't make any grammatical sense and the three words of your sins would be redundant unless repent could actually mean something else on its own so repentance can't automatically mean turning from sin the word repent as i've already explained is just a simple verb as is to eat sleep or run a verb on its own does not have all of this dramatic hidden meaning behind it either it means something like run you know pretty much means something on its own but verbs like repent if it means to turn from something there has to be context provided as to what is being turned from or towards so that's the first problem problem number two as we explored earlier in this video briefly we've already seen examples and there are more from the king james bible at least about god repenting and we know that god does not sin god does not need to turn from sin therefore if the bible says that god repents repentance cannot automatically mean turning from sin okay so these are just three examples genesis six seven this is in reference to the flood for it repents me that i have made then okay so in this situation it the wickedness of man caused god to grieve for the creation redirecting his course to destroy the earth through the flood that's where god repented he turned he turned towards flooding the earth he turned away from his creation of man Jonah three ten and god saw their works that they turned from their evil way and god repented what did he repent of well they repented of the evil that he said he would do so god changed course of action modern bibles would say relented instead of repented but in response to Nineveh turning from their evil way god turns from what god said he would do to Nineveh okay Jeremiah 26 13 is very similar actually so that therefore now amend your ways in your doings and obey the voice of the lord your god and the lord will repent him of the evil that he has pronounced against you so god offers the chance to change course of judgment on the condition that Judah repents so if god repents it doesn't mean turning from sin it just means changing from one course of action to another or changing course or changing mind or changing position we saw that in the dictionary we've seen that in the verses that we've seen so far it's consistent okay it just means change course from one to another very simple word and just on this topic with the way that the king james reads quite differently to modern modern translations um some people might criticize the king james translation for using the word repent instead of alternative such as changed his mind or you know god changed his mind or god relented or god was sorry but remember that as we saw earlier according to the concordance it's itself various forms of the underlying Hebrew word are used in these passages so actually the king james translation is just consistently translating it as repent in english and it's not the only translation to do it this way many reformation era bibles pretty much do the same so the the thing is when people criticize it for saying repent in the king james it's not that the translation is wrong it's because we have forced this turning from sins definition onto repentance so then when it says god repented we say well it's wrong because god doesn't yeah but repentance doesn't mean that okay it means these three things here it's just one word that can mean any of these things god changed his mind or god relented okay problem number three and you might say i'm either nitpicking on here or you could actually point to how the bible uses the word repent as being against what what i'm about to say but i'll show you anyway for the sake of these verses people might say repent of your sins and turn from your sins interchangeably so they say either of those two things meaning the same thing repent of your sins or turn from your sins they mean interchangeably but the very fact that we have a word repent and we have a word turn means and it shows not just in the english by the way but also in the hebron greek that turn and repent are actually distinct verbs now again you might think that's nitpicking because you might argue that the synonyms fine but we already saw in the dictionary earlier that turning um if we just remove the off sins bit on the end of it when we read the dictionary the merrian webster it didn't actually say that repentance even means turning it meant change of mind or be sorrowful now you might argue change of mind is a type of turning it's synonymous fine but they are distinct words though they are distinct verbs they're distinct nouns and just looking at these verses here so in luke 17 3 4 it says take heed to yourselves if your brother trespasses against you rebuke him and if he repent forgive him and if he trespasses against you seven times in a day and seven times in a day turn again to the saying i repent you shall forgive him so the turn again to you is a physical turning your brother turns towards you okay and he says i repent he doesn't say i turn he says i repent so he physically turns towards you but notice he only has to say i repent that you have and then you have to forgive him he doesn't actually have to evidence that he repents he doesn't have to prove any actual repentance he doesn't actually have to prove to you that he's done any actual turning all he has to say is i repent i've changed my mind or i'm sorrowful i'm sorry i did this that that to you and you have to forgive him whether or not they actually do turn from it or not he only has to say so if turning and repenting meant the exact same thing then one of these two things would be redundant because it would be saying turn again to you saying i turn well yeah i just i've just seen that you've done there's a distinction between those two meanings at least in that particular verse and i already read Jonah 3 temp we'll just read it with nine for a bit of context who can tell if god will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not and god saw and watch this as well their works not their faith that they turned from their evil way and god repented of the evil that he said that he would do unto them and he did it not so the people have literally never literally turned from their evil way this was demonstrated by their works it doesn't say god saw their faith it said god saw their works turning from seeing these works and again once again if we were to say that turning and repenting is just interchangeably exactly the same then this verse would be saying turn and turn and turn essentially so you know there is a slight distinction there the fact that says turn and repent god changed his mind and so he also turned from action okay and the point here is yes there are parts of the bible where repent does seem to insist that there ought to be some demonstratable action like you know particularly in the way it's used in revelation i accept that but there are instances in the bible where repent repenting or repentance doesn't actually have to be physically demonstrated because the turning is a physical but the repentance is just a change of mind with or without any actual turning that proves that that change of mind actually happened okay and just to top off this this last point so i mean i'm sort of repeating there what i've already said that there is in a way a distinction between turning and repenting and there are and as i've mentioned there are obviously parts of the bible where repentance is equated with some kind of required actual turning or change of conduct and what we'll look at examples later from revelation which uses the word repent quite frequently in in an actual turning context that there has to be demonstration there um but turning from sin and repenting of sin might not necessarily actually be the same thing because you could literally turn from a sin and then but not change your mind from it or you could even change your mind about a sin and not necessarily turn from that and again you might think i'm nitpicking and playing games but you know it's fine if you disagree with me on this but someone could turn from sin but not repent of sin so let's let's say for example a retired gangster is enjoying a wealthy retirement well he's turned from sin because he's retired he's not gangstering around anymore but he seems to be quite enjoying his retirement he's probably not sorry for the stuff he's done if he's just enjoying the lifestyle so he's turned technically but he hasn't actually repented of it okay he's not sorrowful for that he hasn't changed his mind about that it just happens that he's turned because of his particular situation that he's retired likewise someone could repent of sin but not actually turned from it so like an alcoholic who wants to stop and hates alcohol and recognizes that it's destroying their life they're very sorry about that but they may still have a problem where they really struggle to give up drinking so they have repented of it but they haven't actually turned from it and so you can sometimes actually make a distinction between turning and repenting they're not automatically the same thing even though they can be synonymous okay now even if you completely disagree with what I just said about repent and turn fine not a problem at all because even if repent and turn are the synonymous or the same thing the word turn still requires context to say what is being turned from and or to so you can't just say turn and then oh there's got to be all this emotion and all this vomiting and all this great note turn it's a very simple verb and the words around that verb tell you what is being turned from or towards or what the context of the turning is so let's take our mark 115 example again and the time and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of god is at hand it would say repent so let's just say turn and believe the gospel well okay don't believe the gospel turn believe the gospel still no mention of sin in that verse okay so then even if you want to say that repenting and turning are interchangeable the context is still turning for salvation is to go from unbelief towards belief has nothing to do with turning from sin okay problem number four sin if we define the word sin from the bible it's the transgression of the law so i've shown that in one john three four who so ever commits sin transgressors also the law for sin is that is the definition the transgression of the law you transgress the law you have sinned so if you have to say if you're going to say that repent and turn are interchangeable and the context is of your sins turned from your sins well essentially what you're turning from or away from is the transgression of the law okay but we know that we're not justified by the works of the law galatians 311 but no man is justified by the law in the sight of god it is evident for the just shall live by faith so turning from sin well you're turning from the transgression of the law to obey the law but we're not justified by the law you can't obey the law to get to heaven okay so you can see how this repent of sins terminology has the potential to reintroduce works based salvation but it's much more sneaky than catholic dog dogmas such as penons and sacraments because it still can masquerade this faith alone but if you remember in the uh in a previous slide we saw Jonah three turn it said god saw their works that they turned from it doesn't say god saw their faith that they believed him it said god saw their works that they turned from their evil way you turning from your evil way you turning from your sin that's your works that's your obedience to the law you cannot be saved by your obedience to the law you cannot be justified by that problem number five if you understand opposition and diametrically oppose things and antagonism antagonisms and so on and so forth sinning and believing in christ they're not diametrical opposites so repenting from sin towards Jesus or towards god does not actually make any logical or grammatical sense because the opposite of believing on christ is not believing on christ sinning is not the opposite of believing on christ sinning is the opposite of not sinning someone could believe on christ but technically sin some you might even argue someone could not believe on christ and and technically not sin now obviously we know that that's impossible but logically speaking they're not polar opposites they're not diametrically opposed because the opposite of believing on christ is not believing on christ sinning is not the automatic opposite of believing on christ so you know there are plenty of examples of believers in the bible who did sin which proves that those two things are not opposite you know david abraham solomon samson we could just go on and on and on with that but that's another video for another day in works based religions such as catholicism or islam firm people who take the faith seriously they do try very very very hard to turn from their sins but they still don't believe in jesus alone to save them they think that they have eternal life because they trust in their works some way but they do not trust in their sins to get eternal so sometimes people i've heard people say you need to turn from trusting in your sins to trusting in god but nobody trusts in their sins if you ask if you ask catholics or muslims why are you going to paradise or why are you going to heaven they're not going to tell you oh because i sin so much they're going to tell you the opposite of that they're going to tell you that they don't sin okay but we know that they're not saved because they say they don't sin you can only be saved by believing on christ so they can say that they don't sin or they they want they can say i'm a good person they're not trusting in their sins they're trusting in the fact that they think they don't sin or that they think they are obedient enough by not sinning too much so those things you know they're not polar opposite so to say repentance of your sins towards God does not make sense it's logically inconsistent. Problem number six and again this does go back to how Bibles use the word repent and how it's you know more often in the King James but sometimes in the King James anyway repentance is actually a bad thing okay so in Exodus 137 it came to pass when Pharaoh would let the people go that God let them not through the way of the land of the Philistines although that was near for God said Lesperad venture the people repent when they see war and they return to Egypt they're not supposed to return to Egypt that would be a bad thing and that's the context of repent that would be a bad type of repentance because they would turn from doing the right thing towards doing the wrong thing. Matthew 27 3 then Judas which had betrayed him when he saw that he was condemned repented himself and brought again 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders saying I have sinned in the eye of betrayed the innocent blood and they said what is that to us see you to that and he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed and went and hanged himself. Now Judas noticed that Judas only felt sorrow or repented himself for betraying innocent blood okay that you know that that's quite a low-down thing he didn't feel sorry for rejecting the Holy One the Christ the Messiah the most important person in human historical existence oh I just betrayed innocent blood like you know any anybody could come under that category this repentance was meaningless because he did not seek God's forgiveness he did not believe on Christ he repented the Bible says he repented Judas did repent okay you might even say repented of his sin but he didn't actually repent as far as salvation is concerned he was just sorry that he betrayed innocent blood which could have been anybody you know in another life so this is a bad kind of repentance he didn't repent onto salvation he didn't believe in the Christ that he killed he wasn't even sorry for killing the Christ okay so in summary then regarding repent of your sins whether regarding salvation or not the verb repent in of itself means change of mind or feel sorry for you know you could argue it's synonymous with turning and feeling pity and and all that kind of stuff but you know it's quite a simple verb so the surrounding context then will tell us what is being repented of or towards now the noun form repentance which might not have context as to what it means you have to already know what the net what the noun is that only appears once in the Old Testament at least in the King James I don't know if it appears at all in other Bibles but but it does appear frequently in the New Testament so we'll explore how it's used but in summary it's the noun of the verb so if it gives you a noun repentance like you know God wants it wants all men to come towards repentance but then doesn't tell you what repentance actually means we can just assume that repentance as a noun form is just a general changing of mind from one's unbelief towards belief so now that we've got that out of the way let's look at the Bible Bible versus mentioning repentance in more detail because I've obviously up to now been fairly selective about some of the Bible verses that that I've used but but there's obviously a lot more particularly in the New Testament that that needs to be addressed so I already made this point kind of at the beginning of the video but just to reiterate that there are many instances even in the New Testament where repentance is not actually about salvation and again this may depend on how Bible translations actually translate particular verses so I've chosen two examples here where the King James says repent modern translations would not actually say repent in these examples I'll talk about that in a second so in second Corinthians 7-8 Paul says for though I made you sorry with a letter I do not repent though I did repent for I perceive that the same epistle has made you sorry though it were but for a season so in this context Paul has not changed his mind and he's not sorry about upsetting the Corinthians in his first letter even though he did have second thoughts about it in the past and then Hebrew 721 this is I've already mentioned this verse earlier this is quoting Psalm 110 for for those priests were made without an oath but this with an oath by him said on Tim the Lord swear and will not repent you are a priest forever after the order of milk is it egg so modern Bibles would probably say that about Paul I did not regret though I did regret and then they would probably say in Hebrews the Lord will not change his mind even though it's the as far as I'm aware it's the same Greek word underlying though so where modern Bibles will replace repent with a different word how people might justify that is that as far as I'm aware the underlying Greek is slightly different instead of metanoia or metaneo it's it's metanilamy in these particular examples so what modern Bibles predominantly do is they'll translate metaneo as repent but then when it's an option my pronunciation might be terrible metanoia is repentance but then when it says metanilamy they're a bit more flexible in how they translate it and we saw that when we looked at the concordance earlier in the video so again because I don't speak Greek this is all second hand information so when I read up on the differences between metaneo and metanilamy the best I could come up with that metanoia or metaneo is a change of mind whereas metanilamy is a change of care but they are synonymous even though the different words so let's put that in English terms it would be a bit like let's say I saved up some money so that I could buy something expensive and then let's say I've now got the money to buy it but I'm not going to anymore now I could say in English I've changed my mind and I don't want to buy this anymore but I could also say I no longer care for it so I won't buy anymore now you probably wouldn't say that in that particular context but you know we can say in English I no longer care for it whereas I once did so it's just two different ways of saying the same thing there are multiple ways of expressing the same thing in the English language there are multiple ways of doing that in any other language like you know including Greek so these are just two examples of where repentance is not about salvation you know Paul was not saying I do not repent for salvation it's just you know I do not change my mind about the letter that I wrote that's all it really means there so again different definitions of repentance depending on how the word is used because it's not a complicated theological concept it's just a noun or you know it's just a verb in this case next and I'm sorry I know I keep repeating this verse I've used it multiple times in the video now but Mark 14 to 15 the time is fulfilled the kingdom of God is at hand repent doesn't say of your sins it just says repent you and believe the gospel so I'm sorry to keep coming back to this I know we've already looked at this verse in great detail but this this is still important because it's a simple verse that sets the precedence for what repentance for salvation is because essentially you know believing the gospel that's what that's for salvation and if we use that verse to define what repentance is for salvation believe the gospel this is consistent with what the Bible is telling us to do elsewhere so you know when the gospel of John what does the gospel of John tell us to do in order to be safe bearing in mind that it's the one book written to tell us how to have it you know eternal life well John 3 16 to 18 for God so love the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever doesn't say turn from sins it just says whosoever believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life and so on and so forth he that believeth on him is not condemned it doesn't say he that turns from his sins is not condemned and John 5 24 he that hears my word and believes on him that sent me still doesn't take say turning from sin so if we just take that repentance to mean believe the gospel that's perfectly consistent with everything that got John's gospel is telling us to do as well and we will revisit that later because like you know I mentioned an issue at the beginning of the video that needs to be addressed so next let's have a look at Matthew chapter 3 I'm not going to read the whole thing just because it's a long passage but you can see it on the screen there so John the Baptist is preaching in the wilderness and he says repent to you for the kingdom of God is at hand further down he says bring forth fruits meet for repentance I indeed baptise you with water on to repentance he that comes after me is my dear so on and so forth so you'll you'll probably be familiar with that and I've heard that passage use quite frequently as some sort of evidence text that repent means to turn from sin so this is the first time that we see repentance in the New Testament in this passage there are no mentions of being saved or having eternal life it's not mentioned in any of those verses but many people would interpret this chapter as being applicable to salvation because obviously people are getting baptised by you know in accordance with his preaching and obviously we know from other verses in the Bible that you know believe and be baptised that but being baptised is the follow-up to people who believe so people might still say that it's a gospel passage even though it doesn't really mention salvation and eternal life so first and foremost notice it still doesn't say repent of your sins it says repent you for the kingdom of God is at hand just like you know Mark's gospel said he didn't say repent of your sins just said repent you and again it's about preaching the kingdom just like Jesus was doing in Mark's gospel so yeah that's the second thing to notice is that we're preaching the kingdom of heaven just like Mark did and Mark told us to believe the gospel that's what the kingdom is essentially about that's the whole point of preaching it now where it says in verse 6 they were baptized of him in Jordan confessing their sins so because there was confession of sins and then also in verse 8 there's a command to bring forth fruit meat for repentance this is used to assert that turning from sins or confessing sins is part of that repentance that that's necessary for salvation well the thing is when it when it says confessing sin that that's not the same thing as turning from sin that's just admitting that you've done it that's not turning from it that's just admitting that you've done it okay bringing forth fruit doesn't always mean turn from sin either because someone could be sinful but if they're going out preaching the gospel to people they're still bringing forth through even though they haven't necessarily turned from our sins bringing forth fruit could mean a wide variety of things depending on what issue you're particularly focusing on as as part of that fruit you know you can deal you could technically still sin but then still do good things and those good things are still fruit so you know that that's far too open to interpretation to assume that that's what it means and the next thing that I want you to notice that when it says and were baptized of him in Jordan confessing their sins this is a narration it's not an instruction John didn't say right come forward and confess your sins the narrator is not telling you to confess your sins it's just the narrator is saying they confess their sins he's just documenting what happened so that's that's not a follow-up to repent because that that's just what they did it's just documenting the story okay it's not an instruction per se but there are obviously other instructions about confessing sins but that shouldn't be equated with what it actually means to repent for salvation the bringing forth fruit again we mentioned this when we looked at acts 26 20 it's bring forth fruits that are meat for repentance biffeting for repentance that doesn't mean that the fruit itself is the repentance it's the fruit that reflects the repentance okay so you know you've repented you've been saved make yourself useful and do some work that's suitable for somebody who has repented also notice as well that when he says bring forth through it says in verse 7 he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism and he says oh generation of vipers who was warned you from who's warned you to flee from the wrath to come and he says in to them because he's talking to them bring forth fruits meet for repentance so that's not something that he is saying to absolutely everybody this is quite a target audience for for that saying and then the final point so if you still think that this passage looks as if it's saying that turning from sin is the repentance rather than believing per se well we can prove that it that believing is still the context of repentance for the kingdom of God or for everlasting life because Jesus is going to recount John's preaching in Matthew chapter three in Matthew chapter 21 and Jesus is going to bring it back to faith further proving that repentance for salvation is faith not you stopping sinning so let's have a look at Matthew 21 so in Matthew 21 Jesus comes into the temple and the chief priests and elders attempt to challenge Jesus by asking what authority he's doing all things that he's doing and what he's teaching so he then replies to them and puts them back in their own trap you know they've got to answer his question if they want an answer to that question so he asks them about the baptism of John and you know where was it from was it was it was it from heaven or was it of men and then they're all reasoning with themselves because if they say well it's from heaven Jesus will then say why did you not believe him he won't say well why did you not turn from your sins it's why did you not believe and then obviously if they say of men the people are gonna gonna have them for that so then Jesus refuses to tell them those things and then he gives a parable in verse 28 so he says a certain man has two sons he came to the first and said son go to work today in the vineyard the son answers I will not but afterwards he repented and went anyway so again not about salvation but it's a parable he repented from not going to work in the vineyard to going to it the second said I will go but then he went not so then Jesus asks them you know which one of these two did the will of his father and obviously they say the first so then Jesus says that the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you you being the chief priests and elders okay the publicans and harlots are going into the kingdom before them okay why is that well verse 32 John came to you in the way of righteousness that was in chapter 3 and you believed him not for the publicans and harlots who you know that's a type of sinner they believed him it's not they turned from their sins confessed their sins got baptized no they believed John's preaching whereas the chief priests and elders who were probably among the Pharisees and Sadducees that John rebuked and said you know bring forth what fruits meet for repentance they didn't believe him and notice what he says when you had seen it so when you had seen the publicans and harlots believing the preaching you repented not afterwards that you might turn from all your sins not what it says you repented not afterwards that you might believe him once again proving that back in Matthew chapter 3 when he said repent it wasn't about turning from sin it was about believing believing the message that's been put forth the problem with this crowd is that they won't believe Jesus okay and then again I've sort of picked up on this but just to reemphasize it in the parable that Jesus said the servant the son said afterwards he repented okay and went any so you know he said I will not go but then he repented changed course and he went so he actually turned from not doing something to doing something there but it's not talking about sins it's just talking about going to work in a vineyard and then obviously which of those did the will of his father now people might take that and say well see he's going out to work in a vineyard and by working he's doing the will of his father and if you take that as a reference to our heavenly father so then they might say that works or turning from sin is a part of repentance then because obviously that's how it's being used there but the thing is though this is not an instruction it's a parable so Jesus is just using an earthly carnal example to explain spiritual things and if you want to know how you do the will of the father for eternal life well John 640 answers that for you this is the will of him that sent me that everyone which sees the son and believes on him may have everlasting life so forever lasting life that's how you do the will of God believe on him you don't go to work in a vineyard okay that that's just a parable it's a good parable but it's a parable to explain heavenly things and again even more proof to show that repentance and tying that with John's baptism is still talking about believing so Paul has this conversation with some people here finding certain disciples he said on to them have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed and they said on to him we've not heard about whether there be a Holy Ghost but then he asks them about how they were baptized and they said on to John's baptism so then said Paul John baptized with the baptism of repentance so again we're referencing Matthew chapter 3 when it said that John was in the wilderness baptizing people and preaching repent preaching repentance okay saying on to the people watch this that they should turn from their sins not what it says it says that they should believe on him which come after him that is on Christ Jesus so Paul's recounting the story of John the Baptist the baptism of repentance Paul defined it as believing on Christ it when when when John said repent you for the kingdom of God is at hand he wasn't talking about turning from your sins he was talking about believing on the Christ that's coming after John that's once again how the Bible defines it the Bible is being crystal clear it's being consistent all the way throughout okay next passage to look at Luke chapter 16 so this is the story where there's the rich man that goes to hell the poor man that goes to heaven so there's a certain rich man there you go there's a certain beggar that's named Lazarus the beggar died was carried into Abraham's bosom the rich man also died was buried and then in hell the rich man lifts his eyes being in torment seeing Abraham far off he cries out for the Abraham have mercy on me send Lazarus you know send me some water tormented in this flame etc and then Abraham says basically I can't help you between 25 and 26 then in 27 the rich man asks I pray you therefore father that you would send him Lazarus to my father's house I have five brethren that he may testify on to them unless they also come into this place of torment so Abraham then says on to him they have Moses and the prophets let them hear them and then he says no father Abraham but if one went on to them from the dead they will repent what does that mean well he said on to them so Abraham says back to him if they hear not Moses and the prophets neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead so focusing on that on 30 to 31 he asks obviously for Lazarus to be raised from the dead to preach on to his family so that they will repent but the problem in with that is that if they won't hear the Muslim the prophets they will not be persuaded persuaded of what and again this all comes back to Christ believing on Christ you know persuasion so the context is repentance that's escaping hell hearing the testimony of Moses and being persuaded by the message so with reference to the rising from the dead obviously we can now apply this to being persuaded that Jesus rose from the dead because this was obviously before Jesus died so persuasion being convinced to believe the record that's the context of repentance again it comes back to believe doesn't come back to you turning from sins so next passage mark chapter 6 and again I'm not going to read the entire thing just because this is already a very long video and some of these passages are quite long but between verses 7 to 13 this is where Jesus sends out his 12 apostles two by two and we have a simple message in chapter sorry verse 12 and they went out and preached that men should repent still doesn't say repent of their sins it says that they preached that men should repent ok so in in this bit mark does not provide any context as to what men should repent of or what men are supposed to do in order to repent ok it just says that men should repent whatever that's supposed to mean in in this particular instance however fortunately Matthew's gospel answers this question for you because the same the same story is covered in Matthew so we've got our original mark 6 there they went out and preached that men should repent obviously this is the 12 apostles specifically so again in Matthew 10 Jesus is sending out the 12 and it's all the same thing you know you're going out to preach but you know you're also gonna heal the sick and raise the dead etc. you know don't take too much for your journey some houses will receive you some houses won't all the same kind of thing just told in a slightly different way ok so then in verse 14 Jesus says on to them who so ever shall not receive you nor hear your words when you depart out of that house or city shake the dust off your feet now I haven't included all the verses just because they're not all relevant particularly to repentance but obviously this is all part of the story further down to verse 32 who's who so ever therefore shall confess me before men I will confess also before my father which is in heaven but who so ever shall deny me before men him will I deny also deny before my father which is in heaven so we have more details in the parallel accounting Matthew 10 we know from Mark chapter 6 that men should repent we know that much but obviously we just don't know what it means from Mark's gospel but what's the problem that the disciples will encounter according to Matthew chapter 10 what obstacles are they going to come with come across according to Jesus is it that men will not turn from their sins no that's not what it says it says that men will not receive them men will not hear their words and then further down in verse 32 and 33 they're going to come across two types of people just two types of people there are those that confess Christ and there are those that deny Christ okay now those who confess Christ but won't turn from all their sins that that parent that paradigm is not offered by 32 and 33 Jesus just gives two types of people those that confess and those that deny that's all we've got to go on so once again repentance comes back to belief not turning from sins when salvation is the context or the gospel is the context confess deny well if you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead you shall be saved still no mention of turning from your sins you confess because you believe you shall be saved Romans 10 9 again see how the Bible is perfectly consistent whenever we're dealing with the subject of salvation okay next passage Acts chapter 2 now again I'm not going to read all of this but you've got your own Bible you know blow the dust off and actually read it we've got Peter preaching to people okay he's preaching to this group of people and he's pointing to the Lord Jesus you can see what's going on there and then we'll get down to verse 38 Peter said unto them repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost so there's that word again repent Peter is telling them to repent so let's have a look at this verse a little closer so Peter said unto them repent be baptized and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost so again still doesn't say turn to repent of your sins just as repent notice what immediately follows the repentance we've got baptism and we've got the gift of the Holy Ghost so what's that that's the two things that follow repentance okay well what does Mark 16 16 say it says he that believes and is what baptized shall be saved but he that believes not shall be damned okay baptism goes with belief repent baptized belief baptized because that's where it goes together there John chapter 7 38 and 39 talking about Jesus giving the Holy Ghost he that believes on me as the scripture has said out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water but this he spoke of the spirit which they that believe on him should receive for the Holy Ghost was not yet given because that Jesus was not yet glorified so again we've got repent we've got the gift of the Holy Ghost and according to John the Holy Ghost is given to them that believe so by comparing scripture with scripture we can see that the Holy Spirit and belief baptism follow believe they don't follow turning from sin he doesn't say those that turn from sins and our baptized shall be saved it's those that believe and are baptized doesn't say that he that turns from his sins will receive the Holy Ghost it's him that believes and we've got baptism and Holy Ghost following repentance it must be about believing because once again this is how the Bible is defining it it's perfectly simple and it's perfectly consistent next one acts chapter 17 that I've picked so I am actually going to read this a little bit more because I want you to pay you do need to pay closer attention here so Paul stood in the midst of Martial and said you men of Athens I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious for I have passed by and beheld your devotions I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God whom therefore you ignorantly worship him I declare on to you God that made the world and all things there in seeing that he is the Lord of heaven and earth dwells not in temples made with hands neither is worshipped with men's hands as though he needed anything seeing he gives life to all and breath and all things and has made of one blood all nations of men fought to dwell on the face of the earth all face of the earth and has determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation that they should seek the Lord if happily they might feel after him and find him though he be not far from every one of us for in him we live and move and have our being a certain also of you of your own poets have said for we are also his offspring for as much then as we are the offspring of God we ought not to think that the Godhead is like on to gold or silver or stone graven by art and men's device and the times of this ignorance God winked at but now commands all men everywhere to repent because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained whereof he has given assurance on to all men in that he has raised him from the dead so there's that word again God has commanded all men everywhere to repent okay he's preaching repentance this is people who as we can see believe in foreign gods and we have this unknown God that they ignorantly worship and they need to serve the true and living okay which Paul then obviously goes on to explain who that is so the reason now you might wonder okay well why say the word repent at all if it just if we just need to believe on him salvation why not just use the word believe directly why not just cut out the word repent and then we won't have all of this repent of your sins nonsense but this passage kind of shows why sometimes it is necessary to use the word repent because because they already have this inscription with the unknown God who they do worship out of ignorance they could already claim to believe in Jesus to some extent but they need to turn away from believing in other gods to only believe in the one true living God and and and here's the thing if you ask ask Catholics you know if you tell them you need to believe in Jesus well they'll say well of course we believe in Jesus you ask the Mormons they'll say well yeah of course we believe in Jesus you ask the Jehovah's witnesses you ask the Muslims you ask the Hindus and so on they will all tell you well yeah we believe in Jesus so it's one thing to just say that you believe in him but they all believe different things about him right so the context then of repentance is that you can't just tack on Jesus or God as like an additional unknown God so all these other gods that you're worshiping you've got to turn from believing in false gods to believing in Jesus so you know it's one thing to say you believe in Jesus but do you believe in him exclusively is he your source for salvation it's not believe in Jesus and I turn from my sins believe in Jesus and I hope that these other gods will help me a little bit believe in Jesus and also believe in this just in case I'm wrong about Jesus you've got to put all of your faith in Jesus because that's what it really means to actually believe in him okay so therefore in this context it is necessary to preach repent which you know turning from other gods which turning from sin in an aspect of describing it per you know in in a manner of speaking because believing in Christ cannot be mixed with other gods and so this passage would really explain why sometimes it makes more sense to use the word repent rather than you know going into detail about believing in him okay. Acts chapter three now again very long passage so I'm not I'm not going to read all of it but Peter is preaching to a group of people who refers to the men of Israel and he then accuses them of basically being responsible for killing Jesus so that's the accusation that he's maining against them he then demonstrates somebody that there was a lame man that he healed in front of this crowd that he's preaching to he then says in verse 19 repent you therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord and he continues this again preaching about Jesus explaining who he is and then in verse 26 he says unto you first God having raised up his son Jesus sent him to bless you in turning away every one of you from his iniquities so you can then see in this passage why it has the potential to cause confusion on this issue and undermine some of the previous things that I've been saying and demonstrating from other passages because now having our sins blotted out or turned from is obviously within the context of repentance now it still doesn't say repent of your sins to be saved just to point that out so I've just picked out let's just pick out a few bit versus here just to see what's really going on here now this is an unusual chapter because on the one hand Peter does refer to this crowd as the children of the prophets there in 25 and of the covenant of God so that that kind of implies that they are God's people but then earlier in the chapter he accused them of denying Christ and basically being responsible for killing him so on the one hand the crowd should be God's chosen people but then in a way they're not if you see what I mean because there's still this rejection of the Christ and you can't be God's children and a denier of Christ but there is this mixed issue because we've obviously got Jews from the old covenant who need to start transitioning into the new covenant okay so perhaps really they shouldn't be put in the same category as like a Gentile believer for this particular passive of discussion so they needed to recognize that they denied Jesus the holy one and basically delivered up to him up to his death now obviously not everybody he's preaching to may have done that but if they carry on being Jews who won't acknowledge the holy one then they still fall in the same category of those who who are responsible for his death so they needed to acknowledge the holy one of Israel and that was sent and and basically bring them into the new covenant you know we need to bring them into the new testament way of thinking we can't just keep having the old Jewish system now we need to believe on Christ we have the revelation of Christ now we need to believe in the holy one that God has already sent we're not waiting for the holy one he already sent the holy one now so there's this transition of the covenant okay so then focusing on verse 19 repent you therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out again it still doesn't say repent of your sins therefore it says repent and then it says watch this be converted okay their sins will be blotted out according to their conversion converting from unbelief to belief all right and remember that we just a couple of slides ago we read Acts chapter 2 where Peter also told people to repent just one chapter before and we saw that belief baptism in the holy ghost would follow but that that follows belief it doesn't follow the turning from sins so we've already seen that just one chapter before the chapter that we're on now with repentance and the next thing that I want you to notice there are quite a few verses between 19 and 26 so when it says turn away every one of you from his iniquities that that is part of the overall thing that Peter's saying but it's not the immediate context surrounding where he actually tells them to repent it doesn't say repent to you and turn everyone away from you with iniquities that there's a gap between those because there's other things that Peter goes on to explain first okay so but the next thing that I want you to notice though have a look closely at what verse 26 actually says because it it doesn't actually say that you turn from your sins it actually says on to you first God having raised up his son Jesus sent him to bless you in turning everyone of you from his iniquities so you turning away from your iniquities that's not you must turn from your sin that's he sent his son Jesus who will bless you by turning you away from sins okay so it's God who sent Jesus to turn man away from iniquities because as per verse 9 they were blotted out okay they're not commanded to turn from their own iniquities themselves we don't turn from our own sins to be saved it's Christ who blots out our sins and turns us away from our iniquities now the reason why this is important you see we we we see clearly that it's Jesus who turns us away from our iniquities we don't do it ourselves right now some or you know maybe most repent of your sins preachers they do rightly say that it's not in our own strength it's Christ that enables us to turn from our sins so then you might argue well then they do preach faith alone because us turning from sins is just Christ helping us the problem with that though is that what they do is they preach that the turning from sins it it's part of our repentance so in other words we can't repent properly unless we've turned from our sins but this is what they say they say well first you must repent by which they mean turn from sins and then second you must believe on Jesus classic examples Billy Graham and Ray Comfort Billy Graham used to say first you've got to repent of your sin and then you've got to believe on Jesus alone and then Ray Comfort will do the same thing it'll say to people there's two things you've got to do you've got to repent of your sins and you've got to believe in Jesus so they put the repentance or the turning from sin before believing in Jesus but we've quite clearly seen in Acts chapter three that turning from our iniquities you know iniquities just being a synonym for sin that comes after the repentance not during or not before okay repentance was in verse 19 turning away from our iniquities is in verse 26 so the turning away from our iniquities has come after the repentance not not during okay so to say that we have to first turn from our sins and then second believe on Christ that's putting the gospel backwards according to Acts chapter three and you would essentially have to say to a sinner well you have to turn from that and stop being a sinner before you've even believed on Jesus by which time you've already self-reformed so why believe on Jesus at all this is the gospel backwards you don't turn from your sins stop sinning be sorry for that and then believe on Jesus right you are a sinner you believe on Jesus he removes your sins and then once you're saved then we can talk about holiness and you know growing in holiness turning away from sin etc etc etc you know being sanctified they're getting the gospel backwards when they do this okay but you might you might wonder then well hang on a minute whoa whoa whoa okay what about Jesus calling sinners to repentance and that is a perfectly legitimate question so I've picked some examples here so Luke 5 32 I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance mark 2 17 when Jesus heard it he said on to them they that are whole have no need of the physician but they that are sick I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance Luke 15 7 I say on to you that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repents more than over 99 just persons which need no repentance okay Luke 13 and they were present at the season some that told him of the galleons whose blood pilot had mingled with their sacrifices Jesus answering said on to them suppose you that these galleons were sinners above all galleons because they suffered such things I tell you no but except you repent with again sinners being the context you shall all likewise perish all those 18 upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them you think they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem I tell you no but except you repent you shall all likewise perish so we quite clearly see in these passages here that there is a need for sinners to be called to repentance then you will see that's where it says repent of your sin well the thing is it still doesn't say repent of your sins to be saved that's still not what it says it says sinners need to be called to repentance notice that it's also it's using the noun it's not using the verb so it's not saying sinners repent of your sins it's sinners to repentance so bring sinners to the status of those who have repented okay very important because the fact that it uses that distinction but the thing is though folks if you're going to say that sinners to repentance means repent of your sins it's just another way of saying it well the thing is though in the previous passages that we've just looked at we have already seen that belief is the context of repentance for salvation right so the the point here is that sinners can only be saved because jesus died to save them and consequently that's why they need to believe on him right that makes perfect sense that's not complicated at all they cannot be saved by turning from all of their own sins okay and i'm gonna you know i am gonna pick up on this point we you know i am gonna go through this with you so just a couple of verses i've plucked out romans 5a god commanded his love towards us that in yet while we were past tense yet sinners christ died for us not while we were yet sinners he enables us to turn from our sins no christ died for us we need to believe in him because he died for us this is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptation that christ jesus came into the world what for to turn them from their sins no to save sinners of whom i am chief so even if you say that someone has to if you say that someone has to turn repent of their sins to be saved what what you're doing is you're taking the emphasis away from christ and you're putting it back on the individual but we quite clearly see it's christ who died for us it's christ who came into the world to save sinners all right it's not us turning from our sins that save sinners all right and i'm gonna you know i'm gonna demonstrate this so i'm bringing it up again matthew chapter 21 we already looked at this when we dealt with the issue of john uh john's baptisms so verily verily i say on to you that the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of god before you for john came on to you in the way of righteousness and you believed him not but the publicans and the harlots believed him and you that when you had seen it repented not afterwards that you might turn from his sins no that you might believe him so we just looked at this earlier okay we've we've already touched on this but the publicans and harlots which is obviously a type of sinners going to the kingdom before the chiefs uh chief priests and elders why it doesn't say because the publicans and harlots turned from all their sins okay their sinners who need to you know Jesus came to call sinners to repentance well they're sinners so what's their repentance what what is Jesus telling that the chief priests need to repent of or what you know how do they do their repenting it's that they believed john's preaching the publicans and harlots didn't turn from all their sins to get saved to be brought to repentance they believed john's preaching whereas the chief priests and the elders did not believe in his preaching in other words they did not repent they did not believe the preaching okay very very important that we understand this this is sinners to repentance this is defining it for you the bible is making it super easy okay so then when we see that we have sinners who are condemned Jesus obviously wants to bring sinners to sinners to repentance sinners need to turn from unbelief towards belief i came not to call the righteous but sinners like the publicans and harlots to repentance believing on him believing the preaching sinners who are condemned need to turn from unbelief towards being believers that are saved because while we were yet sinners christ died for us once again the bible keeps it easy the bible keeps it consistent okay it's men that make it complicated then the last thing that i'm going to touch on for this sinners to repentance issue right alcoholics synonymous turns people from their sins addiction to alcohol but this doesn't get people saved the penal system is intended to turn people from their sins all right reforming criminals but this still doesn't get people saved people may turn from their sins just because of getting older so you know they're a bit older they can't keep drinking and partying and fornicating like they did in the younger days but that still doesn't get them saved catholics turn from their sins through the process of confession but they still have a workspace salvation that cannot save muslims also turn from their sins but like the catholics they have a workspace salvation that cannot save turning from sin does not save a sinner believing in jesus who he is and what he has done is what saves a sinner you cannot be saved by repenting of your sins you can only be saved by believing on the lord jesus christ and so with with that in mind then now that we now that we've defined it that way we understand that it's believe we understand that that's what it means to repent you you believe the gospel i touched upon an issue near the beginning of the video that the gospel of john which is the one book that tells us how to have eternal life with that specific purpose in mind doesn't mention repentance once we had two opposing arguments but but we can now resolve these arguments we can sort this so the left side argument was that the word repent is never found in john's gospel which is you know written to tell us how to have eternal life so therefore repentance is not required for salvation otherwise the gospel of john would not be sufficient the right side argument is that the word repent is used as a requirement for salvation in other gospels and in acts so therefore it must be required otherwise why are these books telling us to do it well we can now solve both of these arguments we've solved this problem okay by defining repentance correctly as turning from unbelief towards belief we can now understand that while repentance is necessary for salvation the word is not found in the gospel of john which is the one book written to tell us how to be saved on to eternal life why repentance is already covered by what john is telling us to do john 3 16 for god so love the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life for god sent not his son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved he that believes on him is not condemned but he that believes not is already condemned because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of god i've covered that i've done a series on john i've covered these chapters you can find it okay john 5 24 again believe on him john 6 40 believe on him john 6 47 believe on me john 11 it's 25 26 believe in me believe in me do you believe this john 20 30 to 31 this is where he gives the reason why he wrote this book and many other signs truly did jesus and the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book but these things are written that you might believe that jesus is the christ the son of god and that by believing you might have life through his name believe believe believe believe believe believe john is telling this over and over and over and over again so if we just recognize and acknowledge the truth that from the other gospels repentance for salvation is to believe makes perfect sense why john never mentioned repentance it's already implied in the believing in him okay believing in him is the repentance that's why he doesn't have to use the word so then we can quite clearly say that john's gospel is consistent with what the other gospels tell us to do john 3 and john 5 it was believe in him believe or you know if you don't believe he condemned matthew 21 the publicans and all that's going because they believed but the chief priests would not believe and that's why according to john they're condemned because they won't repent that they might believe and again mark one time is to fill the kingdom i've got his hand repent believe the gospel see how the bible is consistent it's the same gospel in matthew it's the same gospel in mark it's the same gospel in john the repentance is believing on him turning away from your false gods turning away from your false belief turning away from your rejection of christ turning away from believing in a false christ or a false gospel believe the right christ the right gospel believe it's all there it's all consistent and so you know if people still want to bring up this old chest not that repentance really means that we have to turn from sins well then ultimately you would have to accuse Jesus of not preaching the full gospel in John okay because Jesus only ever told people to believe in him you know he doesn't say that whosoever repents of his sins and believes in him it doesn't say he that repents of his sins and believes on him is not condemned and he that doesn't turn from his sins is condemned that's not what it says and again John 5 24 it doesn't say he that here's my word repents of his sins and believes on him it's just believe on him Jesus did not tell Nicodemus or the woman at the well or anybody else in John's gospel to turn from their sins as well as believe on him for eternal life so if you want to insist that we have to return from our sins to be saved you would have to say that Jesus did not sufficiently provide these people with enough information to be saved you would also have to say that while John's gospel declares that it's written to tell you how to have eternal life John fails to do its job because it does not cover all of the steps needed to gain eternal life you know I write this book so that you can have eternal life but I'm not going to tell you everything that you need to do to get eternal life because I'm not going to cover the repent of your sins issue well then it's an insufficient book he didn't do his job properly he didn't fulfill the purpose that it was written for you have to accuse Jesus of preaching an incorrect gospel and I've seen footage where preachers bemoan other preachers for not mentioning the word repent when they say to believe in Christ but you can just see how ridiculous they are when you just you know let the Bible be define itself but one last point though that I really do have to address this is that because you might say well well hang on a minute didn't Jesus say in John's gospel okay not Matthew Mark Luke in John's gospel the one written to tell us how to eternal life didn't Jesus say sin no more and it isn't that a similar saying to turn from your sins right now that that is an important question that has to be addressed now yes he did say he said this to two people he said it to the man that he healed at the pool of Bethesda the lay man he healed him that was in John chapter 5 he also said go and sin no more to the woman caught in adultery so we have two particular examples so we have this gospel of John that's written to tell us how to have eternal life is saying believe and believe and believe but then there are these two instances where he does say sin no more so is that part of eternal life then well again this is where you see this is where you've got to learn to divide the word of God and look closely at what's actually going on now watch this in both of these exchanges go and read them for yourself get your Bible off your shelf blow the dust off and read it in both of these exchanges Jesus never mentioned believing on him or eternal life he never mentioned it to the heat layman or the woman caught in adultery he didn't say sin no more and believe on me that you might have life he didn't say anything like that he never mentioned eternal life to him now in the one in court in adultery did say neither do I condemn you and people make that an eternal thing but that that's not the context of it because it was a physical condemnation she was almost stoned to death so Jesus didn't condemn her in that context no mention of eternal life no mention of believing on him so yes while the gospel of John is predominantly about believing on Christ and having eternal life the two times where he says sin no more is instructed it's not the context of eternal life it's not paired with believing on him the context was avoiding a worse earthly situation nothing to do with eternity so when you see other passages in other gospels about not sinning and living a righteous life I absolutely agree with them but that's not to be saved though and that's where we need to make that distinction and I'll I'll come back to that later in the video so then now we know the context of repentance when it appears in its noun form I alluded to this earlier in the video repentance is not some really complicated word that you need all these theologians to write all these boring articles and quote a bunch of other people and pour all their heart out in some emotional sermon about what it means it's just the noun of the verb and hopefully you've seen by now that the verb is to turn from unbelief towards belief I hope I've shown you enough passages to justify that so now that we know that that's what repent means well now that now we know what the noun repentance means then don't we and I've just handpicked five examples second Corinthians seven ten for godly sorrow works repentance to salvation so salvation is the subject matter being saved eternal life not to be repented of but the sorrow of the world works death so what is godly sorrow well it's recognizing that only Christ can save you from the wages of your sins once you believe in him on to eternal life this is not to be reverse repented of this is repentance to salvation not to be repented of perfect example of somebody grasping that is Peter because Peter said to Jesus in John 6 68 to who shall we go Jesus you have the words of eternal life you know what top answer Peter top marks Peter because that is a brilliant answer where else is Peter gonna go Jesus has the words of eternal life that is repentance to salvation not to be repented of Acts 11 18 when they heard these things they held their peace and glorified God saying then has God also to the Gentiles granted repentance on to life the Gentiles need to believe in Christ just as much as the Jews because he is the Messiah of the Jews and the Gentiles they need to believe that's their repentance on to life it's available for the Gentiles as well as the Jews Romans 2 4 or do you despise the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long suffering not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance so because it's God's goodness that leads people to repentance this is further proof that telling people that they themselves need to repent of their own sins makes no sense they don't turn from their own sins it's the goodness of God that leads them to repentance this is also consistent with how John 6 compares believing in Christ with being drawn by the father why do you have to be drawn by the father because it's the goodness of God that leads you to repentance I've done a video on John chapter 6 go find it Hebrews 6 1 therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ let us go on to perfection not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God yet more proof repentance faith towards God it's not turning from your sins because that would be the dead works that he's talking about okay you don't turn from your sins they're your dead works it's faith towards God that's what repentance is faith and then last example 2nd Peter 3 9 the Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness but his long suffering towards us not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance well if he wants all to come to repentance how do they do that well similar verse John 6 40 this is the will of him that sent me that everyone which sees the Son everyone and believes on him may have everlasting life that's the all that should come to repentance and I will raise him up at the last day amen let's look at some more examples so Luke chapter 24 between 44 to 49 and he Jesus said unto them these are the words which I spake on to you while I was yet with you that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me then opened he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures and he said unto them thus it is written and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem you are witnesses of these things and behold I send the promises of my father unto you but tarry you into the city until you be endured with power from on high so Jesus is talking to his disciples after the resurrection about what they're going to do in Acts and we've already looked at that that passage from Acts so there's an issue with verse 47 is that it's translated differently in different Bibles because Textus Receptus Bibles such as the the King James Bible they use a conjunction so it will say repentance and remission of sins whereas the critical or eclectic text-based translations they use a preposition so they'll say repentance for the forgiveness of sins so that's how the ESV or the the NESB would read neither of these are a translation error so it's not that they just can't seem to understand how to translate the Greek it's because the underlying Greek does vary in the two text sources so on the received text if you were to go on this website scriptureforall dot org that would give you the received text or the text of Receptus reading and that would be the Greek word for and whereas if you went on thebiblehope.com that would give you the critical text so it would give you the Greek word for for so it's not that like the ESV or the King James translators couldn't translate it correctly it's just that the Greek word from the from which they were translating was different okay so because then modern Bibles will say repentance for the forgiveness of sins this verse is then interpreted that repentance and obviously by that they mean turning from all of your sins it is for the remission of sins rather than as well as so then they will assert that turning from sin is not it is necessary for the forgiveness of sin to apply for salvation not not referring to forgiveness for the believer so you know it's not talking about remission of sins generally like when I as a believer pray Lord forgive my sins but obviously salvation forgiveness of sins pass from death onto life so first of all consider that this verse it's not directed to an unsaved person Jesus is not telling somebody how to be saved the narrator Luke is not even telling us as the narrator how to be safe this is Jesus talking to his disciples about what they're going to do in Acts and we've already seen what they're going to do in Acts they preach repent be baptized you know have your sins remitted etc etc and we already looked at that and we already brought it back to faith so you know when it says repentance and or for doesn't really matter to me really but I'm going to show you a clip and just to show you how people are just not grasping this at all and how the repentance of your sins crowd take a verse like this and they just read words that just aren't in that verse and I'm just going to I'm just going to show you this in practice so the video that I want to show you you can find this on YouTube it's titled it's a bit of a sensationalized title but it's titled Stephen Anderson explodes denies biblical repentance and it's uploaded by this guy here so he's out in the field doing whatever he does and then two guys confront him so there's a guy that's going to do most of the speaking and most of the back and forth with him and then there's there's the guy behind the camera so watch what happens because you really need to focus on what exactly they're saying how they're trying to manipulate language and all of the different things that are going on here and it's just to show you how people are just not grasping this whole repentance business at all and how it's been twisted and changed why don't you like the word repent hang on earlier there's four million people in the city I said that I'm not interested no no fair enough I don't actually remember hearing you say that part but I understand I just wanted to make sure that if you did know something that I didn't know you could share it with me because if I actually in one sense agree with you that if I don't speak it then I don't need to expose myself that's just pride that's just pride like oh the greek word here and you don't need to speak greek do you know greek fair enough yeah I do know greek I've read the new testament cover to cover in greek multiple times so my name means my name is chris by the way it's not even pronounced metanoia okay my name is chris that's fair pronunciation what how would you pronounce it it's metanil okay and it means repent right or what does it mean let me ask you so why don't we just speak english and just say repent repent so Jesus so as you've seen from the video so far they've confronted this man in the field who's not really interested in talking to them but they end up confronting him we end up having this back and forth they don't even give him a proper greeting like excuse me you know can I talk to you you know excuse me say it's just why don't you like the word repent that's their introduction so they're already trying to manipulate how this dialogue is going to go they're already trying to manipulate the angle of of conversation and so we then have all the spiel about how they start going back to the greek and you know metanoia and metanil and what what the greek means and the thing is by their own confession they don't even speak greek and then when they've bumped into somebody who does speak greek or you know at least claims to who's read the bible in greek well he's just caught them out it's just the word repent and then he tackles them on it yeah yeah it means repent and that's what it means so then why do we have to go back to the greek let's just stick to the english repent and so you do have to watch out for this when people who don't even speak greek say let's go back to the greek because what they're then trying to deceive you by is to think that there's this special meaning in greek that we then need to put in the english word when really the greek word is just the greek word for the english word repent and whatever it means in greek it also means in english and vice versa and you know we've already done the homework on this earlier in the video but it's not a complicated word at all you know it's a noun or it's a verb but it's not that complicated it's not this profound you know weird weird meaning to repent right yeah but you don't have to repent of your sins to be saved okay now where does the bible say to repent of your sins to be saved that's a works-based salvation does it say that in loop 24 i'm just asking you does it say that it doesn't so it doesn't say repent of sins for for repent for forgiveness of sins so notice what's going on here and this is pretty much the crux of the matter that i've been trying to get across to you all throughout this video so far we've looked at loads of examples of where the bible says repent right it's not hard to find the word in repent or repentance in the bible it comes up plenty of times he's then saying doesn't the bible say repent of your sins and and then this is the text that he wants to bring up what's crazy about this is they even show it on the screen in the video they even show what the verse says and they're still saying it says repent of your sins it doesn't say that folks it doesn't say and that repentance of sins for the forgiveness of said sins it just says repentance for the forgiveness of sins it still doesn't say repent of your sins no matter how many times people want to quote it and it's the same with acts chapter three or chapter two or you know matthew whatever when the bible says repent plenty of times it never says repent of your sins but notice how people just quote these verses and they just tack those words onto the end of it quoting verses that don't even prove the point that they're making it does not say that no that's not what it says in luke 24 it just says that repentance okay and the forgiveness of sins should be preached it doesn't say repent of your sins so here's the repent means to turn or to change your mind or to go in another direction okay well guess what the thing that causes people to be unsaved is that they don't believe in christ do they have to change their mind to believe in christ yeah so that's repentance but not repent of your sins but they don't have to repent of their sins they have to repent of believing in the wrong thing so what could i say turn from your sin no that's a fault that's a lie so because if you have to turn from your sins that's works easy so let's just um let's just have a recap then of just what's happened there so the guy on the left he's pretty much saying what i've been saying as well throughout this video obviously i've just been saying it at a much slower pace than he has because we're you know we're looking up all these individual verses so you know if you follow the video up to now we we've done our homework okay we already know what the bible is telling us we already know what repentance for salvation means turning from unbelief towards belief which is you know what he's trying to explain to these people the guy on the right side it is just not grasping this at all right and then he says so okay if i can't say repent of my sins can i say turn from my sins then as if you know just changing the word repent to turn suddenly fixes fixes the issue so everything that he's trying to explain to the other guy is just going over his head alright and the point here is this repentance doesn't have to mean of sins you you can repent of anything really um you can repent of driving the wrong way to work you can repent of going to the wrong supermarket to get something it doesn't have to be about sin but the guy on the right is just not grasping this at all and even though they don't talk about this verse in the dialogue notice the verse that the editor has put on the screen acts 319 and again he because basically the video the the one taking the video and uploading it he's trying to debunk this guy so this is another proof text about repent of your sins it still doesn't say that now it does read a bit differently in the new american standard it says repent and return um whereas you know the king james says converted but it still doesn't say repent of your sins in either bible okay it says repent and return or be converted that your sins may be blotted out or wiped away repent turn believe all right pass from death on to life believe the gospel and be converted that your sins would be blotted out we've already looked at that folks we've already done the homework on that it doesn't say repent of your sins those three little words are not there after the word repent but that's his proof text that the bible says repent of your sins when it doesn't say repent of your sins is it oh yeah it's just so easy to turn from all your sins right let me let me ask you let me ask you got to work on it every day let me ask you a different way is it work if god changes my mind and i turn from my sins look does that make all you're doing is just you're just repackaging work salvation there's two kinds of salvation okay faith okay works i believe salvation by faith you believe salvation by works no okay so what's going on here and i pointed out earlier that they were trying to manipulate this conversation from the very start is that that now we're playing with words so you know he's pointed out that turning from your sins and trying to live righteous is hard we we work on it every day but then the other guy on the right he's trying to get into this trap is that well what if god causes me to change my mind and i you know i turn from my sins but but this is really playing with words though because first of all if that's the opposition fine the thing is nobody's arguing with that nobody actually objects to that even he doesn't object to that you know they they will assume that he does but he hasn't expressed a problem with that specifically and even deals with that in some of his sermons that he deals with god turning you from your sins is not the issue okay the issue is what must i do to repent for salvation so if you're going to say that well god can change someone's mind and turn them we'll find again not a problem with that but what's that got to do with you turning from your sins then for salvation you can't say well god changed me but then go around telling people you've got to turn from their sins because that's you that's not god that's you okay if god turns somebody from their sins well that's great okay but that should come after believing in christ it doesn't come before believing in christ and i still haven't really dealt with a lot of the scriptures that deal with turning from our wicked ways that that's going to come a little while later so i've still got to deal with that but that's after someone saved that's not to be saved okay you can't reform your character before you've believed on christ and then believe on christ because you've now reform your character you have to believe on christ to start reforming your character if at all okay and the final thing on that point is that yes we know that god you know leads men to repentance we know that god wants men everywhere to repent but the action or all the instruction to repent it's not directed at god it doesn't say god repent that you have to repent that's what the bible's telling you to do repent you know be converted repent for the kingdom of god is at hand repent and believe the gospel it's directed towards you it's not directed towards god it's that simple how can you prove that i believe is by word okay let me prove it to you Jonah chapter 3 verse 10 says and god saw their works yes that they turned from their evil way okay and god repented of the evil that he said he would do under them you did it not you're making a category here because every time you see the word work you think it's a bad thing i didn't say it's a bad thing i said it's not part of salvation yeah so this is starting to get very very wearing now because no matter how much he's trying to explain it to them they're not getting it at all that it's just it's still going overhead they're just not grasping this you know he gives them a verse which we looked at earlier in this study Jonah 3 10 that god saw their works that they turned from their evil way he doesn't say god saw their faith that they turned from their evil way so even if well god helps me turn from out it's still your works though one way or another no matter how much you want to you know twist and turn that issue justification is by faith it's not by work so if the bible tells us to do works well yes we should do those but not for salvation because we're not justified by those works you know that includes turning from sins so you know and then they accuse him of treating works like it's a bad thing which he's never said all right nobody's arguing that works are bad okay nobody's saying works aren't a good thing we're just trying to explain that they're not part of salvation they're not part of justification when it comes to you being saved you need to separate those things and you know when people say the bible says do this the bible says do that the bible says obey the bible says it works nobody has a problem with that nobody's arguing about that but that's got nothing to do with whether you have eternal life or not because that's not how eternal life actually applies i also found it really convenient that while we could have you know luke 24 on the screen and we could have x chapter 3 on the screen for some reason the verse that he actually brings up that would disprove them somehow that didn't make it onto a little banner on the bottom now i can't say that the video guy is sinned by not doing that but it's very very very convenient for him though isn't it folks yeah we don't our repentance doesn't save us right he did he said it did he said to be saved or he said a change of mind god grants that the change of mind because you must so notice how the two people that are arguing with them are now contradicting each other because bearing in mind that they're defining repentance is turning from sin i mean the guy on the right that's what he's arguing you have to repent of your sins to be saved and that's what repentance means well then the guy behind the camera says that repentance is not part of salvation so turning from sin is not part of salvation but then he confronts them say well hang on a bit that's what you've been arguing about and then and then he says no it's a change of mind but you've just defined the change of mind is turning from sin that's what you've been arguing with about otherwise we're two minutes 49 seconds into the video what is the argument then because he's already said that he's already defined repentance as changing your mind about the gospel so then what the argument but you see how they contradict each other and it's like early when i read that living waters article first we say repentance is this and it's a change of mind just in Christ alone and then you've also got to turn from sins be sorrowful you know vomit all your tears out and all this junk it would just get in mixed messages again because these repent of your sins types they always contradict themselves and they always contradict each other because it contradicts faith alone it contradicts justification by faith and not of works because you must you just agreed you must change your mind to turn to christ right so as a result of that repentance you trust in christ not in your work so what does that have to do with stopping sinning what does that have to do with turning from your sins perfect example jesus never ever sinned sinless right uh he never had to repent correct he never had to change his mind god repented 41 times in the bible i'm asking just did jesus ever have to change his mind he didn't have to change his mind but he did change his action sure like for example he's walking on the water he would have passed by but then they called out to him and then he turned and went to them that's repentance so my point is he doesn't have to turn from sin to be pleasing to god i have to turn from sin to be pleasing to god does it please god to sin and not to be saved you don't have to turn from sin to be meaning if so again on and on it goes he's trying to explain it to him he's trying to make it perfectly simple and still not grasping this at all because what he's trying to do it is trying to pit sinning as the opposite of believing on christ so then we have to turn from doing your sins to believing on christ you can't believe on christ if you've still got sins but the thing is that we already looked at this earlier we we already dealt with this quite a while ago in the video sinning is not the direct opposite of trusting in christ the opposite of trusting in christ is not trusting in christ the opposite of sinning is not sinning or obeying okay the opposite of believing on christ it's not you know doing so they're not direct opposites to each other those things aren't diametrically opposed there are people in the bible who are believers and sinned which is why this is completely stupid and then is you know he tries bombarding him with this straw man argument about how jesus doesn't sin like anybody doesn't know that so we have to turn from our sins to be pleasing to god but here's why that's so ridiculous the reason why jesus was pleasing to god is that he had no sin to be repented of what sin can jesus repent of right you turning from your sins even if you just stop sinning and turn from those and you're sorrowful and you stop doing it let's just say hypothetically you do that that still doesn't mean that you've you're now pleasing god because it still doesn't resolve the sins that you have done you you can repent from them that doesn't undo the fact that you did them that's why you have to believe on christ you have to trust in christ alone so uh the guy on the left again points out that god repented in the bible and we've looked at those verses we saw verses earlier in this study video where god repented it's not talking about sin again repentance doesn't automatically mean sin and he even gives him an example of jesus turning from going one way to going another now i don't i don't think it actually says that jesus repented but we know that god repents because we've seen it in the bible we we did all the concordance we looked at the dictionary we saw that it can mean to change your mind or to turn so you know that that is a perfect example of repenting not of sin though but he just he can't grasp that his mind just just cannot handle that level of information that that is too complicated for him apparently you don't have to turn from sin to be sinned if when god makes me a child of his i look more like christ and jesus never sin that's my point am i wrong now at this point you know he's getting rather frustrated and i can understand completely why because you know it's like talking to a brick wall with these people yeah i could see why he's getting annoyed because the thing is it doesn't matter if the bible agrees with you they don't want to let go of repent of your sins or turn from your sins they don't want to let that go so and again he's once again confusing him trying to look like christ or looking like christ with the reason why he saved okay this is just completely backwards nobody is arguing against the fact that we're supposed to grow and become more like christ he does not have a problem with that at all nobody's i don't know anybody who disagrees with that i don't know anybody who's saying don't try and look more like christ i've never met such a person but all of that trying to look like christ and growing holiness and be sanctified that comes after we're saved it doesn't come to be saved it's not part of the repentance to get you saved it's the life that follows you after you're saved but you see how he keeps confusing this and he keeps confusing you cleaning up your life with the reason why you're saved he won't separate those two things and we need to separate them you should not mix you with salvation okay whatever you do should come after salvation but let's get salvation first it doesn't involve all the things that you do when you're cleaning up your life you can't clean your life up when you haven't even believed in jesus yet to then be able to believe in jesus that's completely backwards not listening i thought i would hate your teaching works that's what i'm asking you i thought i was listening to your work salvation and you know what if you don't get off that you're not saved but we don't have fully trust what christ did not this thing of oh well you know god's gonna change me and then i'm gonna start doing all the right things and that's why i'm saved because i turned from my sin that's a false doctor may i ask you another question if you're willing i have other things to do there are four million people in the city pick someone else to talk to i'm not interested this is not the gospel this is a false gospel that's what i'm trying to i'm trying to ask you believe on the lord jesus christ and thou shalt be saved but that's the gospel your gospel is turned from sin and you'll be saved it's not true doesn't need now just if you were to go to the comments thread for this video um some people i mean that's a sarcastic comment there i guess but some people are giving the guy on the left um you know a hard time in the comments because of the way he's raising his voice and he's getting annoyed and he's pointing his finger you know and he's shouting and all this jazz but the guy on the right has been all calm and reasonable and such a loving christian but the thing is though folks that really is a load of irrelevant that's just a distraction that's neither here nor there okay i don't really care what his attitude is like i care whether what he's saying is fundamentally true okay he's the one that tried to they tried to manipulate the conversation in the first place he's misquoting the bible or something it doesn't say he's the one whose brain is the size of a p that's just not getting this simple concept at all but then you know he's the one that's been on christ like when he's defended his position from the bible and he's getting annoyed with him because he's just not getting it but but they approached him they went after him and and then they give all this spiel in the description about how you know they didn't really want to talk to him they wanted to walk away but you know this guy kept coming back to them and it's just blatantly not true really but uh you know we'll we'll get on these two guys a little bit more uh in a moment true doesn't he have to die look this is the second time we're having this conversation i'm not interested you're here just filming me i because you want to use my oh really that's why you have two cameras on me right now because you're not here to film you're a liar you have two cameras on me you're filming me you're not filming me yeah okay you're here to film me because you want to use my youtube channel to promote yourself okay i don't have you are wrong steven i don't have a youtube channel don't want me steven i don't have i'm not your friend i so this right here is a very nice fitting end to um our cross examination of this video because it will just highlight the hypocrisy of the whole repent of your sins thing so he's obviously understandably getting annoyed with them he accuses them of filming him just to get views on youtube which he said i'm not here to film you you know i'm just here with a guy with a camera who's there to film you but i'm not here to film you know you know you know he then gets he then points to the camera and says oh that's why you've got two cameras on me you're filming me you know filming me just for your youtube channel and then winding it back to 438 notice this deceptive caption here he thought i was recording from my iphone and gopro and he doesn't even say iphone not gopro so you know first i thought well have you got three cameras then if there's a gopro and a camera but the camera man's being deceptive by so this this one's i'm not filming you this one's not on even though he's got another camera that is on so it's just and well i'm not filming with this camera you know i'm just not filming with this with this other camera this is really very deceptive in the way that they're doing this and then after the camera man does that he then says i don't have a youtube channel but again the camera man does have the youtube channel the camera man's the one putting on youtube and these two people are together it's not like they just randomly bumped into a park and you know anderson was also there they've come together oh but i don't really have a youtube channel and it's very deceptive what they're doing here because strictly speaking they will say that they're not lying because well it's true the iphone isn't recording his camera is recording he's not the one with a youtube channel that's going to upload this video he's not the one that's here to film him because he's not the one holding the camera so you see how they're not technically saying something that's not factually true but what they are doing is they're twisting the truth and you can see that there can't you the fact that only the fact that only one camera is turned on is not really relevant and this is a bit like a child's argument right you you say to a child i've told you to clean up after yourself when you go to the bathroom well i didn't go to the bathroom i went in the shower room like as if that's really the most relevant bit the relevant bit is you've asked them to clean up after themselves you know when they use the toilet or whatever he's confronted them about filming him and the cameraman's trying to make it about the fact that the iphone isn't switched on like that's relevant and then the pastor even shows on the camera you know turning it around that they're obviously blatantly filming him and then well i didn't come to film you and and this is you know this is what it's like for us i haven't come to film you i'm just with somebody who's here to film you you know i'm not really recording you on two cameras just one you know i don't have a youtube channel but my friend here has a youtube channel and he's going to put it on and you just see the you know that what they're doing here how they're trying to manipulate the truth twisting the truth to attempt to deceive him but you know he wasn't really tricked by this but let's get to what the real elephant in the room is here okay if this guy and the cameraman have repented of all of their sins because that's what they've got to do to be saved by their own confession why did they try to deceive him about filming him why did they try to deceive him about sticking it on youtube because remember they've repented of all their sins so they would have just said well yes i am filming you just not on this camera but yeah we are filming you why not just say yes we are going to put this on youtube and we do want views why not just come out and say if you've turned from all your sins and you're such a righteous person who models christ just come out and say it why why all this double speak why have we got to manipulate the truth and let me show you i've i've hand picked a couple of comments from this this video let me show you this so there's a couple of comments where a couple of people have pointed this out right that you know well you are strict you are lying technically because you're trying to deceive him you know and then it wiggles his way out of it while he pointed to my phone which wasn't on he then points to my GoPro which i replied yes sir you know as he's already you know turning the camera around and you know pinning him down basically you know calling him out like why are you lying about having a youtube channel like well you should listen closer there were two people in this video the one he was talking to i'm not the person that was talking to him but you're with that person you're together you were doing this together that person talking to him must have known that this was going to end up on youtube he must have known it you know i think everybody refuses to believe otherwise but notice how he tries to wiggle himself out of it so this really is you know this is the crux of the matter here people who preach repent of your sins to be saved or some other form of work salvation always always always have excuses and special exemptions for their own sins well it wasn't really a sin i wasn't really doing this you see this is what i was doing you know trying to try to catch right but they were clearly being manipulative you know i don't think you can really escape that they clearly worked as a pair so as a pair they lied about filming him or intending to film him they lied about having a youtube channel not by lying directly as individuals but in a pair by twisting the truth okay satan knows how to twist the truth in the bible too work salvation relies on twisting the truth oh the bible says repent of your sins because of this verse that doesn't say repent of your sins you know etc etc i'm not here to film you my friend is here to film you i'm not filming on my iphone i don't have a youtube channel but the cameraman does you see what's going on you see the manipulation you see how he just wiggles his way out of it like a pathetic little weasel even though he's turned from his sins and he models christ apparently so you know they say that you have to turn from your sins and have fruits as a believer well they have the fruits of people with a work salvation they have the fruit of sin just like everybody else so by his own standard he's not saved okay by their own standards and so i know this has gone on a bit of a tangent from uh luke 24 but you know it reminded me of this video because of the fact that they bring it up as repenting from sin and i wanted to show you what what's happening here so i'm sorry to digress there i didn't expect that looking at five minutes of footage would turn into a half an hour breakdown but you know we saw a bunch of things there that someone's using luke 24 as you know to say that we have to turn from all of our sins and that's what repentance means when it when it doesn't even say that but the of the two people being confronted the the guy on the camera the camera and the the other guy they they use the nasb which agrees with the esp that it's repentance for the forgiveness of sins whereas the the pastor that they were trying to tackle he would use the king james where it says repentance and the remission of sins and then so some people wonder whether that causes confusion but the thing is whether it says repentance and or repentance for it doesn't really matter either way because repentance for salvation involves turning from unbelief towards belief not turning from the other things we've already done the homework on this in the video we've already covered this for you know we've we've done ours of work on this we know this now and we already covered acts too earlier so when jesus is telling the disciples you know go out and preach repentance for the figure that says or repentance and the remission of sins it makes no difference because it's pointing to here acts 238 the preacher is preaching repent we've got remission of sins there or forgiveness of sins there and also in this verse we've got baptized and we've got received the holy ghost well what does baptism follow he that believes in his baptised shall be saved what does the holy ghost follow he that believes on me the spirit the holy spirit will be given to him that should believe not him that turns from their sins so you see how one way or another no matter how much people want to wrestle on this issue it still comes back to believing on him not turning from all of his sins here's a couple more verses this refers to john the baptist preaching but they read more similar to acts so john did baptise in the wilderness and preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins Luke 3 again it says repentance for the remission of sins so early we looked at Matthew 3 when john said repent for the kingdom of god is at hand we saw that by comparing it with Matthew 21 that the context was turning to belief the publicans and the harlots believed him as Matthew 21 explains Mark and Luke's accounts read a little bit differently here because obviously we don't get repentance for the remission of sins in in the quote from Matthew 3 but it's because they're not documenting the actual dialogue when john is saying repent but rather than narrating the story in a bit like how Jesus told the disciples in Luke 24 that repentance ties in with the remission of sins though here the king james does actually say four rather than and here much like Luke 24 though you know if we compare repentance and remission of sins with the accounting acts we see that it comes back to belief so these verses still don't say repent of your sins to be saved now earlier when i looked at the living waters article quite a while ago in the video now it quoted 2 Timothy 2 25 and it says in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves if god for adventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth so this verse was quoted by the article as it was basically the first proof text if you like the first actual bible text that it provided to say that repentance means you know turning from all of our sins and a dramatic change in our character and lifestyle and all of the stuff that it was saying we were told by this same article and also we're told by the repent of your sins uh crowd generally i've now abbreviated them for future slides that it's it's not enough to just have an intellectual belief in in jesus or a mental acknowledgement to the truth we need a change of lifestyle it's not enough to just mentally acknowledge him but yet this very simple and easy to understand verse above shows what the outcome of repentance is repentance to the turning away from all of our sins in a clean and holy living that's not what it says it says repentance to the acknowledging or acknowledgement of the truth so once again the bible makes repentance for salvation simple but all these men are making it complicated for us we're saying it means this dramatic change in lifestyle when according to timothy here it's the acknowledging of the truth even though these guys say it's not enough so this point about injecting of your sins into repentance i'm going to finish on this point now with a few remaining verses so these are still yet more verses that we haven't covered that again people will quote some of these verses either in person or on the internet as their evidence for repent of your sins yet you will notice none of these verses say repent of your sins we have acts 5 31 him as god exalted with his right hand to be a prince and savior for to give repentance of your sins not what it says repentance to israel and forgiveness of sins acts 11 18 when they heard these things they held their peace and glorified god saying then has god also to the Gentiles granted repentance from sin oh wait again not what it says it says repentance onto life acts 13 24 when john had first preached before his coming the baptism of repentance of their sins no again not what it says it says repentance to all the people in israel acts 20 21 testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks repentance away from their sins oh again not what it says it says repentance towards god and faith toward our lord Jesus Christ once again proving that the context of repentance for salvation is turning to god believing in him he brew six so reading through one through six therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of christ let us go on to perfection not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards god of the doctrines of baptisms and of laying of hands and of resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment and this will we do if god permit for it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the holy ghost and have tasted the good word of god and the powers of the world to come if they shall follow or to keep sinning and not turn away from all their sins oh wait that's not what it says it just says if they fall away to renew them again on to repentance of all their sins oh again that's not what it says it just says renew them again on to repentance seeing they crucify to themselves the son of god afresh and put him to an open shape so what's the problem here in this Hebrew's passage well you know there's people that are going to be enlightened they're going to taste the heavenly gift they're going to be partakers of the holy ghost but they may fall away doesn't say they're going to turn from all of their sins and it doesn't say they're going to fall back into sin they're going to fall away from tasting of the heavenly gift being enlightened being partakers of the holy ghost that's what they're going to fall away from and that's why it's impossible to renew them to repentance on to those things still not talking about sin so at this point we've all you know we've really labored the issue now we've gone on it for quite a long time but we I hope you see by now after all of this time watching the video repentance for salvation is believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and yes we can say that God grants us such repentance which results in our faith towards God forgiveness of sins and life everlasting so that that kind of draws that point to a close so the next point really is to deal with the whole turning from sins issue where we can actually find passages in the bible that deal with it so I know it's been a very long time but stay with me because now this is super important what about turning from sin what about all of the verses in the bible about turning from our sins what about all of the warnings in the bible about unrepentancy well to explore this topic this is what we must understand we need to know what is the context of those verses are they even relevant to eternal salvation okay who is the message being addressed to and for what purpose you know cities are not directly comparable to individual persons by the way and what are the consequences of such unrepentant sin because obviously we make it like hell fire and you know not being safe but but we need to know what the consequences are and what the bible tells us what the consequences are of unrepentant sin so Nineveh is is a good example to start exploring repentance as as turning from sins because Jesus makes a reference to this so Jesus said in in Matthew 12 41 the men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonas and behold a greater than Jonas is here and obviously we can backtrack to the story of Jonah and in 38 it says but let man be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily on to God yeah let's let them turn everyone from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands so when we view the story of Nineveh we see a wicked city Jonah preached against it and constantly consequently they changed course they they turned away from their wicked ways and Jesus in hindsight refers to this as their repentance so in this example we can clearly see that turning from sin is the context of repentance even if it doesn't say repent of your sins okay but the first thing that we should recognize before we look into the story of Jonah is that this is an entire city so it's not really indicative of an individual person's salvation so if an entire city repented that doesn't mean that every last individual became a born again believer but the city as a whole did turn from their wicked ways and so God's judgment against that city what was spared okay and that's what we're going to look at when we explore this so Jonah chapter 3 i will read through this so the word of the Lord came on to Jonah a second time saying arise go to Nineveh that great city preach on to it and preaching that I bid you so Jonah arose and went on to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days journey and Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey and he cried and said yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown so the people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to the least for the word came on to the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne and he laid his robe from him and covered him with sackcloth and sat in ashes and he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles saying let neither man nor beast heard nor flock taste anything let them not feed nor drink water but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily on to God yes let every let them turn everyone from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not and God saw their works that they turned from their evil way and God repented of the evil that he said that he would do on to them and he did it not so there's the passage for you that's the context that they you know repented at that Jonah's preaching there now here's the first thing that I want you to notice about this that I've highlighted well I've marked in blue there verse five so notice that their belief came first you know their belief in verse five cannot go unnoticed their belief in God's message came before their turning from sin whereas preachers and evangelists are putting repentance of your sins before belief that's completely backwards as to what we saw earlier in Acts 3 and it's completely backwards here the belief precedes the turning from sins you can't say first you've got to turn from your sins second you've got to believe in Jesus the belief has to come first according to this passage and also according to our earlier study study in Acts and again I know I've already pointed this out earlier in the video but it's just so important that we get this in Jonah 3 9 and 10 it said God will turn and repent and it said you know God would repent of the evil so as we saw earlier in the study here the context is God repenting and we know that God doesn't have sins to turn from because there is a different context to be repented from here so repentance doesn't mean the same thing every time so when it means turn from sins in one passage like in Nineveh that doesn't mean it means turn from sins when it comes up as salvation and notice as well I already mentioned this but let's look at it again it says notice that people turned from their evil way and it was their works the Bible does not say God saw their faith that they believed in him and turned away from their evil way it said that God saw their works that they turned from their evil way their belief came earlier in verse 5 their turning from sin followed that belief but it was still their works and obviously we know that we're not justified by works so this preaching was also it was directed towards an entire city so their their repentance saved the city from being judged by God at least in an earthly sense so that that does not mean that every individual in that city became eternally saved but it did spare the city the physical judgment that God said he would do to that city so while while this is a picture of an individual person's salvation it's not really a doctrinal argument or a clear instruction for it because it still comes back to them turning from their sins was still their their works okay so you can argue that that's a picture of salvation that you know we turn to Christ and this city turned from their evil way you know we recognize that we're a sinner and we turn to Christ but turning from your sins is still works and what happens to an entire city is not applicable to what happens to an individual's eternal life directly okay so you know if you turn your from your wicked ways that is great that that is a good thing well done but that is still your works you cannot count that as credit to your salvation unless you admit to having a workspace salvation so here's another good example Matthew 11 so then Jesus began to upgrade the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done because they repented not well on to you Chorazin well on to you Bethsaida for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes but I say on to you it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you and you Capernaum which are exalted on to heaven shall be brought down to hell for if the mighty works which would have been done in you had been done in Sodom it would have remained until this day but I say on to you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you so again this is an example of cities repenting now based on this verse alone if you didn't look through new the Old Testament of what happened with these cities then you could interpret this in two ways you could say that based on how Jesus used repentance elsewhere in the gospels you could assume that the problem with these cities is that they would not believe on him because as we know Jesus was going around to these different places doing all of these miracles but there were still many Jews who rejected the Messiah so you could look at that from a belief point of view and say that those cities were very very unreceptive to the miracles that was that was being done so though people in those cities did not get eternally saved because of their lack of belief so that's one way you could look at it the other way that you could look at it is that based on the story of Nineveh you could assume that the cities would not turn from their evil ways so the cities are deserving of a physical condemnation such as an earthquake or a flood but that has nothing to do with whether you know that the individual salvation status of every person that lives in that city but obviously you can make a generalized statement and based on Nineveh I'd say that that's more likely for correcting interpretation because other cities would cities were judged in this manner but I don't think that you can rule out the the first way of looking at it I think I think that's still legitimate based on the kinds of stuff that Jesus had to deal with with the Jews in general so it either interpretation works but again because these are entire cities you can't really apply this as instructional on how an individual person gets saved and and eternal life is not explicitly mentioned in the context especially when there are plenty of examples where Jesus is dealing with individuals and it comes back to believe like the people that he was talking about in John Acts chapter 8 I'm not going to read all this just because it's quite long but we have the example of Simon the sorceress so as we know Simon did all of these great miracles in that in that people thought he had the power of God when really he was just doing sorcery but then he believed Philip's preaching he was he was baptized he continued with Philip for a while and he observed the miracles and signs that were actually being done by the power of God then he saw that you know that the apostles had the power of the Holy Ghost Peter prayed that some of them would receive the Holy Ghost and then Simon saw what the apostles were doing and he tried to buy that he offered the money for that asking for the power of the Holy Ghost based on money so then Peter rebukes him in verse 20 saying your money will perish with you because you have not thought that the gift of God you thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money you have neither part no lot in this matter for your heart is not right in the sight of God repent therefore of this wickedness and pray God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven thee for I perceive that you are in the goal of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity then answered Simon and said pray you to the Lord for me that none of these things which you have spoken come upon me so this is probably the closest verse in the Bible that that resembles repent of your sins repent therefore of this your wickedness so but let's just fish out what's going on here so in verse 13 it said that Simon himself believed also and that's when he was baptized and went with Philip Peter then commands him to repent okay so 13 it's not verse 22 is not directly connected to Simon's belief there there's a gap between then so when when Peter commands him to repent therefore of this your wickedness it doesn't say repent of all of your sins and it doesn't even say that that's to be saved or the eternal life or his salvation is anything to do with what Peter is saying here Peter is getting a very particular sin so this this repentance it's not of all of Simon's sins generally it's a very particular sin that Peter is asking Simon to repent of here and then notice that Simon appears to immediately accept this correction as according to verse 24 because usually when you tell people to you know repent of wicked things and you rebuke people they're not usually very very they don't usually positively respond to to that kind of thing but you know Simon appears to he appears to accept the correction and he hopes that those things don't come upon him which implies actually he was very repentant but but this is after he's believed he's already done the belief part this is somebody who's already believed this is now after he's believed this is directed at somebody who is now already a Christian but has an issue that that needs to be dealt with following this idea then about repentance applying after somebody's believed this leads me on to Revelation next which would be a good book to to get to next because repentance is frequently mentioned in Revelation so let's establish some facts about Revelation before we actually delve into to what it says so in summary and you'll find this out when we actually read the verses but there are two types of repentance in the book of Revelation so in the first half of the book particularly chapters two and three Jesus tells various churches to repent of a particular wickedness or malpractice of some sort in that church and he's telling that church to correct his course of action so whereas earlier in this study we looked at if there's a distinction between turn or repent Jesus does use the word repent as if there is some actual turning required for what he's asking them to do later in the book of Revelation it then documents that the wrath of God is being poured out on the world and the people in the world after the elective being gathered which that does depend on your end times views but but the people in the world will not turn from their wickedness despite all the plagues in the wrath of God being poured out but as a spoiler alert neither of these two types of repentance are about salvation onto eternal life you just you would just have to read the word repent and assume it's talking about that but that's not the context of what it's talking about in any of those cases and so that's why we need to look at the verses and see what's actually going on there just as a side note the book of Revelation was written by the same author who wrote John's Gospel we assume John's Gospel never mentions repentance as we discussed earlier but it does frequently talk about eternal life whereas revelation frequently mentions repentance by the same author but revelation is not written with a deliberate intention to tell you how to be saved or how the gospel applies even though salvation and eternal life are an important part of the narrative like the judgment day and the resurrection and so on and so forth so picking up on that point that we looked at earlier about John's Gospel not mentioning repentance yet we see the book of Revelation written by the same author written multiple times so you know repentance mentioned multiple times and so it's not that it's not part of John's vernacular and that he just has a different way of explaining things he does use the word repentance but he's not using it in a context that's about eternal life so that it's not a particular action or instruction that he's telling you to do in order to be saved and that's just an important fact to recognize there because I have used heard that I've heard that used as a rebuttal when you mention repentance not being in in John's Gospel and obviously as we've explored it's not that you don't need repentance it's that you need to define it properly as turning from unbelief towards belief and then you can understand and justify why he doesn't have to use that word specifically so let's let's delve into revelation so the first instance of repentance in revelation is in chapter two and it's the first letter that he writes to the Church of Ephesus okay so he introduces the letter and he starts off saying these things the positive things so I know your works and your labor and your patients and how you cannot bear them which are evil and you have tried them which say they are apostles and are not and you have found them liars and have born and have a patience and for my namesake have labored and have not fainted and then he gets to the negative bit in verse four nevertheless I have somewhat against you because you have left your first love remember therefore from where you are fallen and repent and do the first works or else I come on to you quickly and will remove your candlestick out of his place except you repent that's the negative bit but then again he does flip it back back to a positive thing that they still have this going for them that but this you have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolation sorry I'm not pronouncing that properly which I also hate and then obviously he has his his closing statement there so let's pull a few things that are going on so notice Jesus has positive things to say about the church okay so he's not writing this letter to some filthy wretched unsaved damned sinner to you know tell them how to recognize how wretched they truly are in turn from all of their sins he has positive things to say about the church and the fact that it is a church means it's an established body of believers okay now that doesn't mean that every last individual in the church is saved necessarily but you know it's a church of his believers Paul also obviously wrote to Christians in Ephesus in the namesake epistle to the Ephesians and this letter overall has you know very positive overtones to to that book it's quite a quite a positive book it doesn't you know have all the problems that Paul had to deal in in the book of Corinthians for instance the first one and then obviously in verse four and five Jesus then commands them to repent okay this this repentance this is of a very specific thing though so he's not he doesn't tell the church here to turn from all of their sins he's telling the church to get back to their first works or you know their first love which is it's obviously stop doing or it's not doing it with the same pace that it was doing before so and then failure to do that means that the candlestick will be removed from its place now that does require extensive study to understand what that means i'm not really going to get that into this video because it's not you know it's not in the context of what i'm talking about here but readers will often jump to the conclusion that when it says remove the candlestick out of his place that you know that that means it they lose their salvation but the thing is this is addressed to a whole church it's not addressed to one you know terrible sinful individual and and the thing is this is not really an issue about all of the naughty things that this church is doing it's not like jesus is saying here that this church is just filled with with sin and wickedness this is something where the church has actually become slack okay there's something that they should be doing and the fact that it's their first love or first works it's obviously something that should be prioritized by that church but they've they've not been doing it and you know when it says your candlestick will be removed well you know typically jesus says things like you know you are the light of the world and you know walking the light as he is in the light so if the church is not doing the most important things that it should be doing it's not carrying the light that it should be carrying it's not being the light of of the world okay so you can't you can't just take then this this passage as being repenting from all of your sins in sackcloth the nations have been so sorry and forsaking them all and renouncing them all and you know getting on your knees and crying out in absolute desperation for you you can't get any of that out of this passage okay this is a church of christ that has he has positive things to say about it he doesn't even accuse them of all this terrible wickedness but they have fallen slack on what their number one priority should be their first love their first works and you know the issue with the candlestick they're not carrying a light that it should be carrying they need to be the light of the world and they need to get back to doing this that's what the repentance is it's get back up and get back to doing this but it's got nothing whatsoever that this has anything to do with how to be saved or how an individual can enter the kingdom of heaven you cannot get that from this passage it's as simple as that and then the next instance of repentance we have the letter to the church at pergamos following this same chapter so once again rather like the last letter he does start with a positive I know your works and where you dwell even where Satan's seat is and you hold fast my name and have not denied my faith even in those days where in antipas was my faithful martyr and again I'm sorry if I've pronounced that that wrong who was slain among you where Satan dwelt and again now we go on to the negative just like the previous letter did but I have a few things against you because you have there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam who taught Balaac to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel to eat things sacrificed onto idols and to commit for an occasion so have you also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaotans which I which thing I hate as he said to the Ephesians repent or else I will come on to you quickly and we'll fight against them with the sword of my mouth and then again his closing statement okay so let's just summarize what's going on so once again Jesus does have some positive things to say about the church in Pergamos okay so then in verse 14 16 Jesus states the church what the church needs to repent of it's not notice that this isn't a sin that the entire church is actually guilty of that there are some among them okay you have there them that hold the doctrine so that there are obviously particular people in this church that hold the detestable doctrines that that need to be got rid of and you know there are passages that deal with you know brother who sins and casting him out and you know a man that's a heretic and so on and so forth so the church needs to repent of allowing these false members with these bad doctrines to be part of their congregation okay once again this is a very specific thing that needs to be repented of it doesn't say turn from all of your sins it doesn't say do this for eternal life and if we're making it about eternal life just say for the sake of argument because we've got doctrines of Daylum and you know these bad doctrines and that that could be a damnable doctrine well remember that he does say in the positive you as the church have hold fast my name and have not denied my faith so they've not denied the faith despite having people in that church that have these bad doctrines so even if it is an eternal life thing once again you can't make this about an individual salvation because this is a whole church where some people have not denied the faith and some people hold to the doctrine of Baylor okay so again mixed issues this is addressed to a whole church it's not about an individual's salvation or eternal life okay and then notice the key thing if they don't repent Jesus will fight against them so not not you not thou you know it's not the whole church them specifically the specific people that have these doctrines of Baylum or the Nicolaitans he's the one that he's going to fight against with the sword of his mouth okay he's going to rebuke them once that that's the context of the repentance folks okay so once again this is not predominantly a sin issue this is not about all the naughty things that the church is doing you know the church is not filled with murder or fornication or all of these other things there's very specific issues in that church that that church needs to to repent of so this is church already having believers in it that haven't denied the faith but they've got this issue that they need to address and this is what Jesus is trying to tell us here through Revelation is churches need to sort this stuff out otherwise it's just a matter of time before those churches do become you know rejected or filled with unsafe people if they don't sort these things out so you know again as I've said it's addressed to a church Jesus is not telling an individual to recognize his full depravity and turn from all these things to be saved once again just like the previous verses this doesn't say anything like that but it does use the word repent it's not always about salvation okay it's not always about eternal life and then in the next example of repentance this is the letter to the church of Thyatira still in Revelation 2 so we've got our introductory statement and then just like we have with the previous letters we start off with a positive and then we go to the negatives although you will notice in this letter that the negatives are rather longer than the previous ones so in 19 we have the positive I know your works and charity and service and faith and your patience and your works and the last to be more than the first notwithstanding I have a few things against you so we're on to the negatives now because you suffer that woman Jezebel which calls herself a prophetess to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed on to idols and I gave her space to repent of her fornication and she repented not behold I will cast her into a bed and then that commit adultery with her into great tribulation except they repent of their deeds and I will kill her children with death and all the children all the churches shall know that I am he which searches the reins and hearts and I will give on to every one of you according to your works but on to you I say and on to the rest in Thyatira as many have not the doctrine and which have not known the depths of satan as they speak I will put upon you none of the burden so let's break down what's happening here then so once again Jesus starts with something positive to say about this church before we go on to the negatives so in verse 20 to 24 Jesus has once again had to address this issue in the church but it's a very specific issue to be repented of the context of repentance is Jezebel and any specific members who have committed adultery with us it's not the entire church okay very very specific this is not turned from all of your sins in general this is very very specific repentance of very specific sins for a very specific person or people okay now looking at the way Jezebel is behaving and you know you might argue it's no coincidence that she has the same name as the old testament character Jezebel who was also very wicked Jezebel may well have been on an unsafe false prophet but the thing is Jesus doesn't actually ask her to repent of any false doctrine specifically but Jesus does tell the rest of Thyatira down in 24 that there are others on on to you on to the rest of Thyatira that have not this doctrine and the depths of Satan so Jesus is saying that there are people in Thyatira who don't have this bad doctrine but he hasn't actually asked Jezebel to repent of her doctrine specifically he's asked her to repent of her works okay so the the doctrine may or may not have been damnable but we can't really go beyond what what the passage actually tells us okay we then see that the punishment of Jezebel would be the death of her children so not not even her own death but the death of her children so once again very very specific so when it says I will give on to you everyone according to your works and you know he's judging people by their works but but we have something very very specific there and it's not even Jezebel directly suffering her children have the death and then she suffers emotionally from that okay so people will then want to make this about works and work salvation or you know because Jesus will judge us by our works that you know we need works that as part you know to be saved or whatever but the thing is we we know that we're not justified for righteousness before God by works you know Romans 3 10 Galatians 2 16 for example but works do at least justify our faith before man so James 2 18 Romans 4 2 for example so she does certainly look and act like an unsaved person at least as far as we're concerned as as people you know because we can't see someone's faith but we only see an evidence evidence of an earthly punishment hellfire is not mentioned in this passage even eternal life is not mentioned in this passage for that matter so this is not a strong enough proof text to make this about eternal eternal life okay so you know if you want to say well see Jesus judges us according to your works well this is a very specific example of him judging somebody according to their works it's an earthly punishment and it actually hurts other people if it was hellfire why why would the children be punished if it's something that she's done if it's an eternal hellfire okay so you know we thought we've we've sort of addressed that but the the last thing that I want you to notice is that despite Jezebel and despite all of the wicked things that is she's doing and despite the fact that there is this doctrine and this depth of Satan possibly going on you can't ignore the fact that in the positive Jesus does say I know your works okay and charity service and faith so in the positive Jesus still commends the church generally speaking of its works and faith so this is a good church it has good faith it has good works despite the fact that they put up with this Jezebel so once again you can't make this about turning from all of your sins to be saved this is Jezebel who needs to repent of her fornication in a church that has good works and good faith okay this is not about individual salvation once again this is not turned from all your sins to be saved you cannot get that from this passage just like you couldn't get it from the other letters that we saw so the next instance of repentance in Revelation then is the angel in the of the church of Sardis so it starts off by saying a sort of mixed message I know your works that you have a name that you live and are dead so there's a thing where they live and they're dead okay there's you know perhaps a bit of both going on here which will be clarified in verse four that you have a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments and they shall walk with me in white for they are worthy so it says in two and three this is the negative bit be watchful and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die for I have not found your works perfect before God remember therefore how you have received and heard and hold fast and repent if therefore you shall not watch I shall come on to you as a thief and thou shall not know what hour I shall come on to you and so the next example of repentance then is we're now in Revelation three and it's the letter to the church in Sardis so we have a mixed message in chapter one I know your works and you have a name that you live and are dead so there's a bit of this you are you are alive but you are also dead like there may be a mixture of things going on in this church and that's kind of also implied by verse four as well that you have a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments and they shall walk with me in white for they are worthy so you know there may be good people here there may be bad people here but the context of repentance is very specific so he says in the negative bit be watchful and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die for I have not found your works perfect before God remember therefore how you have received and heard and hold fast and repent if therefore you shall not watch I will come on to you as a thief and you shall know not what hour I will come on to you so there's mixed things going on here so you know that there were not all of the members of the Church of Sardis were bad though there were some that were not defiled but the main danger is that there were some of them that were not being watchful that's what he says you know be be watchful okay and essentially that that's that's what they they need to repent of it if you don't watch Jesus will come on to you so that that's the context of the repentance right there if you're not watchful that you know that that's what's coming next so we don't really know from this there's not enough information to go on about any underlying sins of the church here or what exactly the works were that weren't perfect before God so we don't exactly know what they were supposed to be watchful about and obviously if John was relaying this message then you know they would have already had some familiarity with each other to know exactly what what that issue was but but the context of repentance is once again it's very very specific okay they're commanded to repent of not being watchful possibly for Jesus the second coming I would imagine there we you know we need to be watchful for the same reason many other you know many problems in church do stem from not not being watchful for things like this but this is still not about turning from all of your sins to be saved that that's just not the context there's a very specific thing to be repented of now now this is a tricky letter though because there are some themes that do look eternal life sort of relevant so you know we have this issue of people inside us who have not been defiled with their garments and they shall walk with me in white and then there's this thing about he that overcomes shall be clothed white white raiment and we see examples of that later in revelation where you know those in heaven are clothed in white in white raiment and I will not blot his name out of the book of life so you know that someone is saved there essentially but he says I will confess his name before my father and before his angel so that that does seem to look like it is about salvation or eternal life but again there's not really a strong enough context to go on now now now revelation would need its its own study really I can't really adequately cover it in this video just for the sake of time but but I will summarize this very briefly for you in the next slide so picking up on this point then we've got he that overcomes whoever he is Jesus will confess him uh his name before the father okay so that raises the question then who are they that overcome who Jesus will confess according to what we read earlier are they those who don't have the perfect works before God well once again this letter is very short we don't really have a lot to go on here there's not really a big list of sins put here other than you know you're not being watchful and therefore you know your works aren't perfect that's what needs to be repented of so if we're going to make this about eternal life because of what it says about overcoming and confessing and clothed in in white in the book of life well we know from Matthew 10 32 that Jesus said whosoever shall therefore confess me before men him will I confess also before my father which is in heaven we also have Romans 10 9 that if you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead you shall be saved so we have this issue of confess confess if you confess you'll be saved Jesus will confess you and then on overcome we have Revelation 12 11 which says they overcame him which is referring to the accuser of the brethren by the blood of the lamb so over and over again in these letters to the churches Jesus keeps saying him that overcomes him that overcomes him that overcomes but we're not being told what they're overcoming of but then when we read Revelation 12 we see that they they overcome the devil's accusations against them so you know whatever sins the devil wants to accuse them of they they've overcome that by the blood of the lamb so it's Jesus blood so so once again you want to admit if someone wants to make this about eternal life and getting saved well overcoming and you know confess that that's not overcoming that's not you overcoming your sins it comes down to what you believe and it comes down to the blood of Jesus what he actually did and also just to point out in three that he says remember therefore how you have received and heard you know past tense and hold fast okay so let's pick up on that issue so hold fast to what you have received and heard well here's a very similar verse 2 Timothy 1 12 to 14 3 verses for the which cause I also suffer these things nevertheless I am not ashamed for I know that whom I have believed past tense or you know perfect present and I'm persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed on to him against that day now that the context doesn't really exactly say what day that day is you would assume it's judgment day because the previous it does talk about the gospel and how that's you know saved us and so that would presume up to be the day this day here that Jesus is going to confess and hold fast the form of sound words which you have heard of me in faith and love which is in Jesus Christ so again remember what you've heard you know that that's what you need to hold fast to remember remember what I've told you and believe the right the right gospel so if someone does want to make this about eternal life it still ultimately comes back to belief this isn't you know you can't turn from all your sins you cannot get that from this passage at all you see other bibles just consistent all the way through it's whoever believes whoever believes whoever believes now just super quick on that point then if that would be the issue that they overcome and will be confessed because of their faith and will not buy their works you might flip that back on me then and say well why would the church's works be not found perfect before god you know why does it why would it not say I have not found your faith perfect before god but that's because once again this letter is addressed to a church it's not an individual telling an individual how to be saved this is the whole church that's many people and as for verse four states there are some names in sardis that will be robed in white so if there are members of that church you don't have correct faith that may stem from poor teaching by the church so the church's works are still bad if they're not teaching properly and there are people who are not holding fast to that which they first heard and received and so if you go out evangelizing that you'll bump into many Christians where you just ask them do you know for sure you go to heaven and they cannot give you a clear succinct reason as to why they're going because they've not been taught properly by their churches their churches are not doing the perfect works the works are not and as a result people are not holding fast to that which you have heard and received because they've not even heard and received it properly so you know just in case you wonder but that's all i can really say on that because obviously this video is about repentance it's not a revelation study so i'm just going to have to carry on and so the last repentance in the church letters is to the church of of laodicea so again we have our introductory statement now this is a very interesting example because he doesn't really have anything positive to say about the church now he does have something positive to say to the church but not about the church so obviously he knows their works it's neither hot or cold he wishes that they were one of the two so this is where the expression lukewarm obviously comes from so because you are lukewarm i will spew you out of my mouth because you say i am rich increase with goods and have need of nothing and know not that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked i counsel you to buy of me gold tried in the fire that you may be rich and white raiment and that you may be clothed and that the shame of your nakedness do not appear and anoint your eyes with eye salve that you may see and then this is where so he hasn't had anything positive to say about the church but he does have something positive to say to the church what's this as many as i love i rebuke and chasen be zealous therefore and repent so there's obviously a bit a bit more context as to what this church actually needs to repent of and then we've got our closing statement there so we don't know all of the sins or wrong things that the church was guilty of but perhaps you might argue it was a church that was very comfortable compared to other churches you know they had plenty of cuts or at least they claim they did anyway they claim to be rich you know they've got the shiny church building they've got the nice big alter and you know the fancy golden cup for communion and all of that jazz but the spirit of the church was genuinely you know generally dead so you know it's really miserable it's poor it's blind naked it's not really as lavish as it claims to be when you get to the spirit of it so this could be anything i mean it could be bad doctrine it could be lack of teaching it could be lack of zealousy among the people we we just don't know because the letter just doesn't tell us we can only assume that based on conversations between the disciples and church brethren that the leo de scenes would have known to some extent what he was talking about so the churches warned to repent and christ would spew them out of his mouth and this is made into a salvation statement as like proof that you can lose your salvation but the thing is jesus once again isn't talking to an individual person he's talking to an entire church okay an entire church doesn't lose its salvation individuals are either saved or unsaved okay it's not like whole churches are saved okay so but this thing is again despite everything wrong with the church jesus tells them to repent and in the same sentence he says i love and chase and rebuke though so he still has love for this church he's chasing to them he's rebuking them because it is still a church that he loves despite all of all of these problems and so this will be very important you know as we we look through what what happens with unrepentant sins because that that's something that we're going to have to look at what happens when when people aren't repentant of sin now we're coming towards the end the end of our revelation study we've just got a couple more bits to look at but this is the other type of repentance in revelation so we've dealt with repentance in the churches now we're dealing with the lack of repentance with unsaved people but it's not specifically in the context of actually getting saved and believing on christ so your end times may vary with from you know they may be different from that i'm not really going to argue about that in this video but one way or another god's wrath is being poured out in this chapter so you know we've got the horses in the vision breastplates of fire etc etc the third part of many is killed by fire so you know all of that crazy stuff is going on people are dying left right and center and so one third of man's population basically dies from this but the rest of them which were not killed by these plagues didn't repent of the works of their hands and carried on worshiping the devils and the idols of gold and silver and brass and so on and they did not repent of their murderers and their their murders and their sorceries and their fornication and theft so god's wrath is being poured out this you know all this wickedness on the earth is being judged and despite all this wrath being poured out they will not turn from their wicked ways now hypothetically let's just assume that they did repent of their evil what would happen well god might relent of this wrath perhaps but that the thing is though that wouldn't automatically result in people believing on jesus and getting saved it doesn't say like they repented not and then believed on the lord and got saved there's not really an implication that the people being judged in the wrath of god can actually be saved that that opportunity is even available to them anymore because believers have been raptured out and you know people have bowed down to the beast so and again you know your end times may differ from mine i can't really cover that in this video to be honest but according to the futurist view anyway people will take a quite a literal mark of the beast in some sense and there are hints to the bible that once this mark is taken the marked are unlikely to be redeemable that revelation 14 8 to 11 so it's not exactly proof that the company's ability does seem to give that implication that they probably won't be okay they're marked they pretty much belong to the devil by being marked by him and so this idea that these people can repent in sackcloth and ashes get right with god and still make it to heaven is just not there really only the wickedness of the earth and the judgment of god on the earth is really the context of that repentance and so moving on then to the the last example is in revelation 16 and it's really just a repeat of what we saw in revelation night so you know again we see this scorching we see this these plagues and all this wrath but men still wouldn't repent despite suffering and they continued to blaspheme god so you know it just didn't have any effect on them at all as far as their wickedness was concerned but again there's nothing about these passages that say that they're about eternal salvation you cannot get that from these verses so you can't just say well here they you know repent of wickedness so we have to turn from our sins there's nothing here about being saved it's just not there so you know i hope that you start to see that yes absolutely repentance can mean turn from sin but that doesn't mean that it means it you know every single time or that that's how you actually get saved though okay you know repent is really a verb like you know any other verb out there so we've already covered that now the next passage that i've picked out is second Corinthians 12 this is another example of repentance that's that's there in red so this is once again a bit like with the issue of Simon the sorcerer and revelation with the letter to the churches this is predominantly aimed at god's own people okay paul didn't write this letter to unsaved people telling them how to be saved it's something that he wrote to his brethren in the Corinthian church now there's there's 12 and there's 13 i'm not going to read all this out because it's a very long passage but you know pause the video if you want to read it all here or open your own bible but i'll just pick up on from verse 19 to 21 that paul says again you think that we excuse ourselves on to you we speak before god in christ but we do all things dearly beloved for your edifying for i fear lest when i come i shall not find you such as i would and that i shall be found on to you such as you would lest there be any debates envying wrath strife backbiting whispering swelling's tumours unless when i come again my god will humble me among you and that i shall bewail many which have sinned already and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed so this is another example of repenting with sin being the context there is obviously general sins there but then sort of gets a bit more specific there in some ways but this is again repenting of sin but it there's no mention of eternal life going on here he's not saying that this is part of the gospel or how to be saved and it's addressed to the church it's writing this to people that are his brethren okay they should at least in theory already be saved so let's just pick a few things that are going on here so we see that the context of repentance paul wanted to visit the Corinthian church again but was you know concerned that some members would not repent of sins previously committed now if you remember from the first letter to the Corinthians there was an issue of fornication in the church in 1 Corinthians 5 so that where the appropriate punishment was given to reject such members from the church and not maintain fellowship with with such people so fornication is among those sins for which there may be lack of repentance in his second letter so you could see this as a follow-up to his first letter so 1 Corinthians 5 1 there was obviously fornication among you and then we get to 2 Corinthians 12 and you know some may may have not repented of their fornication and paul will be well them and so just as paul said that he may have to pass judgment in his first letter he may have to do this in his next visit after his second letter as a decline so 1 Corinthians 5 that's when he said although he's absent from the body he's judged already being present in spirit concerning the people that have done this and then we see a similar thing in 2 Corinthians 13 you know I told you before and I tell you now is if I was present and I write on to them that have sinned and I will not spare okay if he comes again so repentance here is a matter of church discipline there's no implication that this has anything to do with um eternal salvation um for such offending members it might not even be a salvation issue but it could be a fleshly destruction issue so when he covered it in 1 Corinthians 5 he said to deliver you know when when you check such person it's to deliver such a person onto Satan for the destruction of the flesh but that the spirit might be saved now it says might be or maybe rather because you know that person might be unsaved if they're behaving like an unsafe person because going around fornicating is what unsafe people do but there is still a chance that the spirit may be safe we you know we don't know and again I mean I sort of alluded to this earlier we can only judge each other by works but obviously justification before God is by faith so the spirit may still be saved but the flesh may have to be destroyed as as a punishment okay for for this sin and that's going to lead into the upcoming passages that we've got about what happens when we sin and what happens if we're not repentant about it and then second chronicle seven is a good passage to to pick up on this point so between 12 to 20 and the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said on to him I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place to myself for house of sacrifice if I shut up heaven that there be no rain or if I command the locust to devour the land or if I send pestilence among my people watch this verse watch verse 14 closely if my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then will I hear their hear from heaven and forgive their sin and will hear heal their land now my eyes are open and my ears attempt under the prayer that is made in this place for now have I chosen and sanctified this house that my name may be there forever and my eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually and as for you if you will walk with walk before me as David your father walked and do according to all that I have commanded you and shall observe my statutes and my judgments then I will establish the throne of your kingdom according as I have covenanted with David your father saying there shall not fail you a man to be ruler in Israel but if you turn away and forsake my statutes and my commandments which I've set before you and shall go and serve other gods and worship them then will I pluck them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them and this house which I've sanctified for my name will I cast out of my sight and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations so what's going on here notice according to verse 14 who second chronicle 7 is talking about if my people this is the context of turning from their wicked ways this is not a call to believe that this sorry this is a call for believers to turn from their wicked ways to spare god's earthly judgment over their promised land it's not directed to unsafe people to get saved this is not directed to the foreigner or the stranger or all those other words that the bible refers to non-israelites it's if my people so likewise in the new testament today Christians should turn from their wicked ways to spare god's judgment on churches otherwise you know we could lose some of our christian freedoms we could lose the freedom to preach and attend church and worship god countries where we currently have religious liberties could one day be like north korea where we will be killed for being christian even if we're in an apostate denomination this is the context of turning from our wicked ways that god won't send pestilence among his own people that god won't send plagues on the land or shut up the rain and cause a drought this is the context of god sparing his judgment if we don't turn from our wicked ways but it's addressed to god's own people they're already believers they're already god's people this is after they believe to turn from their wicked ways so that god will hear our prayers from heaven and this is pretty much what's mirrored when you read revelation chapter two and three when jesus is saying to churches you know the spirits of the different churches repent of whatever the issue in that churches you know or i i you know i will i will do this to you or this will happen to you you know i will blot out your candlestick or whatever so that's just a new testament application to this same principle repentance when it's turning from sin is addressed to god's own people whether that's the old testament nation of israel or the new testament the different churches that are out there and the next sort of what what proceeded that chronicles is first kings eight and that's that's solemn's prayer now i'm not going to read all of it because i've got more verses after this and it's quite a long passage but the context of solemn's prayer is the sins of god's own people so notice the consequences of their sins here that the land may be you know be overcome with drought the israel acts may be smitten by their enemies that there's nothing he mentioned about eternal salvation but we know that because of israel's sins against god that they need to turn back to god because otherwise you know they could be smitten from their enemies or you know they could be a drought and so on and so forth and again forgive the sin of your people it's still directed towards god's people that's still what it's talking about so turning from their sins would mean that god will not allow them or cause them to suffer in this particular way still no mention of eternal salvation being applicable to turning from sins and continuing this prayer you know again we see the same theme recurring if god's people sin there will be curses on the land there will be famine there will be pestilence so on and so forth but if they turn from those things and turn back to god then god will bless the land once again eternal salvation not the context it's talking about god's own people and then again same thing when we carry on this prayer if people sin they may be carried away captive but if they turn from their wickedness god will return them to the promised land so the context here is god's blessing or cursing on the land of his own people it's not addressed to unbelievers to get saved it's god's own people that need to clean up house so then turning from wicked ways is still an instruction for christian believers today if we want god to bless us and not chastise us but because this command is directed towards god's own people it is not an instruction on how to get eternally saved it's an instruction directed to people who are at least in theory already saved or it can be for a city to not be destroyed but that's only in earthly terms that's not relevant to eternal life but obviously if anybody in that city dies unsaved then obviously they are condemned so then should we turn from our sins then well you might wonder well should we turn from our sins sure that we should preach repent of your sins if we know that the bible does warn us to turn from our wicked ways well the answer is yes we should we should turn from our sins and we should preach turning from sins but the thing is though what purpose are you teaching that for why should we turn from our sins or why should we preach turning from our sin what is the purpose of teaching that now if the answer is to please god and not be chastised solely by god and have god bless us and our land if we are christian you know if or if we're believers or if we're saved then yes turn from your sins if you as a christian continue living in sin god will make your life on this earth very miserable indeed as he did with david as he did with samson but to be saved on to eternal life no it's not turn from our sins it's believe on jesus only so yes recognize that you are a sinner of course be sorrowful about that recognize that you need saving of course but you turning from your sins will not dictate your eternity because you fall short of the glory of god turning from sins is to avoid god's chastisement to the believer but believing on jesus is getting saved on to eternal life so there's repentance for the believer and there's repentance for the unbeliever okay different kinds of repentance for different applications so don't teach unsaved people to turn from their sins to get saved teach them to believe on jesus to get saved and then when someone saved if they come to church to hear the preaching then in church we can preach to other believers to turn from their sins and again i'm just going to repeat this for emphasis but say it in a different way so before being saved so if you are not yet a son of god if you're not a child of god you're not saved yet repent of your unbelief towards belief that's belief in the gospel for your salvation believe in what in the one true jesus the son of god that he saves you by grace through faith not of works and be justified by faith alone after being saved so when you are already a son of god you've already believed you've already got saved repent of your wicked ways that your days may be well on the earth for your sanctification that you may partake in god's holiness so when these evangelists and preachers say first you must repent of your sins and then second you must trust in Jesus they're giving the gospel backwards okay because this right here you turning from your wicked ways that's not the gospel that's your growth as a believer this turning from belief turning from unbelief towards belief that's the gospel that's how you get saved so this leads on to a very very important question then with that framework established that the unbeliever needs to turn to belief but the believer then starts needing to turn from sins for the believer then assuming and i'm assuming that they're already saved obviously what happens if we are saved believers don't repent of our sins so so we need to deal with that do we lose salvation or were we not saved because we didn't truly repent or you know just something else happened that's what we need to unpack it now i've picked Hebrews 10 to start this off because Hebrews 10 is often used as a proof text that if someone has unrepentance in Jesus's sacrifice will no longer apply to them it won't be effective anymore so you know that they may lose their salvation or you know people might phrase it a bit differently well Jesus's sacrifice didn't apply because they didn't complete their repentance but the thing is that's not really what it what it says and i'll get on to that in a moment but when a saw punishment is described between 27 to 29 it's automatically assumed that to be to be hellfire but Hebrews doesn't mention hellfire here and it does give an example of punishment of the flesh defining the context so let's just read it so from 26 to 30 if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of truth there remains no more sacrifice for sins but a certain fear for looking for of judgment and firing the Ignatian which shall devour the adversaries he that despised Moses's Lord died without mercy under two or three witnesses of how much saw a punishment suppose you shall he be thought worthy who has trodden under the foot of the Son of God and has counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing and has done despite onto the spirit of grace for we know him that has said vengeance belongs to me i will recompense says the Lord and again the Lord will judge his people so the context of Hebrews 10 i've obviously not gone through the whole chapter just because it's quite long but read it for yourself the context is that obviously in the Old Testament they had animal sacrifices and that that was very continual they had to keep doing those people sin they have to offer a sacrifice people sin again they have to offer another sacrifice and on and on and on it goes because guess what God's people people in Israel keep on sinning so they keep needing sacrifice but then as we see in this chapter Jesus is the final sacrifice he's a perfect offering so that's why if there is willful sin there remains no more sacrifice because Jesus a sacrifice is final it does not need to be repeated it doesn't need to keep coming back and dying all over again it you know there remains no more so it doesn't say his sacrifice will not be effective he says there remains no more sacrifice for sins because in the Old Testament there was constantly a remaining for another sacrifice for sins in the New Testament there is Jesus has finalized him he that died without mercy in verse 28 died a physical death so a sore punishment may apply to a believer who has willful sin because that's the context of the passage now you could argue that a very very miserable life on this earth is worse than than a death because assuming if he gets punished by dying under the law of Moses but he is technically saved then he just goes to heaven anyway okay that that varies his punishment but then if his life is made worse on this earth and he immensely suffers on this earth you could then argue that for him that that is worse than than death okay and sometimes people take this if we sin willfully and they'll say well all sin is willful well no because there are categories of non willful sin in the bible as well such as the sins of ignorance okay that that's in the Old Testament occasionally and we you know these will have a milder punishment if any at all than than willful sin would and the last point to take away from this passage here is that the bible is very clear that the Lord shall judge his people so this you know this is not dealing with unsafe people but you can already really tell from the context it's generally you know at least talking about somebody who claims the name of God especially given what what verse 29 seems to tell us so if we want then context as to how God will judge willful sinners in a way that is worse than dying without mercy under Moses law well this is really easy we can just look at examples in the bible and there's plenty of them by the way of the Lord judging his people okay so let's just look at a few examples of how his people were judged for their sins and by that I mean willful sins so let's start off with Abraham I've chosen three examples the first one I've chosen is Abraham so Abraham believed God and it was countered onto him as righteousness that that happened in Genesis 156 but Abraham even while being a believer married multiple women for example he married Hagar in Genesis 16 and despite already being married to Sarah and in fact interestingly although this is not necessarily chronological the very last thing that Abraham is recorded as doing in Genesis before his death is documented is the fact that he married multiple wives and that's you know all the children that he had with those wives you can find that in Genesis 25 now when I sometimes I've pointed that out to someone and they'll say but wait a minute though Abraham didn't know that marrying multiple women is wrong so for him it wasn't a sin well not according to Jesus because Jesus said marriage is between one man and one woman from the very beginning okay and that's in Mark 10 6 and 9 and he quotes Genesis you know very early in Genesis to actually back that up but the thing is though obviously we don't know how much Abraham knew about this so maybe Abraham wouldn't necessarily be held to the same standard as a New Testament believer believer would but that wouldn't fundamentally change what Jesus said that from the very beginning it was one man one woman okay with a few exceptions that were out Lord and sorry with a few exceptions that were mandated in the law of Moses like you know if somebody dies and the brother can take the wife and so on so although God did not punish Abraham outright for doing this like it doesn't really specifically say God dealt with that you know in a punished it Abraham did have to deal with heavy jealousy between Sarah and Hagar we obviously we know that from the Bible and that resulted in Hagar having to take Ishmael and leave and so Abraham couldn't see his son Ishmael for the rest of his days from that point and you know Abraham lived quite a long time so we see an example of Abraham suffering for his sin but it obviously this is not absolutely you know this is not a huge punishment I mean it depends you know how much you take that because that's obviously an emotional suffering rather than a physical one so you know that's obviously a bit more subjective but you know we do see an example of Abraham suffering for doing this okay married multiple wives two of his wives got jealous with each other and one of his sons he could never see again but the thing is that we do know that Abraham made it to heaven as according to Luke 16 and Matthew 22 32 but we don't have any examples of Abraham saying sorry God that I did this okay we know we just can't can't find it so there's nothing to say that Abraham wasn't saved until he turned his life around and stopped doing this there's nothing that says that it undermined his righteousness in any way but I imagine I don't know but I imagine that not being able to see one of his sons anymore would have come down quite hard on him so he did at least suffer to some extent for his sin so the second example I've got is Samson okay now he's sometimes a poster child for someone who lost their salvation and at the last minute got it back again and I'm not really going to unpack these too deeply because you know I want I want to try and stay on topic and I'm really just summarizing this point but you know what do we know about Samson well he married a Philistine wife despite it being forbidden to marry those who worship false gods reference verses there he ate food that had contacted an unclean animal I think it was a lion if I remember even after the spirit of the Lord already came mightily upon him and it being prophesied that he would be a Nazarite and Nazarites had strict rules about what they could eat and drink compared to everybody else even though everybody else still had rules about clean and unclean he had sexual relations with the prostitute Delilah and you might also argue although this is perhaps a bit more subjective but you can also argue that he maybe killed more Philistines than was necessary or sometimes it was out of revenge rather than the deliverance that he was prophesied to do there was obviously a lot of tiff attack going between him and the Philistines Samson again he's an example of somebody who actually suffered greatly on this earth okay his corn was burned and his wife was killed that was in judges 15 he lost his supernatural strength and was permanently blinded in judges 16 in his final prayer for strength he died well before his natural time and before his parents but despite all of that so despite Samson being sinful in many ways his faith was still commended in Hebrews 11 32 now it doesn't actually go into detail about Samson in Hebrews 11 but Hebrews 11 is giving good examples of people's faith in the Old Testament you know this guy did this and it was through faith this guy did this through faith and then time wouldn't even give me permission to tell you everything else about this guy this guy this guy so when you look at the the life of of Samson and these sins that he committed and his story isn't that long in the bible really he doesn't really bear the marks of a very faithful person when you judge him by his works and even with his supernatural strength it wasn't even because he was that on fire for god necessarily he just you know it was prophesied that he would be able to do this thing and as long as he kept his long hair uh on under the Nazarite system he had that strength so it wasn't even his mighty faith that enabled it in a way and yet we see his faith commended despite his works not really reflecting um that faith and uh you know so he suffered on this earth well let's compare that with what we read in Hebrews 10 well was it willful sin well yes yes and yes okay you know nobody forced him to do these things it was clearly willful Hebrews 10 tells us that um you know that someone who was in willful sin will suffer worse than dying under the law of Moses well what could be dying under the law of Moses well you could argue that hell is but um Hebrew that that passage in Hebrews didn't mention hell and if he really wanted us to believe it was he could you know the writer could have just told us that but some some examples of Samson's suffering you can actually argue what are worse than than dying because if Samson saved anyway so he's going to heaven regardless let's assert that let's assume that that's true okay well if he dies well before his natural time well yeah you can argue that's a punishment but he's going to heaven anyway but then if you knew that you were going to heaven when you died would you rather die and go straight to heaven or would you rather be permanently blinded for the rest of your life now i don't want to spend another 60 years on this earth being permanently blinded okay you know that that for me would be a very depressing lifestyle now my heart goes out to people who are blind and you know find a way to be happy and love the Lord and God bless them you know that's very commendable i would probably find that worse than dying and going to heaven straight away to be honest so you know you can actually there's other ways to look at that other than just well if it's worse than death it must be hell well not necessarily because there there are worse things that a believer can go through especially a very very miserable life and so once again we have no proof text that samson lost his salvation now people assume he lost his salvation and they assumed he got it back when he prayed this final prayer even though there's no evidence in this prayer that he was remarkably sorry for what he did he just prayed you know to go out with a bang essentially i'm obviously paraphrasing there there's nothing that said he he lost his salvation there's nothing said that he had to get it back there's nothing to say that he wasn't truly we've got none of that we've got nothing to go on if we're going to start making statements like that but what have we got to go and well we can see how samson suffered greatly on this earth because of his sins we can see that in the bible we have proof text of that happening and so again we see this fleshly punishment for his unrepentant sin but that doesn't undermine his faith being commended in in Hebrews 11 so i hope you start to understand you know what what's actually going on here and david is my last example i think it's probably the best example because you know we have all the psalms and we just know so much about david so david killed uraya so that he could get away with his adultery committed with best sheba second samuel 11 the prophet nathan then warned him that his sins would be exposed and that evil would be raised against his house that was in second samuel 12 so what were the consequences to david's various sins and i haven't even really listed all of the things that nathan would happen i'm just you know what what does the story tell us that happened to david well we know that many of his children were killed and died prematurely okay it's not evident that david had any happy marriages and his wife uh mickle plurian probably not pronouncing that right but she she bemoaned him that was in second samuel six you know she was a bit sarcastic with him there probably not really very happy with him his own son absalom tried to overthrow his king satan provoked david to carry out an illegitimate sent uh census after which he had to choose from a range of three very harsh punishments on his nation and so um although david maybe didn't go through as many personal sufferings that samson i mean david wasn't permanently blinded obviously but emotionally you know he went through probably much worse things than than samson did in many ways but once again his faith was also command uh commended in hebrew's 11 and we have we have actually got scriptures that that deal with god's mercy on david and so picking up on this point that once again no proof text that david lost his salvation there is no verse that says that nathan doesn't describe that as one of his punishments okay but we can see him suffering in this life certainly right so let let's look at psalms that that deal with god's mercy on david and that that's really going to be important be important with this issue of unrepentance in so i've chosen psalm 89 to uh express this point because i just think it's it's one of the most clear psalms for discussing this issue so between verses 28 to 36 it says my mercy will i keep for him david forever more and my covenant shall stand fast with him his seed also will i make to endure forever in his throne as the days of heaven watch this if his children forsake my law and walk not in my judgments if they break my statutes and keep not my commandments well what will you do god what will happen well verse 32 then will i visit their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes nevertheless my loving kindness will i not utterly take from him nor suffer my faithfulness to fail my covenant will i not break nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips once have i sworn by my holiness that i will not lie on to david his seed shall endure forever and his throne as the sun before me so this is this is really interesting this is so helpful this because we see if david's children were to break god's law so if they sin god would not forsake his covenant with david and would not forsake his mercy his faithfulness his loving kindness now it doesn't say he won't forsake eternal life but isn't that part of his loving kindness though if it's by his grace you know if that's his mercy it isn't that a part of that but what will happen if they break his sins does it say that though there's their salvation no it says i will visit their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes which is synonymous with with beatings okay god will give them beatings for their sin but he will not utterly take his his faithfulness and his loving kindness from them he will not suffer his covenant to break well how can we apply that in the new testament well again we can expect to be beaten with stripes metaphorically speaking if we transgress his laws but he won't forsake his loving kindness and what does this mean his covenant will not break well what has god agreed with us in the new testament he says whosoever believers in him shall not perish but have everlasting life that's what he said they're his words not not mine he said that that's his agreement with us he cannot go against what he said okay but he may still have to visit with stripes and and this is you know this is super important and we have we have verses in the new testament that deal with this now the new testament doesn't give us as much to go on but but we do have something Hebrews 12 is really good to explain this point so verses 5 to 11 and you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks on to you as on to my children my son do not despise your chasening of the lord nor faints when you are rebuked of him for who the lord loves he chasens and scourges every son who he receives if you endure chasening god deals with you as with sons for what son is he who the father chasens not but if you be without chastisement whereof all are partakers then are you bastards and not sons furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us and we gave them reverence shall shall we not much rather be in subjection on to the father of spirits and live for they verily for a few days chasened us after their own pleasure but he for our profit that we might be partakers of his holiness now no chasening for the present seems to be joyous but grievous nevertheless afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness on to them which are exercised thereby so it's a great passage this this is the new testament is clear god will chastise his children doesn't say unsaved not dealing with unbelievers this is god's children the sons of god they are sons they partake of his chastisement so if they still have sins that he yet to be repented from they can expect god's chastisement we are chastised for our sins for what purpose so that we may yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness and be partakers of his holiness but again this is directed to those who are the sons of god it does not speak of unsaved people so then let's recap in the examples we looked at and there are more in the bible by the way there are no proof texts at all that abraham samson and david lost their salvation now people assume that david or samson did but they have no fundamental proof text saying this there are no proof texts that they weren't really saved yet because they hadn't truly repented of all their sins yet again you can assume that that was the case but you've got no proof text that says that we don't have any examples of samson being very apologetic about his things now we can see examples of david being apologetic people assume but people assume in samson's final prayer to god that that that he was you know repenting of his sin in that final prayer but again no proof of this there's nothing in that prayer that that's about him turning from his sins and being sorry about it it's just god give me strength to take down these philistines help me to get revenge that that's what his prayer is concerned with there is nothing about him returning from his sins in there and being sorrowful about it but we can prove that these men were rewarded for their sins in this life okay and and this is the fundamental difference between how god judges believers of unrepentance in versus how god judges non-believers okay non-believers it doesn't matter if they don't get punished for their sins in this life because they're already condemned anyway believers have been saved well god can't go against his covenant that if you believe on christ you shall be saved okay christ said those that the father gives me i shall lose nothing you either believe christ when he says that or you don't but that's his covenant that's what he said he can't go against what he said but he will visit our iniquity with stripes if he was a christian continue living in sin and you insist on testing the lord okay now on the issue of actually losing salvation or not being saved in the first part or anything like that well i'm not going to address that in this video this has already been such a long video and i want to keep it on repentance but you can go find a study video on my channel on john chapter six where i i deal with that issue and so i'll just point you that way for that so then should we repent or turn from our sins well yes as long as we understand the correct purpose for doing so okay now if you are a saved believer to be blessed by god and not cursed then yes as god's people we should turn from our wicked ways that's the believers repentance so that we may not be chastised solely by god and so that god may bless us but to to be saved onto life everlasting though for the unsaved person no salvation is by believing on jesus christ that is the unbelievers repentance okay that's sinners bring brought to repentance the joy in heaven for the sinner that comes to repentance jesus calling sinners to repentance he's calling them to believe on him that by believing on his name they might have everlasting life and so to add your own turning from the sins to the gospel is frankly it's just to make works with works with faith for justification frankly you know we we've seen that so so you know just i'm saying the same thing here but i've got a diagram just in case anybody's still not getting this the unsaved they're dead in sin they're sinners repentance for salvation believe on the lord jesus christ and you shall be saved all right say now once you saved you pass from death onto life then the repentance for the believer is sanctification growing in holiness turning from your wicked ways denying yourself daily follow christ be filled with the spirit and its fruits thereof but that is for somebody who's already saved okay that's not to be saved you can't turn from all of your wicked ways to get saved you believe on christ first and then you turn from wicked ways people who say first repent of your sins and second believe in christ alone and just putting the gospel backwards i already addressed that early but that that's exactly what they're doing they're giving the gospel backwards that that's just what they're doing but let's just conclude what we've talked about so far okay if repenting of your sins was such an essential component of the gospel we should expect the bible to say over and over again especially when salvation and eternal life is the key topic like in roman's gospel sorry like in roman's and like in john's gospel okay whosoever believes in him and repents of all this sin shall be saved not what it says for by grace are you saved through faith and not of yourselves as long as you repent of all your sins still not what it says okay this phrase it's not appearing in the bible and whenever people quote these verses that show that it's in that they're just quoting verses that say repent they don't say of your sins this phrase is not appearing but we keep hearing it like a parrot from all of these different christians of all denominations and all persuasions calvinist or minionist catholic protestant they're all they're all chirping this same phrase okay the clearest verses about repenting for salvation refer to belief only that is consistent with the gospel of john in which jesus never told anyone to repent of their sins to be saved now the clearest verses about turning from our wicked ways and you know repenting of this sin or repenting of that sin we've looked at and we've studied them we've put in the hours if you've put being with me this far into the video you have put in the time we have seen this they're not talking about eternal salvation as the intended purpose you have to make it say that you can't prove that it says that you're making it say that if you still want to want to flog that dead horse okay only an earthly punishment for god's own children can be proven as the reasoning or or the earthly judgment of a city irrespective of whether it individuals in that city actually believed that's the purpose of turning from sins so that you don't suffer on this earth earthly judgment or a city doesn't get destroyed on this earth and so with all of that in mind then the the last major point that i really really need to talk about is is just where is this false repent of your sins gospel coming from where is it coming from and this is not something new folks it's being passed on and passed on and passed on it's just a mantle that's being carried forward by everybody who thinks that they have something to do with them being saved okay so that that's what we're going to explore in the next thing as we eventually do draw this study to a close now although we could go through the old testament because a lot of the uses of the word repent are in the new testament it just makes more sense to cover this from the new testament so even during jesus's time he dealt with the Pharisees he dealt with a lot of jews who who wouldn't believe on him okay now a good illustration of this is is john chapter nine so there's the man who was blind jesus healed him and it happened to have been on the sabbath day when he was healed so then the Pharisees find out about this and they start questioning the man about jesus so so obviously they confront him for healing for being healed on the sabbath day by jesus so then the Pharisees get a bit worked up in about this in in 16 so therefore said some of the Pharisees this this man referring to jesus is not of god because he keeps not the sabbath day others said how can a man that is a sinner do such miracles so there was obviously a bit of a conflict there there was a division among them so the fact that some were saying that he could do miracles shows that this wasn't doing work in the conventional sense you know it's not like a doctor going to work or a physician so the getting worked up about jesus working on the sabbath but if it's a miracle then then you know what hard work did he actually do so they don't have all of the salient facts but but they're already making these ridiculous accusations and then because so but you know because of this one isolated incident they essentially accuse jesus of being a sinner okay jumping to the conclusion that he's not of god even though they don't know all of the facts behind this and they've not even questioned jesus directly yet and then we see it wasn't just the Pharisees but you know many jews did not believe concerning him so there was a big problem that the jews would not turn to believing the christ and that's not isolated to this chapter that's just you know a chapter that i've picked out later then in the same chapter they confront the healed man again so they're still accusing jesus of being a sinner even though they don't know all of the facts they haven't questioned him directly so you know there's a few things going on in this in this passage so then the man that was healed he answered that the people questioning him so he says we're hearing is a marvelous thing that you know not from where he is and yet he has opened my eyes so you know this is a wonderful thing that this man has opened the eyes of the blind but but they're getting angry about this you know over something that they don't even know what happened and then he says a statement here we know that god hears not sinners but if any man be a worshipper of god and does his will him he hears so the healed man reminds him that he is already aware that god hears those who do his will now we're you know i'm not i'm not taking that to be a salvation statement per se that he doesn't know who the christ is yet so this is just him making a statement to the Pharisees that they would you would assume that they would agree with that statement they wouldn't really have a problem with that it then goes on to say since the world began it was not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind so this is this is a new thing this is quite an incredible thing if this man were not of god you know he could do nothing or how could he not do such thing so even though what he's saying here is plainly obvious and it's also plainly indisputable as well they answered and said on to him you were all together born in sins and yet you know do you teach us and then they cast him out so they do not accept being lectured to by the man that was healed they accuse him of being born in sin and unworthy to teach them and so the Pharisees are elevating their own status above the man that was healed assuming that he was a sinner and they're not so you know although it's we're not using the terminology repent from sins we still see how their righteousness is then thinking they're not a sinner because they think they don't transgress the law because that's what sin is it's the transgression of the law so picking up on verse 31 particularly about his statement god here's not sinners you know if any man be a worshipper do his will and supposedly as far as we understand he's not making any statement that the Pharisees would actually doctrinally object to there now they still accused him of being a sinner and you know not worthy to to tell them anything but he's already acknowledged god he is not sinners and you know how how is this man healing this blind man then it's not entirely clear from this conversation whether eternal life or righteousness could be considered as the context of his statement there because they're not talking about that topic strictly speaking you know that we're talking about whether Jesus has had the ability to do Mary calls but what we can see is essentially you know his views in verse 31 would be uh uh in agreement with the Pharisees on one principle that someone who sins even if just one sin which they didn't even know all the facts because they accused Jesus of being a sinner for working on the Sabbath day when he did a miracle which how much hard work is that they don't know all the facts but they're pitting that as the opposite of someone who does the will of god so there is sinners and there are those that the the do the will of god they're putting those as opposites now the repent of your sins to be saved crowd they use Jesus's own statement in Matthew 7 21 in a similar way putting those who sin as being the opposite of those who do the will of god that is necessary to enter into the kingdom of heaven so you know they interpret the statement not everyone who says to me lord lord as meaning the opposite well sorry it's meaning that it's not just enough to to believe so that's Matthew 7 21 not everyone that says on to me lord lord shall enter into the kingdom of heaven but he that does the will of my father which is in heaven but the problem with interpreting it this way though is that Jesus didn't actually define in Matthew 7 what it actually means to do the will of god in order to get into heaven but he did define in John chapter 6 so we have this statement in Matthew 7 21 not everyone that says to me lord lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven but he that does the will of my father so the repent of your sins crowd will take that and say well it's not just enough to believe because not everyone who says lord lord you know you have to be doing the will you have to be doing the works you have to repent of your sins but Matthew doesn't define what that Jesus didn't say Matthew 7 what that actually means do do my will to enter in seven he hasn't defined in Matthew 7 but he did define it in John chapter 6 in a separate conversation so he's talking to a group of Jews in John chapter 6 and he says and this is the father's will which has sent me that's all of which he has given me I should lose nothing but should raise it up again at the last day and this is the will of him that sent me that everyone which sees the son and believes on him may have everlasting life and I will raise him up at the last day so to do the will of god at least for salvation eternal life anyway we need to believe the son if we make that comparison so when the bible talks about doing works or obedience that we must do for the will of god this is after somebody's already been saved but in works salvation models including the repent of your sins to be saved crowd they mix that obedience and self righteousness with the entry requirements to heaven okay so I have done a video on John chapter 6 already so if you want to check that out I do talk about that issue of the father's will because if it says here the father's will is that you believe on him but then there are other passages like Thessalonians where it says this is the will of god that you should abstain from fornication well that's also God's will but not necessarily for eternal life though and that's where the conflating the two so we have the will of god for eternal life believe on him but then we have the will of god for your sanctification you know and that is abstaining from fornication or turning from your wicked ways so if you want more of a study on that I could just point you to John chapter 6 in my channel because I have covered that somewhere in there okay but just getting back to this point because obviously let's try and stick on topics so this is consistent then this that you have to believe on him with the definition of repentance according to what we read earlier in Matthew 21 the publicans and harlots enter the kingdom now they're a type of sinner okay they enter the kingdom but it doesn't say that they enter because they turned from all of their sins to do the will of god but because they believed John the Baptist's preaching about Jesus to do the will of god so that's how the publicans and harlots did the will of god they believed on him whereas the chief priests did not believe and we've already covered this earlier in the video so Matthew 21 32 for John came on to you in the way of righteousness and you believed him not but the publicans and the harlots believed him and you when you had seen it repented not afterwards that you might believe him so how did the sinners like the publicans and harlots do the will of god to enter the kingdom of heaven well they believed him they believed in the preaching they believed in the Christ that was being preached about whereas the chief priests it's not that they wouldn't let go of their sins and believe in Jesus it's that they wouldn't believe in Jesus that was the problem and that's the context of their repentance there and we'll come back to that verse a few slides later when we look at how bibles translate that differently so going going back to John 9 then so 934 that's when the Pharisees answered him and said you were you was altogether born in sins and yet you teach us and then they cast him out so the Pharisees refused to be lectured by this man because he was born in sin essentially so by him being born in sin he was you know he was not considered worthy the problem with that though is that in Psalm 51 5 David says behold I was shaping an iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me so by that logic then that the Pharisees are using we would have to throw David out too because he himself and then after god's own heart claimed to be conceived in sin okay that was his own claim so everybody is born in sin you know according to Romans we inherit sin from Adam but also according to Romans we are justified not because we turn from all of our sins but by faith because the grace of god is a free gift turning from sins to obtain it is not a free gift that's a conditional reward so you know just a handful of Romans 5 passages for you Romans 5 is a good one on this so 12 to 15 wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world that's Adam and death by sin and so death passed on upon all men for that all have sinned so you know through Adam all have sinned for until the law of sin was in the world but sin not imputed when there is no law nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression who is the figure of him that was to come but not as the offence so also is the free gift for if through the offence of one many be dead much more the grace of god and the gift by grace which is by one man jesus christ has a bounded on to many and then at the beginning of that chapter in the first two verses said therefore being justified by faith we have peace with god through our lord jesus christ by whom we have also have access by faith into the grace wherein we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of god so faith another term for belief it's your faith in god what you believe in god that's how you're justified that's how you have peace through god it's not turning from all of your sins to have peace through god you have the faith to have peace through god that's where you start now we can again talk about turning from sins after someone's had the faith but that's where we start we don't first say turn from your sins then have the faith and romans 519 it's actually a very key point because if you're going to say that you have to turn from sins for your salvation you have to be obedient to do the will of god as it were while romans 519 says for as by one man's disobedience adams many were made sinners so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous so it's the obedience of jesus you can't be righteous because you've turned from your sins and now you obey it's christ's obedience it's the obedience of one that you can be made righteous as opposed to being a sinner okay so to add your own obedience to that is then you're now making your righteousness by your obedience instead of the obedience of one and so you know when we looked at the earlier passages earlier in the video about jesus calling sinners to repentance okay making sinners righteous well that's by one man's obedience and that's justified by faith so sinners believe on the lord jesus christ they are made righteous okay now that they're made righteous and you can still have this issue of the flesh wrestling against the spirit then we can deal with sanctification turning from sins the chastisement of god and holiness but we shouldn't confuse that with the reason why sinners actually get saved okay and so in conclusion then we've clearly and indisputably seen from romans that it's the obedience of one man christ that makes the many sinners righteous they don't turn from their own sins to be righteous because it doesn't come from other men's obedience and this is really consistent with acts 326 that jesus was sent to bless you in turning every one of you away from his iniquities doesn't say you turn from your own iniquities okay jesus christ blessed you in turning you away from them and this is just further proof that saying you have to repent of your own sins it takes the emphasis away from christ's obedience for our salvation and onto our own obedience for salvation so the repent of your sins crowd they're really just teaching workspace salvation but the thing is they won't admit doing it now in another breath they will say that salvation is by trusting in christ alone and they'll say it's a free gift but the thing is though the catholics and the jehovah's witnesses also say this just because you say you're still proclaiming that it's christ alone or it's a free gift doesn't mean it's true you can say that but then if you're still going to say this other stuff with it anyway you're just really talking out of two sides if you mouth there and so i will revisit that issue of of the free gift but um in you know in summary it will come to something like this it's by faith not of works but dot dot dot it's not your obedience to the law but dot dot dot it's a free gift but dot dot dot you know you must trust in christ alone but dot dot dot it's by one man's obedience but dot dot dot you don't have to be perfect but you you know you must be sorry enough to stop sitting so it's like well again which one is it and we'll come back to that but you know that that's just a finish on showing you how unsaved people think it's like well they can't dispute something but then they have to they always have to put in a put in a catch so let's move away from the Jews let's move to Paul so Galatians 1 starting at verse 6 i marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of christ onto another gospel which is not another but there be some that trouble you would pervert the gospel of christ but though we are an angel from heaven preach any other gospel onto you then that which we have preached onto you will let him be accursed as we said before so i say now again if any man preach another gospel onto you then he that you have received him let him be accursed for do for do i now persuade men or god or do i seek to please men for if i yet pleased men i should not be the servant of christ but i certify you brethren that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man for neither i received it of man neither was i taught it but by the revelation of jesus christ for you have heard of my conversation in the times past in the jews religion how that beyond measure i persecuted the church of god and wasted it and profited in the jews religion above many my equals in my own nation being more exceedingly zealous of the tradition of my fathers but when it pleased god who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by his grace so let's just summarize what's going on here so we've seen a few examples you know we've seen an example of the jews having a false gospel in jesus time and now we see paul you know probably just a few decades later warning the new testament church about people among them already troubling them with a false gospel and that they're accursed paul himself used to be zealous of the jews religion which was really just a passing of traditions from those who came before and repent of your sins to be saved is really just the same tradition being passed down through the ages but we've just changed the vernacular from the jews to various early accursed early christians to catholics to prophets and evangelicals and we're just going to see that journey in the upcoming slides but notice that paul's gospel was revealed by the revelation of jesus christ well what did christ reveal in john's gospel whosoever believes in him should not perish he doesn't say whosoever repents of their sins that's not what christ revealed christ revealed whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life and so you will start to see that from the time of paul until today the gospel has been perverted and passed down from generation to generation in two ways so first you have the preachers or theologians or clergy you know pastors ministers whatever they've redefined repentance bible translators have replaced reworded and or redacted repentance so look for these two types of men the preachers and the bible translators okay they're the ones responsible for this and that's what we're going to see so here's a good early church father example okay even as early as the second century men like tutulian were making repentance onto salvation about turning from one's own sins so you can find this out there i'm not going to read the whole lot it's very long so i'm not going to read all of it for the sake of time but if you want to read it fully look for tutulian on repentance okay that's what it's called and it's divided into a few chapters so um i haven't actually got that it doesn't have verse numbers so i'm you know i haven't provided any verse references but it's just the chapter so in chapter two he says but that where there is no fear in like manner there is no amendment where there is no amendment repentance is of necessity vain for it lacks the fruit for which god sold it that is man's salvation so um again you see this repentance there has to be this turn of character there there has to be this amendment to one's life it then goes on to say of these blessings the title is briefly one the salvation of man the abolition of former sins being the preliminary step so again that's how he's defining it now he does is not quoting the bible showing this he's just making statements and because he's an early church father we're just supposed to believe that he was closer to the truth than we are even though paul already warned about this stuff from his own time further no deed put an evil one deserves to be called sin nor does anyone err by well-doing but if he does not err why does he invade the province of repentance the private grounds of such dessert so you know again if you've not turned from your sins why do you even invade the province of repentance whatever that's supposed to mean further down in chapter five he says thus he who through repentance for sins had begun to make make satisfaction to the lord will through another repentance of his repentance make satisfaction to the devil and will be more hateful to god in proportion as he will be more acceptable to his rival so making a very sort of elaborated statement there about again still defining repentance from sin so and also as well this is the title here i haven't actually quoted what i've quoted the title of the chapter so chapter six is actually titled baptism not to be presumptuously received it requires preceding repentance manifested by amendment of life so notice what the title is showing here okay the or amendment of life must come before you can be baptized so you can't believe in christ be baptized amend your life you have to first amend your life essentially before you can believe in christ and be baptized so you've got to abolish your sin as part of your repentance before you can even come to jesus and be baptized well that's not what jesus said he said the publicans and harlots believed him okay now you know we would assume that they probably stopped living as publicans and harlots after that hopefully they did but the bible doesn't tell us that because that's not the relevant bit the relevant bit is the publicans and harlots believed him okay so if you read the full book on repentance i've put you can see the link on the video there but i will put it in the description if i can fit it in there because you can obviously you can't click at it from here so um if you read that you'll notice some things about the way that titullian writes this book okay there is a lot of emphasis about men changing their ways and living a pure life bearing in mind that's his definition of repentance by which he said that a lack thereof if you're not doing this repentance salvation is then not the fruit of repentance so if you if you don't live this pure life you won't have the fruit there it he does mention it but there is very little emphasis in believing on christ or what christ actually did to take away our sins all the emphasis is on man amending his character okay you'll also find just from a secular point of view that he writes in a very poetic way using many fancy words that you know you may have not even heard of before and he structures sentences in a way that no ordinary person would use in everyday speech uh you would only use this style of writing if you were very passionate about writing literature such as poetry okay this language that titullian writes in it's very difficult for a normal person to understand a novice christian who wanted to further study on repentance would find this book very difficult to read and understand even though it very obviously has been translated into english by someone who can quite competently and um read the underlying latin i mean if you can understand the latin and translate it into these fancy english words that's obviously a very good translator okay it's because even in the latin he's writing in a very fancy poetic style of writing okay and because of this very drawn out poetic style of writing he does not make very direct clear statements like the bible does he takes a very long time to make points in an entire paragraphs really that could easily just be made with a few short sentences he justifies very little about what he says from biblical text or if he does supposedly quote the bible he actually severely paraphrases it or he quotes texts that aren't really relevant to the subject but most of the time he's just making statements and we're just expected well he's a church father that's authority you know he's close to the truth so he must be right about this regardless of whether he's just writing poetically and not actually using the bible and you'll find actually this is very similar to Charles Spurgeon's writing style taking huge paragraphs to say what could be made in small sentences churning out statements and just making quotes and making you know elaborate statements without actually defining it from the bible very very similar writing style in that regard so i understand that if you're someone who enjoys literature maybe you enjoy that style of writing but for people like me who don't it's very boring it's very frustrating to read it takes me 10 times longer to read than it needs to take and most importantly it's just really hard to understand what he's talking about because he just uses pompous fancy talk i mean if i just move these red bits out for you you know but if he does not a why does he invade the province of repentance well why not just say if he doesn't turn from sin he hasn't repented that would just be a much simpler statement but it's all this pompous fancy talk and you know using this repentance of his repentance makes satisfaction to the devil and more hateful to god in purport it's just fancy talk that's that's all it is really and then while we're on to Tullian on this on repentance book i've picked out one last extract for you but some think as if god were under a necessity of bestowing even on the unworthy what he has engaged to give and they turn his liberality into slavery but if it is of necessity that god grants us the symbol of death then he does so unwillingly but who permits a gift to be permanently retained which he has granted unwillingly for do not many afterward fall out of grace is not this gift taken away from many so again we're using just fancy speech here we're just using pompous ways of saying something which could be said in a much more direct statement but in normal pit person speak okay this is what he's saying god gave us a gift eternal life or Christ but he does so unwillingly okay he's not willing to do this he does it because it's of necessity he just has to do it notice how he also uses a very strange euphemism to mean this the symbol of death that's that's some symbol for eternal life it's not the symbol of life isn't Christ the symbol of life he died and rose again so that's a very very strange euphemism but again it probably sounds really smart and fancy to somebody who likes this poetic style of writing he also says god can take this gift away which in the context of this article means they can sin after their so-called repentance but let's see what the bible says well the bible says in 2nd Peter 3 9 the lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness but his long suffering to us would not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance so he says god grants this repentance unwillingly Peter says god is not willing that any should perish so god you know that's what he's willing that we shouldn't perish John 1 12 to 13 says but as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of god even to them that believe on his name which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of god it is god's will that men are are born into being the sons of god that that's what it says that's what the bible says but but he doesn't quote any of that he's just making his own statements and it sounds super smart and theological to someone who's reading this stuff think wow this guy's amazing he knows all of this stuff and he's really close to what Christ believed but he could churn out any old rubbish and we're just expected to laugh it up and then these some other verses for 2nd Corinthians 7 10 for godly sorrow works repentance to salvation not to be repented of but what is he saying he's saying you can then turn back from your repentance okay you can reverse repentance essentially you know you god can take this gift of repentance away jesus said in john 6 39 this is the father's will which has sent me that all of which he has given me i should lose nothing but should raise it up again at the last day jesus also said in john 29 10 29 my father which gave them is greater than all and no man is able to pluck them out of my father's hand so then we see peter someone who believed christ very consistent with christ not losing him and also this repentance to salvation not to be repented of simon peter answered him lord to whom shall we go you have the words of eternal life in other words what peter is saying is there's nowhere else to go jesus has the words of eternal there is nowhere else to go and we believe and are sure that you are the christ the son of the living god that's that's opposite to what tutulian's saying okay he's saying they can fall away from this gift well christ said i'm not going to lose them paul said this salvation is not to be repented of and peter said where else would we go but that's not what tutulian wrote but then he's not quoting bible he's just making statements and we're just expected to blindly believe it and so just as the repent of your sins crowd today and a well respected early church father engages in this buttism it's a gift but insert man made exception here jesus said he would lose nothing we will not be plucked out of his hand but insert my man made exception here tutulian did it and that's still what preachers are doing today so as these early church fathers started to introduce various different kinds of heresies and strange teachings we then saw a catholic system evolving from that now i've put roman catholicism but obviously there's the eastern side of the catholic church as well before they split but the western side started to speak in latin as their main language and so they would then translate the bible in latin and then the latin would become their authority instead of the greek and so an example of how differently they read there in matthew 4 17 we have the king james translated from the greek that says from that time jesus began to preach and to say repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand well in the duae reams it says do penance it doesn't say repent and that's that's because they have a very old tradition of translating repentance in this way as far back as the fourth century jerome's vulgate translated repent as and i apologize for my pronunciation but ponitentium agitate make penitence instead of reciprocity now that being said i did read that in the latin these words are perhaps more interchangeable than in other languages but this has affected how the roman catholic church has then translated that into english i mean this is this is a case in point but but they do it in other verses as well so in ax 238 pete said onto them repent and be baptized but in the duae reams that becomes do penance and be baptized in ax 3 19 repent you therefore whereas it becomes be penitent therefore now some modern catholic translations do now translate repentance correctly such as the new catholic bible so even the catholic church has had to recognize that penitence is not an accurate translation okay you know penance or penitence you know they they've made a doctrinally biased translation there because of all of this redefining repentance and you see how that's crept its way into the bible and so throughout various times there were attempts to get the word of god translated accurately and correctly so in the english language for example the first full bible translation was compiled to be compiled was the wickliffe bible in the 14th century so in ax 3 19 john wickliffe did correctly correct the translation back to repentance in the reformation era various bible translations were now available and so would likewise translate repentance correctly but during the reformation era even while the king james version was still being translated the roman catholic church started to complete for english readers sort of compete sorry by releasing the duet reams where they continue to translate it as penance instead of repentance such as in the examples that were just looked at so while penance is arguably one of the possible definitions of repentance you could put it under the category of be sorrowful it's not the only definition and it's not what the holy spirit inspired the bible authors to write and so translating it as penance forces this since a specific definition on to repentance so as i said you've got the bible translators and you've got the preachers preachers like tutulian redefined it and then the bible translators are replacing it so they're replacing repentance with penance okay or they're just exchanging it for something else so then fast forward a couple of centuries after geromes vulgate we then end up with the karan we have these the emergence of this new religion islam and it's a spin-off religion from judaism and christianity a possible link is that muhammad may have learned things from a catholic but i can't quite remember on that and i don't know if history is a bit hazy on that but then since then islam has become the second largest religion in the world after christianity and he's actually larger than the roman catholic denomination if you take a whole denomination so we have this other book now competing with the bible to be the declared word of god so in the karan 2082 it says and most surely i am most forgiving to him who repents and believes and does good and then continues to follow the right direction so you see how repentance has now become a whole lifestyle change instead of just believing to be saved you have karan 539 but who whoever repents after his iniquity and reforms himself then god will turn to him mercifully and god is forgiving and merciful so again who's god going to have mercy on those who reform themselves and we keep hearing preachers that we've got to do this first okay this reformation of character comes before believing on christ karan 7153 and as to those who do evil deeds then repent after that and believe your lord after that is surely most forgiving and merciful so again the repentance of the evil deeds comes before the belief just like a lot of christian preachers are doing today and then karan 9 11 but if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor rate they are your brethren in faith so it's not your brethren are those who believe like you they have to keep up doing the work so you see how works is a part of the repentance it's not just you do the works be fitting for your repentance the works are the repentance there okay so you know this counterfeit is is tying and turning with sins and doing good works as a necessary component for repentance it's not enough to believe now we keep hearing repent of your sins repent of your sins we can't find it in the bible for salvation but we are seeing it mixed with belief in the karan okay and so all of this stuff with Catholicism and the karan you know that's going down the age as it's just been passed on and passed on and passed on and then as we get to the early to mid 19th century the book of Mormon comes out so we have this book compiled Mormonism pretty much carries the mantle of Catholicism by basing many of its beliefs on writings outside of the bible so they use non-inspired text but they still claim to be a bible based religion so they they then have their own book which they now use as their holy book and you start to see where the catchphrase is coming from because when when the catholic church was replacing repentance with two penance and saying that it means turn from sin they didn't come up with they weren't coming up with the catchphrase repent of your sins so this is going to show you where the catchphrase is coming from Alma 6 2 neither did they receive any onto baptism save they came forth with a broken heart and a contrite spirit and witnessed onto the church that they truly repented of all of their sins so those who came forth to be baptized oh do you believe well it doesn't matter if you believe as long as you have repented of all of your sins that's what counts Alma 22 16 but Aaron said on to him if you desire this thing if you are bowed down before God yeah if you will repent of all your sins and will bow down before God and call on his name in faith believing that you shall receive then shall you receive the hope which you desire so you can see how um his copying biblical language there he's trying to make it sound like the bible because all this desirous and you know the language then shout that wasn't 19th century vernacular okay that was all you know that was an older form of english but he's trying to make it sound like the bible to make it convincing and again see how this repent of all of your sins comes before the faith okay that's where it comes from helman 7 23 for behold thus says the lord i will not show onto the wicked of my strength so one more than the other save it be onto those who repent of their sins and harken onto my words now therefore i would that you should behold my brethren that it shall be a better for the laminates than for you except you shall repent so even Mormons who have already gone through this process and then got baptized there's still this ongoing repent of your sins or you may fall for everything that you've done up to now so you see how it's the same mantle it's just reworded and repackaged differently jacob 38 oh my brethren i fear that unless you shall repent of your sins that their skins will be whiter than yours when you shall be brought with them before the throne of god now the book of Mormon is a racist book that teaches that the whiter your skin is the more holy you are okay it's utterly ridiculous but that's what the book proclaims so you have to then do this ongoing repentance of sin not even for your own holiness but to compete against other people by trying to have whiter skins than other people so you see how it's just competing against everybody else to show who's turned from their sins the most so we keep hearing this parroted phrase repent of your sins then believe Jesus repent of your sins then believe Jesus we can't find the bible saying repent of your sins to be saved but this counterfeit book is telling us to do it over and over and over again and it's even putting it before faith just like a lot of christian evangelists and pastors are doing today they say first repent of your sins second believe in Jesus just like the book of Mormon so you can see where the catchphrase is starting to develop now and only a few decades after the book of Mormon we then have Charles Haddon Spurgeon in the Protestant world now i'm not going to read all this out because we did already look at this earlier in the video so i won't read all that out for you but let's just recap so we remember that when we looked at his book the soul winner Spurgeon redefined repentance essentially is turning from sin to the point of not doing it anymore and he defends this blatantly by discounting what the greek word actually means in favor of a hymn so he didn't defend the definition from the bible itself now like many christians today Spurgeon already had the presupposition that repentance means turning from sin instead of turning from belief towards belief so at round about Spurgeon's time the catchphrase repent of your sins wasn't creeping into christianity yet because it's still stuck with the Mormons but but the definition is still there even if the catchphrase is not there right so you know we've had the reformation we've now got a bible that shows that god repented or repentance doesn't always mean turning from sin we've got the armor of god but then we're creeping away from that again by just redefining repentance anyway and Charles Spurgeon pretty much does the same thing that Tertullian did making these poetic oversensationalized long-winded statements instead of just using the bible itself to define repentance and let's look at a couple more of his quotes so here's a couple of other statements from Charles Spurgeon so in this in this one why some seekers are not saved he says there is no real salvation except salvation from sinning so your sin must be quitted i put this question to any man here who is a hearer and a seeker and yet he does not find peace is there not some sin that you have yet to abandon in another quote from soul saving our one business he says once more when the apostle wished that he might save some he meant that being regenerated and being pardoned they might also be purified and made holy for a man is not saved while he yet lives in sin while he lives in sin so Charles Spurgeon essentially taught sinless perfectionism but earlier in our study you see we looked at an article much earlier in this video from Living Waters that actually quoted some quotes by Charles Spurgeon but that clearly taught on that same article that repentance doesn't mean being perfect so we don't have to be perfect but let's quote a man telling us that we have to be perfect because if they're still sinning your life you're essentially not saved and so you know again it's no wonder why Christians are so confused on the requirements for salvation because this is what we're getting it's by faith alone but dot dot dot it's a free gift but dot dot dot it's not by works but dot dot dot so just like Tatulian did and just like other church fathers did and just like various catholic and Protestant theologians and pastors preachers have done throughout the ages we just see this being carried forth from person to person redefining repentance and trying to replace what God actually said about the subjects with our own interpretation thereof and obviously it's not this has just been passed on today Charles Spurgeon is long gone now but this has just been passed to it got passed to Billy Graham and now it's been passed to Franklin Graham it's been passed to Ray Comfort not only have the preachers redefined God's word but the translators have replaced or reworded or redacted it so in Charles Spurgeon's time there was in the non-catholic world there was for the most part really only the King James Bible used you know with a few exceptions but across the English speaking world it was pretty much the Bible you wouldn't even need to call it a King James you just call it the Bible because that's essentially what it was but then round about Charles Spurgeon's time then the English revised version started to hit the market and become available and then since then we've been undated with you know many more and so you see all these now competing with the King James for the you know the primacy in the English language and so even after centuries and centuries of the Catholics trying to replace repentance with penance the Reformation-era Bibles fix that for us but we're getting back into old habits again we're just doing it in a slightly different way you know we're now doing it where we keep the word repentance but we change it in some way always substitute it in some way so for example Acts 26 20 in the King James it says but showed you first onto them of Damascus and at Jerusalem and throughout all the coasts of Judea and then to the Gentiles that they should repent and turn to God and do works meet for repentance so we quite clearly see a distinction between the repentance and the doing works meet for that repentance okay now it gets slightly hazier in the ESV which we'll talk about in a moment but ESV says repent and turn to God performing deeds in keeping with with their repentance but then in the New World translation this is the Jehovah's Witness Bible they've changed it to repent and turn to God by doing works that befit repentance so in the King James version the use of a conjunction shows that clear difference between the repentance itself and the works that are fitting for that repentance okay now most formal translations at least in the modern era tend to use a present participle instead of a conjunction so this this distinction is slightly less clear because it then makes the works a continuation when I've looked at it in the again I don't speak Greek I just this is all second hand information but this this is just considered more accurate with the underlying Greek because there's no word for and before that but but even so we can still maintain that there is still a difference between the repentance itself and the doing the works of the repentance but in the New World translation instead of a conjunction or a present participle they've used this preposition so they've explicitly made the works a part of the repentance itself and this contradicts justification by faith without works because you can't say well we're justified by faith without works if you do your repentance by doing these works they've made the works the repentance itself instead of just something that comes after the repentance because it's befitting for that repentance now in the evangelical world obviously we kind of expect the Jehovah's Witnesses to change God's word like that but in the evangelical world paraphrase bibles are widely used so if we take Acts 26 20 in these other versions so we have the message it says I started preaching this life change this radical turn to God and everything it meant in everyday life and so notice how the word repent isn't there it's just being defined as a life change it's you know your works your self reformation which you know is what the Quran said fully enough and then again this radical turn to God that that's not there that that is emotionally charged language to make it more embellished and then everything it meant in everyday life so again whatever the repentance is that's what it's not that you do the works for repentance it's just how you will live your life is defining it the voice translation it says turn from their past and toward God and align their deeds in the way of life with this new direction so again it's making the works a part of repentance but they've also removed the word repentance as well the living bible says must forsake all of their sins so again we have this catholic or early church for the definition of repentance put straight into the bible there that they must forsake their sins and turn to God and prove their repentance by doing good deeds so how do you turn to God well believe on Christ apparently not yet you must forsake your sins and that's how you turn to God so you see how again it's taking the emphasis away from Christ and it's putting it back on yourself to reform your character for God and then the new living translation which is a very very widely used bible that they almost repent of their sins see how they've added those three words again the new living translation keeps doing this by the way they keep tacking those of your sins at the end of repent the underlying greek doesn't say that the new living translation has added those three words and then prove that they have changed by the good things that they do so again it's this trying to justify themselves by works in the sight of God for salvation now obviously i know there is obviously uh james too with the issue of being justified by uh works and faith which i can't really cover in this video just because it that would be too far off topic unfortunately but it's making a works the part of the repentance for the purpose of eternal life now it's putting works back into the gospel okay and so uh paraphrase obviously i've just said the widely used by evangelical christians but the the thing is what's so ironic about this is that the producers of these paraphrases bear in mind these these are not translations these are paraphrases because that that's not what God said you're just paraphrasing what God said they claim to be helping christians by making the bible easier to understand but really what they've done is they have dangerously mistranslated what God actually said putting works into repentance for salvation so that you cannot consistently advocate justification by faith without works using these bibles because say well you believe on christ it's not of works it's what he did oh but then there's this thing about turning from your sins and living this new life and well that's all the stuff i've got to do so you know you see our works has crept its way back of there and i can only assume that the people who wrote these paraphrases do not believe that salvation is a free gift but they masquerade as evangelical or mainstream christianity and it wouldn't surprise me if they don't believe in the free gift because frankly you know the bible does warn us about people who amend God's word having their name blotted out so if their name is blotted out well then why would they believe the right gospel that would just be contradictory and in fact while i'm on the living new living translation let me give you some more examples because unlike the other paraphrases this is a widely used bible and it's the one bible that keeps top tacking on these of your sins at the end of the word repent so here's another example Matthew 4 17 Jesus says repent for the kingdom of God is at hand and they've made that repent of your sins and turn to God which the turn to God isn't even in there now we saw it in the ax example it's not in Matthew but they've put that in there so that you turning from your sins is the equivalent of you turning to God irrespective of what you actually believe so it's like reading this verse it doesn't even matter what you believe it just matters that you've turned from your sins whether you believe or not is neither here nor there so there are you know any other bible like the king james the ESV they just say repent here but they keep putting this of your sins and this definition of repentance this belongs to Catholicism it belongs to Islam it belongs to the Jehovah's Witnesses it belongs to the Mormons they all have a workspace salvation but you see how it's crept into a bible used very very widely by evangelical Christians now some of you maybe didn't need me to tell you that maybe you already know that paraphrases are bad but what about the more formal translations well of the more formal and commonly used modern translations so for example the new american standard bible the english standard version the niv that new international or you know the new king james in some instances translators will say that they're actually more accurate than the king james which i can't comment on that but you know that that's the claim that in some verses well the word repentance in many instances in those bibles has actually been substituted with an alternative reading now unlike the catholic bibles they're not trying to bend that meaning like you know they're not replacing repentance with penitence but they are replacing repentance with something else that says what repentance actually means in that context so this is this is particularly problematic in the Old Testament Hebrew but also apparent in the handful of new testament greek instances where metamelemia is used instead of metanoia now it's problematic because the thing is from a translator's point of view this substitution is not indefensible okay repentance is a flexible word we've already seen examples of that much earlier in the video you know we saw it can absolutely mean change your mind it can absolutely mean be sorrowful or feel remorse it can absolutely mean relent or it can absolutely mean turn from something which may be of sin so they are contextually correct by translating it using these different words but because they're not consistently translating it into the same verb in english what what happens is we lose our proof texts for showing that repentance doesn't always mean turning from sin we can't defend that with a modern bible anymore and then it comes as no surprise then that we have all of these oversensationalized embellished definitions of repentance because you can justify that with a modern version because we're losing our rebuttal verses so we're losing our weapons of warfare the sword of god's mouth is being blunted and this is at a time when christians are being given mixed messages about how to repent onto salvation so let's just look at some examples of how this is done so in genesis six seven i've used this example multiple times throughout this video now so in the king james bible god was the first individual to repent and in fact it doesn't actually strictly say that god repented so much as it says it or the situation or the wickedness of man repented him so the repentance was not even a directly carried out action but rather just a reaction so the situation repented god okay so it says that it repents me that i have made the earth because of all the wickedness in the new king james that has become i am sorry so repentance has been substituted with i am sorry likewise the esv does what the new king james does there in the new and then in the new american standard also does this i am sorry and then in the new international version it repents me or i am sorry that has become i regret okay now i remember somebody telling me at one time that the king james is actually wrong here because it makes it look like god made mistakes and has to apologize for his own decisions he said that that's why it was wrong to say repent but if repent just means to change your mind or change course and which in this case is only changing course because it's in reaction to man's behavior then which one of these translations actually makes it look like god makes mistakes because here he says he's sorry like he has to apologize for his own decisions and here he says he regrets like he wish he never did it but he already knew that this was going to happen so again it's because it it's because he had that loaded definition that repent means to turn from all of your sins and self reform your character whereas we just say it means change of mind then actually this translation the king james makes more sense than any of these okay so in the king james bible then i have a fundamental indisputable proof text that repentance does not always mean turning from sin but because other bibles have now substituted this we've essentially lost the proof text so i can't take out an esv or an asb and say well here look let me show you an example of where god repented so it doesn't always mean turning from sin i can't do that anymore because i've lost my proof text and they do that quite consistently throughout the old testament when there's multiple examples of god repenting now i might you know if i if i said well look here where here's where god repented someone will just point to that and say well no it says he was sorry he doesn't say repent it's not the same thing you know if they if they don't realize that you know that there's the similar word in in Hebrew or Greek now i could say to someone well if you go back to the original language but i don't speak Hebrew i don't speak Greek and the chances are that the person i'm explaining it to probably doesn't either so for all they know i could make up any old garbage about what the Hebrew and Greek believes that's why it's important to have it correctly translated in English now in a way you from a translational point of view you can absolutely argue that these bibles have not mistaken the translation they're not technically wrong because repent can mean be sorrowful it can mean have you know have regret but that means that each passage that uses a variation of the same Hebrew or Greek word is being translated into so many different expressions in English that the read is never going to join those two things together so in the New Testament when we have repent for the kingdom is at hand or repent for the remission of sins or repent and baptized and so on and so on someone's not going to make that connection between God repented of flooding the earth or God repented of this or God repented of that now if we had that connection you'd say well okay repentance doesn't always mean turn from sin so if the New Testament says repent and i don't know what it means i need to look for where it defines what it means to repent but because we don't have that Old Testament proof well now someone can just tell me it means turn from sin so as soon as i see the word repent oh right okay well that means turn from sin because that's what it means and so you see the problem there we're losing our rebuttals we're losing the fact that repentance is a flexible word that can be for all sorts of things and even in the Hebrew and Greek it just has many different forms of the same word being used in many different contexts but we've lost that connection now another great verse that again is being diluted and we're losing our sortie is Jonah 310 we looked at this earlier and we saw that turning from our wicked ways is our works right it's like God saw their works that they turned from their evil way so when you turn from your evil way that's your works now the ESV and the NIV have then substituted this with a more diluted turn of phrase so that it's not as explicit that it was indeed their works because instead of saying God saw their the works that they turned it's God saw what they did how they turned from their evil way so it's not explicit that them turning from their evil way was their works because he could say well it was their faith God saw what they did as part of their faith how they turned from their evil way you've lost that that proof text there that that fundamental proof the new american standard uses the word deeds instead of works which is not wrong in of itself but because works is more the word we use in our biblical terminology for salvation you know it says we're saved by a great through faith not of works we don't say not of deeds you might miss that connection if you're trying to compare these verses over a concordance and in one of the ceramic verses we actually did read that repentance was with deeds it didn't use the word work so deeds tends to be a bit more of islamic terminology rather than christian terminology so to me i don't know why they wouldn't have just just said works instead also notice again we've got this proof text that God repented so again repent doesn't always mean turning from sin but that's now become God relented now again that that's not wrong to say that God relented that's what he did but we're losing that connection now between all of the Hebrew instances of repentance and therefore the greek instances where it actually quotes the um Hebrew and so then when you're trying to explain this to people what now happens is we started with pure fresh orange juice okay we have a strong healthy drink but now what we're doing is we've now we're now on to dilute squash and notice that in the newer and more common editions of the bible used today we've got lower concentrations you know we're diluting it more and more this would be a clear proof text that God repented this would be a clear proof text showing that you turning from your sin is your works it's not part of your faith it doesn't say that God saw your faith God saw what you did your works but we're now losing this helpful proof text so what would be a really good rebuttal verse to show somebody we've lost that now we we don't have that sharp sword anymore another very very important example Matthew 21 32 we looked at this earlier in the study this was clear indisputable proof that repentance that john preached about was for the remission of sins was based on belief not turning from sin because Jesus referenced this he said you the chief priests repented not afterwards that you might believe him so that you might believe that continues what he means by you did not repent essentially so in the new king james that's now become relent and believe so then when you see when you see uh john's preaching it says john preached repent for the kingdom of hand or john preached repent for the remission of sins you'll get to that and it doesn't say repent so then you don't know that the repentance was changing from unbelief to belief it just relented you're not going to make that direct correction anymore uh the new american standard translates this as even have second thoughts like maybe you just considered it but that that's not even uh you know that's not even a true repentance really you can have second thoughts but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to change it but you see how they're diluting again and again you've lost that connection because you don't know that that is the repentance that he preached about anymore okay so you know john can preach repent turn from your sins and then jesus can say you did not believe and and believe you did not relent and believe him when he told you to turn from your sins you see how that that's now possible because we don't have the link between this and the word repent the esv says change your minds and believe him well change your mind is one of the definitions of repent and that's essentially what it means in this context but because they won't use the word repent again you've got no direct connection between john preaching repent and jesus saying the repentance was that you might believe him but you didn't repent now the niv um unusually does actually use the word repent here which it's actually very unusual the niv is usually the worst bible to use for him among the most popular ones anyway the more formal ones i just find it terrible but yeah it's quite amazing that they did actually use the word repent there um but when i looked at this on the concordance um that there is no greek word for and all that it's just it's embedded in the word believe by just having it in a different form but obviously english has to use separate words to express that so but in english and is not always it's not always a very good word for when two things are separate or two things are actually combined so for example you could say god the father and the son okay well is the son very separate from the father then you know is the son not god or you could say god father and the son in that both the father and the son are god it's not a very good word in english to decide whether two things are actually combined um or separate and so it's not as clear as the king james that the believe him is actually the repentance that that's how it's defined it's because if repent means turn from sin then then it could be saying you did not turn from your sins and believe him because we've now got and instead of that it's not as clear whether those two things are put together and then the nlt just spells it out for you that they separate the two you know they just say you refuse to believe in him and repent of your sins you know they're up to their old tricks again just tacking these three words on the end making turning from sin something distinct from believing as if you have to do two things and again you can see where preachers are actually getting it from because it's in a bible that many of them use so with matthew 2132 being taken from as we we can't use that rebuttal anymore with with modern versions well acts 19 for is then perhaps our secondary proof that we and we could still use the esp and esp or nkjv actually in this case but the nl that the niv and the nlt have separated into two sentences so even when they do use the word repent they're still trying to separate it from the belief so you know in the king james we have but john verily baptized with the baptism of repentance comma saying on to the people that they should believe in him in other words that's the repentance that they should believe in him that's what he was telling them for their repentance now the new king james does still allow this so we still have our secondary proof text there the new american standard still enables this and then so does the english standard version but then in the n in the niv it says john preached the baptism of repentance full stop he told the people to believe in the one coming after him so like as if they're now two separate things like he preached repentance stop he told the people it's like that they're separating it by putting that sentence stop in there and then the nlt obviously does the same thing but puts those two words from sin again which just aren't in there but they've put it in there once again you know putting corrupting god's word saying something that god didn't actually say and and this would be the proof text once again that repentance was that the people should believe in him that's the repentance that john preached they've managed to include the word and yet they've still butchered that concept um with what they've done and so as i said you've got the bibles and you've got the preachers well we saw preachers like tutulian and charles spurgeon redefining repentance we then saw the bible translators going with that and trying to reword and replace some substitute or redacted repentance and then it just goes back and forth and we're on to the preachers again and so you know in our modern era we still have preachers redefining repentance so billy graham was one of the most famous people who thought that you must be willing to change your life before you can believe in jesus because this is essentially what he said the first thing you have to do is be willing to repent of all your sin that means to change the way you're living now he essentially gave contradictory statements because he wouldn't say do we actually have to change or do we just have to be willing to change which is it because it either means one or the other live a new kind of life be willing to give up some of those wrong things in your life and then he will ask retrospectively have you repented are you sure of it did that change take place you can't just say lord i'm sorry or lord i said that's not repentance it means a change and then the second thing you must do is receive him by faith so before anyone accuses me of misquoting him or taking what he said out of context i'm just going to show you the clip of him doing this you say well billy what what really do i have to do first you have to be willing to repent of your sin you say well what does that mean that means to change your way of living to change your thinking about christ and about god and about yourself it means to live a new kind of a life it means that you're willing to give up some of those wrong things in your life and walk with him that's repentance and jesus said except the man repent he can't see the kingdom of god have you repented are you sure of it did that change take place i'm not talking about did you say oh lord i'm sorry that's not repentance oh lord i've sinned that's not repentance it means a change all things have passed away and everything becomes new and then the second thing you must receive him by faith but as many as received him to them gave him power to become the sons of god even to them that believe on his name just simple faith like a little child believes in its father its mother you believe jesus said you have to become like a child you may be the professor at the university in mathematics or some of the sciences but you have to become like a little child when you come to christ in faith believing just as i have confidence in faith in this platform to hold me that's what the word faith means you put your confidence in you put your strength in you put your everything you have in jesus price and really so so there is folks there's the evidence so you know that's what he taught first we have to change our life we must reform our character there must be a change in our life first because he said that's the first thing you've got to do but he did contradict himself by not making it clear whether there must be an actual change or a willingness to change that's not exactly the same thing but remember this is all before you can come to jesus so are you willing to change have you experienced that change before you can then believe on christ that that doesn't make any and then he ironically calls that the simple faith of a little child well that doesn't make any sense folks because how much change is enough for me before i can then decide that i have the faith of a little child this is contradictory this is backwards so you know he says that we must put all our strength confidence and faith in jesus christ despite saying that we must change our life first it doesn't make any sense it's completely backwards it makes no sense and it's not just him this is still happening today with our preachers i mean ray comfort is pretty much carrying on exactly where billy graham left off so let me show you a clip of ray comfort doing it you've got to repent all your sin so what you've got to do justin is repent of your sins what you've got to do in response to that is repent that is turned from your sins is repent don't just say i'm sorry but turn from those sins you've got to repent that means turn from all sins now from those clips i didn't make those edits okay i didn't trim that video i just found it someone else had done so it didn't include the bit where he tells them to believe in christ but if you watch most of his videos that's what he will tell people to say there's two things he must do first and he'll say you've got to turn from your sins you know by which they mean fix your life and reform yourself second believe on jesus after you have reformed yourself so you see how they're giving the gospel backwards you see how putting the car before the horse here so and you know we already looked at his article earlier in this video where the same article in one paragraph it tells us you know if you're putting your trust in anything other than christ you need to repent or change your mind about trusting something other than christ but then earlier in that same article it said that there's got to be this radical you know transformation of the entire person in fundamental turnaround but they're not emphasizing that that's just a life of the believer after you're saved this is all part of the prerequisite to being saved so essentially you're asking an unregenerate person who doesn't believe in jesus yet and doesn't have the holy spirit yet to first redeem themselves as a fleshly person and first fix the life and then they come to Jesus that makes no sense it's just completely and utterly backwards and all that article and all that is just throwing word salad around all the time and it's just confusing people and this is why Christians don't know how to be saved because they've just been listening to too much of this word salad being thrown around now here's another famous preacher John MacArthur I've extracted this from his website but I'll open that website just to give you the full context of what he says and so this is an article on his website what is biblical repentance and it looks as if he wrote it himself he's going to do a lot of what Ray comforts website did where again quoting somebody he gets space on the page to put his quotes but we still have to hover our mouse to actually see what the bible says and then the first bible verse he quotes doesn't even mention the word repentance but it's being used to define it and then in this case it's not even a behavior reform so somehow it's now more embellished than behavior reform which is an already embellished term term but he's you know he's defined it that way from the very beginning he's got the presupposed idea that that's what it means and then he says you know it's not it's got all of these intellectual and emotional and volitional ramifications well what's his justification for that well he just quotes some other Calvinist from you know however many years ago and again we're just quoting other people saying it so you see how it just gets passed down the line not because we can open the bible and prove it but because somebody makes these dramatic statements and then somebody else studying his work copies those dramatic statements and repackages it and it's just been regurgitated but with you know with the words changed slightly but we're just quoting everybody else saying it and then that's how we define it this must be what it means because some guy who came before me says that that's what it means so you just see that he's just doing the same thing that we've already seen living waters do he then goes on to criticize the no lordship view so those who are against lordship salvation which includes free grace by the way and then he says if the issue is simply what must I do to be saved the answer is to believe on the lord Jesus Christ he calls that a peculiar formula while quoting the bible verse that even says that you know that's what it says in Acts but that's a peculiar formula which is just the formula that they gave him in Acts which I just find it very very bizarre really that that he calls it that and then he says that it's absolutely staggering that people believe this you know it's staggering that someone would just read Acts see that the apostles told somebody to believe in the lord to be saved and then we believe that and that's staggering that that's all there is to it you know but then he goes on about all this harmonious terms with God and then you know no sense no sense of gravity towards it well this is just emotional embellishment folks that there is no such term in the bible as being harmonious to you know he doesn't say whosoever be harmonious with God shall enter into it we're just making emotional statements that sounds really puffed up and wise to people that follow these kind of people and then I can't actually believe that he even has the audacity to write this he says the predominant lord no lordship view on repentance is simply to redefine repentance as a change of mind not to turning from sin or a change of purpose I mean that is just the most audacious statement like change of mind is one of the most basic definitions of repentance that's literally as basic as you can define it okay turning from sin is his loaded definition but we've redefined it no he's redefined it and all the people he's copied it from has redefined it we've not redefined it we've just gone back to what it originally said and how it was used and at the beginning you know earlier in this video we look through the concordance for the underlying Hebrew word and we saw it appear in all these passages where it then changed your mind or it meant you know relenting or it meant changing course and you know even God repented that's how the bible phrased it that's how it appeared in the Hebrew and that's how it's been translated in the in the English King James so it's just ridiculous and just audacious for him to accuse the no lordshipers of redefining it that way when that's what it in its most basic definition means if it means the change or returning there's got to be context as to what's being changed from you can't just tax in on every time because that's not even how it's originally used he's made it that way because he's quoted other people and he's got that predetermined definition that that's what it actually means and so you know he just makes this really rich rather arrogant accusation you know those who reject lordship of saying that they've redefined repentance is just a change of mind but the thing is we've done more than enough study in this video to know that change of mind is the literal and simplest definition of repentance with the surrounding context telling us of what's being repented of now sometimes it is sin absolutely repentance can be of sin in certain contexts but there's plenty of times when it's not and we've just been through and seen the evidence we've done all the study we looked at all these different verses we looked at how Jesus referenced the preaching of John the Baptist and how Paul also referenced referenced it as well we've done that we've done the homework now but the reason he thinks that we've redefined it is because just like Tatulian just like Billy Graham just like Charles Spurgeon and Ray Comfort he embellishes the definition he cannot comprehend this idea that it's just a simple noun like any other noun in the bible okay it's really not that complicated and that's why I has to go through all of these word salads throw all these words around and sound really emotional and you know on his knees and crying out to really tell us what it means because you just can't look it up in a dictionary and find out what it means you know you've really got to feel this stuff and it's just it's just emotionalism frankly and then the last guy I'm going to cover to really wrap up this point before we come up to the very last part of the video it's this John Piper so not all of these articles were actually written by him but they are all on his website written by his staff so here's an article what is repentance sounds like a simple question John this should be able to give a fairly simple answer to this well the guy who put this article hasn't actually written anything himself he's just put three quotes okay that's all these put they're all quotes of other people telling us what repentance is so we're doing it again we're just parroting and parroting and parroting other people tell us what it is but what does the bible tell us what repentance is I've read the bible and it's told me to repent so what is repentance in the bible oh well this person says this load of rubbish and this person says this load of rubbish and this person says this load of rubbish and none of them have proven it from the bible they've just made a statement that's what it means so when you read it in the bible that's what it means folks it's just absolute garbage this is another article then written by another member of staff who to be fair does use a lot more bible than the other person did which was none at all so unless you stop loving sin it's titled the heart of repentance but again forcing this definition on repentance ignoring the fact that it can mean plenty of other things as well so he introduces what Jesus said about the Galileans that they suffered things but they weren't any more sinful than anybody else well we already studied that earlier in the video so we already looked through that and then as Jesus said unless you repent you will all likewise perish and then he goes on to say you know calling people to repentance is the reason why Jesus came and again at least this guy does actually seem to verify most of what he's claiming and not quoting a bunch of other people which is a refreshing change and then we get to the heart of repentance and so this is where this is where the emotionalism kicks in again this is where repentance has about eight million definitions and it means all this and it means all that and it means all the other so he goes on to say about you know bare fruit keeping with repentance and John John the Baptist preaching but again he's making it about John the Baptist telling you to turn from your sins when really Jesus defined it as turn from unbelief towards belief and bring forth fruits meet for that belief which he also said that to a very specific group of people but we all we already dealt with that earlier in the video and then he goes on to define it from the uh John John Piper he quotes John Piper is defining it from the Greek so change of mind with perceptions and dispositions and purpose as well John MacArthur said it wasn't a change of mind we redefined it as that apparently so you know they just contradict each other with what they're saying to be honest it does mean a change of mind oh but it's not just a change of mind it's got to be all this as well what does it mean then you know who can tell what it really means and then he goes on to say more emotionally embellished statements about you know we see god for who he is and great and glorious and desirable well yeah i get that god is all those things but i didn't i didn't realize that god was all those things just because i saw the word repent okay i didn't get that from the word repent i got that from where the bible tells us that god is great or where the bible that tells us that god is glorious or desirable i didn't get all that because i read the word repent changed all my behavior and now i see all that in god that that's not how that worked at all and then we see sin for what it is diminished ugly and repulsive but again i didn't get all that meaning about sin from the word repent all right i had to actually read the bible where it said that sin was was all of that stuff but you know it's just emotionally charged stuff so then he goes on to say how repentance is a commitment to a profound change of direction reorientation of our lives away from sin and towards god but again those two things are not polar opposites because there are still people in the bible who believed god and still sinned so that's again this idea that sin is the opposite of believing that they're not polar opposites okay there are people in the bible who sinned but they still believe god okay and then this is his defense so this change of perception and direction is something we're commanded to do in acts 2 and this is his defense defense verse well nothing in there in that verse there tells us about seeing god for who he is and seeing sin for what it really is and seeing all this and seeing all that in your mind will be you know blown away by all these things it doesn't say anything like that it's just a simple statement the bible uses this word as a very simple word it does not have all this complicated meaning behind it and we already looked at this first when it said be baptized well what does baptism follow mark 16 hear that repentance and is baptized shall be saved okay and then you know forgiveness of sins you will receive the holy the gift of the holy ghost well again what did john seven tell us that the holy ghost follows it go it goes to them that believe so that's what that means repent and be back well you have to believe to be baptized you have to believe to receive the holy ghost so that's the context but he's made that a big thing about turning from all of your sin and a complete change of direction and seeing all the mighty stuff of god you don't get all that from someone telling you to repent okay seeing god for who he is requires more study in the bible than just somewhat some preacher throwing his arms around like this you know aching his heart out telling you to repent you don't get all that from just someone making a you know a big a big fancy speech like that okay you have to read the bible to know who god is and you have to read the bible to know to understand what sin is okay and then i'm not going to read this paragraph because that's just one of one of his personal anecdotes so i'll just go to the last paragraph repentance for eternal life so we've had all of this stuff about how repentance means to you know throw your life to jesus and see him for who he really is and all of this overloaded stuff and if that's how he's defined repentance and we need repentance for eternal life well here's how it is then but then trying to do good won't save us from god's eternal judgment well i certainly agree with that no one feels feeling sorry for sin or saying sorry for sin or becoming more and more a person well that obviously is true that they're all important to do but on their own none go deep enough you know we need to go deeper than that we need to hear jesus say again unless you repent you will all likewise perish we need to see the beauty and the love and the holiness of the triangle again this is just emotionalism folks and then it's just this last thing we need to turn from the false promises of sin and aim our lives towards him this is repentance and this is like well none of the verses that he's quoted prove that okay all of that stuff about him being the triangle again you don't get that from the word repentance you actually have to read other parts of the bible to actually understand that it's just you know overloaded statements and then the false promises of sin folks i have never met somebody who thinks that they have eternal life because of their sin i have never bumped into anybody like that nobody sins and then says i have a promise of eternal life because of the promises of sin that i don't know what that means but again they're trying to pit those who sin as the opposite of believing on christ when they're not they're not directly polar opposite and just because i've already spent a long time and you know we need to wrap this up i'm not going to read this last article how to repent but what you can see from this when you hover and show all of the different verses none of these mention repentance okay they they don't mention the subject but again because we've got this preloader definition whenever we then define how to repent we have to go to other verses that don't mention repentance to tell us how to repent which frankly makes no sense and so you know it's just the same thing everybody's doing it this is not unique to one person you see how this is just going on and on we're defining repentance with verses that don't define it for us and then we're just redefining the verses that actually do tell us to repent instead of letting those verses define themselves and so again you know it's just this constant writing of oversensationalized embellished articles quoting a bunch of other people are just making emotional fancy speech that doesn't mean anything i mean one of the quotes from this article was that the fog of unworthiness needs to take shape into clear dark pillars of disobedience then you can point to them and repent and ask for forgiveness and take aim with your gospel i mean is he writing a psalm or a poem or is he actually just trying to give practical instructions because this first sentence that's not a practical instruction all right that's poetry that's not a very clear answer to telling people what repentance is all right but you know now if confession and feeling sorry for our sins is the life of a safe believer then fine okay now i have all you know in a different way already argued that sinned sorry saved believers should turn from their sins but if that involves taking aim with a gospel bazooka then does that mean then that it's an inherent part of getting saved because is it no longer enough to believe in jesus jesus never said any of this embellished stuff when preaching god john's gospel so did jesus not preach the gospel properly when he just said whosoever believe within me he didn't say see me for all of my divine glorious beauty and realize how terrible all yours is you know jesus never said anything like that but you know did jesus redacted repentance then in the gospel of john because he didn't say any of this stuff this is all men saying it jesus is not saying this stuff jesus is making quick easy simple statements that even a child can understand he doesn't have to say things in a dramatic poetic way and quote all of these random people with all this emotionalism he just doesn't talk like that folks it's only these preachers with their theological degrees that talk like this no normal person talks like this and so you can see how it's just been repackaged or changed but it's been the same old tricks you know essentially redefining what it means and then trying to replace it in the bible with what we think it should mean and then you know that just they just feed each other constantly doing that back and forth so with all that in mind we can wrap that to a close and the very last thing to sort of cover really here is just to answer a few common objections and although we've really dealt with this in a way it just helps to package it into a neat little conclusion if you like so objection number one if repent means to turn from sin in some context at least it must mean this in every context including salvation now you can't really argue that with the king james bible because god repented in the king james but obviously in a modern bible you might have that question well yeah when you're not sure what a word means in the bible it does help to look up other instances where it appears so that you know that will help you define it if you're not sure who the sons of god are well then just look every time that appears and you'll find it but even if such terms have a particular definition that that does not always mean that they apply in the same way or in the same context every time that word appears so i'll give you an example of this so the word sanctification so in john 1790 this is jesus praying for his disciples and for their sakes i sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth and then in 1st Thessalonians 4 3 to 4 it says for this is the will of god even your sanctification that you should abstain from fornication that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor so both of these verses talk about sanctification but not in the same context okay abstaining from fornication is part of sanctification in 1st Thessalonians 4 but we know that Jesus didn't need to do this for his own sanctification he never sinned so he wasn't being sanctified by abstaining from fornicate he never fornicated okay but he did say in his prayer that he must be sanctified and that that's referring to the process that he's going to go through now all of his work ministry on the earth was done at that point you know he said that he'd done the work that God had gave him to do but then he still got to go through this final death burial and resurrection there and then from that the disciples will be solidified in their confidence in him his belief that that's a separate study so we won't cover that now um so yeah in some passages repentance absolutely is about turning from sin and we already looked at them we look through revelation okay we look through other passages so it's not like we don't know that there we've already done that homework now but not where salvation is concerned repentance for salvation is about changing who or what you believe in and so even if we were to say that repentance is turning from sins for salvation let's just say if that meant recognizing we are sinners and deserving condemnation but believing on Christ to save us well then there wouldn't be an issue okay but then what i have to ask you is what what does that have to do with all of this emotional sensationalism and embellishment like making repentance louder than the sin and the vomit of the soul the bible does not make such dramatic statements like that okay and also what you know even if you say well you know as christians you know we should turn from this and we should turn from that and you know no no such person who does this will inherit the kingdom of god etc etc well yeah i'm not arguing against that but what does that have to do you know what does the christian life growing in holiness have to do with that when that that's something that should come after we believe not before so we're conflating the christian life post-belief with the initial gospel and salvation about how you believe because then first clean up your life you know repent of your sins second you must trust in jesus for christ alone well no first you must trust in jesus for christ alone that's how you get saved and then we can talk about the christian life growing in obedience and so on and so forth now if we are to say that repentance is a change of mind or returning at its most basic core definition then only the surrounding context around how the word is used can tell you how it applies in that situation so it you know if someone said to you turn full stop with no context you wouldn't know what they meant okay now you wouldn't think back to some other time when that person told you to turn like driving in a car and then apply that definition again oh is he thinking is he talking about driving because i'm not driving right now that that statement would not make any sense turn full stop there has to be some context as to what's being turned from and uh or you know towards and repentance needs that likewise but but you see this is what people are doing with repentance they're conflating it with something else where it does mean something in a particular instance and so just imagine right imagine if we embellished the definition of continuation like we do repentance right now if i said to you this statement you all know what this means this is a really simple statement there's not really much to it continue working at your job don't give up and resign and there's the keyword continue okay now imagine these princes of preachers and big time theologians telling us what this means they'd probably say something along the lines of well it's not enough to just carry on working you must pour out your heart and soul into the job and if you're not breathing a fiery passion every working hour of your life then you are not truly continuing continuation doesn't just mean carry on if you go back to the greek it means to turn from your miserable attitude about your job and completely transform the way that you work until every day at work is a good successful day that flows from the core of your being a person who truly continues his job will never want to quit an apparently famous nobody defined it well he said if you don't want to continue working beyond your paid hours if you don't want to stay with the same employer forever if you don't want to put up with all of that bad management and all of the obstacles to success you don't truly want to continue this is the true definition of continuation and then this would be their biblical proof text that's you know first Timothy 416 take heed onto yourself and onto the doctrine continue in them for him well doing this shall you both save yourself and then that hear you that would be their proof text for all of that you see how they're doing it with the repentance this would be ridiculous if we did this with this statement right here that continue means all of this rubbish okay you cannot get that from that statement but this is essentially what they're doing with the bible taking a simple statement like repent and dot dot dot and just putting all of this loaded stuff around it you know just putting a bit too much cheese on the chips or let me give you another example to show that how the word is not used in the same way in different passages so you know what about the word amusement well in the uk treasure island is an amusement park all right as various rides that you know you would expect from such a place you can see some of the rides in the picture there now in the uk at least i don't know if it's the same in the states but small casino arcades are referred to amusement centers you know we don't tend to have the big vegas places over here so much but we do have lots these pokey little shops for gambling and so forth and then there is this particular place somewhere that's a family amusement center so you know that is indoor arcade games including those suitable for children like you know the racing arcades you put your coin in you erase each other all that kind of thing okay now you wouldn't say to treasure island well you're not an amusement park you're not a true amusement park because it doesn't have a casino okay that's not the true definition of amusement you wouldn't say to the casino you wouldn't accuse the casino of not being an amusement center or picking a bad name to refer to themselves just because they don't have indoor roller coasters and ferris wheels right you know well the amusement park has all of this stuff so it must be included in your amusement center that's not how the word works folks all right you wouldn't then accuse the family amusement center of not being an amusement center because it probably doesn't have a casino if it's suitable for families but the thing is folks amusement is just the noun of the verb to amuse it does not automatically mean the same thing in every encompassing you know everywhere it's used so you amuse yourself at an amusement park you amuse yourself in a casino arcade well i don't but you know some people do you amuse yourself in an you know a family entertainment center you amuse yourself with different kinds of activities and that's just what amusement is well you can repent of different things you can repent of sin you can repent of unbelief you can repent of judging the earth so repentance covers that as the noun but it doesn't mean the same thing everywhere it's used okay and so you know you wouldn't embellish continuation you wouldn't embellish amusement in this way so you know my rhetorical question is why do we do it with repentance it's a simple word it does not come with all of this deep hidden meaning that would require expert theologians and bible college qualified experts to pretend to sound smart when they explain it to you now we only think it does because we keep being told by all these preachers and evangelists and theologians that it means all of this other stuff but the bible doesn't use the word in such a dramatic way and the thing to be repented of is not the same in every context where the word is used now again i've said this many times now sometimes the context may be turning from sin absolutely nobody's pretending that it doesn't but not in every context that's the point that i'm trying to get across now objection number two is that the orthodox or traditional christian definition of repentance is turning from sin and that's you know what the early christians and church fathers believe that's what most christians have believed for a long time well i already really addressed that because we've already seen in the last section that believing in a false gospel does go back all the way as far as paul in jesus' time and so there's nothing pure or special about christians from the third to fifth centuries okay and moreover if the catholic church has been the largest denomination propagating the works of salvation you know why would they elevate early christians to an honorable status or sainthood and preserve their writings if they didn't agree with catholic doctrine all right the catholic church has only preserved the writings of christians who aren't too objectionable for their dogmas or you know where they have preserved someone denouncing other christians as heretical so history really only tells us one side of the story jesus himself said that not everyone who says on to me lord lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven okay jesus said the gates onto life is narrow few there be that find it that's what he said okay if the vast majority of christians have believed that repentance for salvation means to clean up their life and turn from all their sins before they come to jesus well guess what the vast majority of christians have also been going through for wide gate to destruction okay objection number three if god hates sin and we cannot allow for a doctrine that enables sin which you know i don't disagree with that i agree with that perfectly if repentance for salvation is belief only and doesn't mean turning from sin then and this is the straw man that they always you know pull out these kind of straw men arguments a murderer or child molester could go on sinning willfully and still go to heaven that that's you know the straw man that they always pluck out well the thing is we have already seen that god chastises those he loves okay he scourges every son whom he receives the chastisement of the believer deals with the issue of a believer that sins if believers cannot be punished in hell they must be punished on this earth and that's why the wicked world gets away with evil on earth but saved christians do not excuse me saved believers can't go on sinning willfully because they will completely ruin their life on this earth you know they could go to prison they could have an accident and lose their arms or legs or eyes even if they do still make it to heaven okay jesus can make sure that they will get their punishment the bible is full of examples of god's own people sinning like abraham or david or samson or solomon okay we already saw examples of this david a man after god's own heart killed innocent blood so there that's where the straw man falls apart immediately but god now god's people made it to heaven but they did severely suffer in this life much more than most of us are you know accustomed to i'm not accustomed to the same level of suffering that david went through okay but i've not slept around with loads of women and killed a bunch of people either so you know he suffered for his sins on this earth we've already seen that turning from sins comes after believing on christ not before so turning from sins first then believing on jesus is still a backwards gospel whichever way he puts it okay paul himself said if i sin it is no longer i that do it but the sin that dwells in me referring to his flesh that's in roman 717 i haven't really done a study on romans yet but you know i plan to eventually and really the the burden of proof lies with the repent of his sins to be safe crowd to explain why a born-again believer who is a new creature in christ would want to go out and kill people and or less children because being an actual born-again believer like i can't think of any good reasons so this is just a complete straw man like well you could do this and still go so well guess what folks i don't do it because i don't know why anyone would want to do that all right those things are sick right so you know it's just a complete straw man and you know most of the people who do those things on telly are predominantly not bible-believing christians okay and the thing is folks people who preach repent of your sins to be saved they're hypocrites because they haven't turned from all of their sins themselves now you already saw an example of this earlier we looked at a video of a repent of your sins evangelist trying to challenge a well-studied pastor trying to deceive him about filming him and publishing on youtube despite claiming repent of your sins to be saved and then you go on their youtube channel in the comments and they're just making excuses for themselves all the time well he didn't have a youtube channel it's i who do we just didn't tell him that you know what i mean we already looked at that so you know we just saw an example of that hypocrisy the catholics will tell you that you have to turn from all your sins but they've not repented of calling their priest's father as his title when Jesus said call no man on earth your father and you actually show them that and you confront them about that and what you will find is excuses they have not repented of bowing down to statues when the bible said not to bow down to graven images nor serve them yet their catechism claims repentance must include an enter sin that's what their catechism claims okay but they still do those things they haven't they won't repent of doing that you confront them about it well we're not worshipping them we're venerating them they just make excuses for it folks that's what that's what repent of your sins people do the average Protestant minister has not repented of wearing long robes when Jesus said beware of those who walk about with long clothing so when you see these Anglican Protestants with all these long flowing robes Jesus said beware of those people i guess they think it doesn't apply to them or you know we even the Protestants are the ones putting female ministers in the position of pastoring a church when the bible says i suffer not a woman to teach in a church context now even the Catholics aren't doing that but the Protestants who claim that they come out of that and they've cleaned up and reformed everything well they haven't cleaned up that bit have they they've actually got worse because they're the ones who are pushing that all right the Jehovah's witnesses have not repented of denying Jesus the title of mighty god when it was prophesied of him in Isaiah 9 6 and Jesus himself said there is none good but God and we all know as Christians that Jesus is good so either he's good and he's God or he's not good which one is it and you try and confront them with these scriptures and they just try and deflect you and push you off into an irrelevant subject and bring out all of this irrelevant scripture that has nothing to do with the issue they tell you that you need to turn from all your sins but they won't turn from their specific things and the lordship salvationists they have not repented of putting works into the gospel while still masquerading as justification by faith without words they have not repented of writing poetic emotionally sensationalized embellished statements and quoting other preachers to override what the bible actually says so all of these repent of your sins types they always have excuses and exceptions for their own sins and the thing is we know this issue of not of not enabling sin in our doctrine well if there are you know a handful of preachers that are lifted up in the evangelical world as great men of God because unlike blatant false prophets like your obvious ones like Joel Osteen they do or when they were alive they did actually preach hard against sin so you know for example the ones that we've just looked at like John MacArthur or John Piper but also others like Francis Chan and Paul Washer and David Paulson David Wilkinson Leonard Ravenhill I've obviously named but a few these men absolutely did preach hard against it more than most which many preachers behind pulpits just aren't brave enough to do because they you know just want to fill bottoms on the seats so I accept that these men did preach holiness I accept that they did preach against sin and of course they were right to do so it's right to preach against drunkenness and fornication and idolatry and so on if you're preaching to the right audience if you're preaching to the congregation of believers not to tell and save people how to be saved though but the thing is just because these preachers were bold enough to preach against the sin and preach a holy standard of living that does not automatically mean that they were or are men of God because all of that falls apart if the gospel preached was a false gospel all right now Jehovah's Witnesses preachers also preach against sin I'm sure many Jehovah's Witnesses probably hold themselves up to a higher standard of living than most average Christians lose it using that word very loosely okay but all of their righteous living comes to note if the gospel they preach is still false okay so your Jehovah's Witness elder probably isn't running around getting drunk and partying and sleeping with a bunch of women he's probably living quite a clean life and he tries to be friendly with people and he tries to love his neighbor and all of that jazz but guess what it means nothing if the gospel you preach is false you can turn from your sins as much as you want to Muslim preachers have even been accused of hate speech for preaching hard against sin from a Christian perspective they were often right to preach against some of those sins or you know preach loving God which obviously they refer to it as Allah even in English language but you know from the general perspective they're preaching to serve God but all that still comes to note if the gospel they preach is false all right and so wrapping that up then it's precisely because God hates in so much that you cannot turn from your sins to be saved because it doesn't matter how hard you try or how well you do at repenting of your sins you still fall short of the glory of God okay you must come to him by faith in what christ did it is his obedience that many shall be made righteous so only those who have faith can turn from their sins to be pleasing to God in any way whatsoever because without faith it is impossible to please him so belief must come first then we can deal with behavioural modification after somebody's already believed but not before and not for the purpose of getting saved and so that leads me then on to the next objection number four if all we have to do is believe in Jesus or on Jesus to be saved you might wonder well then why use the word repentance at all why not just say belief every time and thereby eliminating this entire controversy well in certain situations though it made more sense to preach repentance specifically because belief is a one-way verb right it just tells you to believe but that that doesn't in of itself tell you to stop believing in something else whereas repentance is a two-way verb because you move away from one thing towards another thing so sometimes in the bible it is more appropriate to use this word for salvation so you know for example we cannot add believing and trusting in Jesus to trusting in other things as well so you know work salvation being the case in point but also other gods or false christs we absolutely need to ensure we believe in the true Jesus and the true gospel alone because we were warned about another Jesus and another gospel in the bible this is not clear from the from the word belief in of itself so the repentance adds the turning away from trusting in that which is not Jesus to then trusting in that which is Jesus and so and by the way many many people already claim to believe in Jesus including Muslims and Hindus as well so but the thing is they have a false view about who Jesus is or they don't trust him for their salvation or they add Jesus onto something else such as their own turning from sins or their plethora of other idols you know they end up with well i believe in Jesus but i also believe that i have to do all this and so you know it repentance is emphasizing moving away from what you thought you believed or what you were trusting in to believing in Jesus now as well that the Jews who heard Peter and John the Baptists preaching when they said repent in a manner of speaking they were believers so named the children of Abraham and believers in Jehovah but but for the Jews specifically at that time what they needed to acknowledge was that the Holy One had now come okay they were no longer waiting for the Holy One as they were in the Old Testament so they also needed to recognize that it was the Jews who killed the Holy One so they needed to move away from Old Testament thinking and transition into the New and Better Testament they needed to acknowledge that believing in the Lord God Jehovah must include believing in Jesus the Son of God so you cannot remove the Son from the Godhead which Judaism has continued to do since that time and so that's why to a Jewish audience it made more sense to preach repent because yes you have to believe in Jesus but that is a part of believing God so you need to repent into this new covenant way of thinking another good reason to use the word repentance is that it's a good all-encompassing word it's an easy word for an orator who is summarizing a story and includes the fact that preaching may include other topics as well so let's take the story of John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness for example well we have much more dialogue in Matthew but Mark Luke and Acts just summarize the story without giving us all of the dialogue so the story can be summarized by saying John preached repentance Matthew 21 helpfully clarifies that the repentance he preached was in regards to entering the kingdom of heaven that it was by belief not from turning from sins so in a way we could say that John preached belief but this would be vague and incomplete because of the aforementioned issue that that Jews needed to transition into the New Testament way of thinking and furthermore believing in the coming Christ was not the only thing that John preached or did because he also preached about who Christ is and the readiness of his coming he he baptized people he told the Pharisees to bring forth fruits meet for repentance but you know the fruits are not the repentance itself it's important that you don't get those two things confused and he preached the eventual baptism of the Holy Ghost and so saying that he only just saying that he preached belief does not really capture all of that whereas we can say he preached repentance because it's a more inclusive word that can capture the additional things that John preached which are not not for salvation itself but they ought to come after belief onto salvation such as the the baptism and the bringing forth fruit so it's just a good all-encompassing word for that and then further building up on the issue with John so instead of saying you know instead of repent for the kingdom of God is at hand or or repent for the remission of sins what if John had said something else so although none of these would be entirely wrong there's a good reason for not using these expressions so for example if he said believe for the kingdom of God is at hand well this is the essence of what he said but as seen in previous slides this does not capture the issue that the Jews would already claim to be believers as according to the Old Testament but they needed to change into the New Testament way of thinking recognize the Holy One is here okay so to continue your belief in God that must include the acknowledgement of the Holy One he could have said be justified for the kingdom of God is at hand but justification means to have good reason for so if you just said have good reason for the kingdom of God is at hand or have good reason for the remission of sins it's not really a comprehensible instruction the good reason for you know being given is their belief or repentance that that is the justification that's having the good reason he could have said get saved for the kingdom of God is at hand but rather like being justified get saved is not a comprehensible instruction because we need to be told how this can be achieved just just telling people to get saved doesn't address the the how or the what must i do to be saved and so you know John could have then gone on to say bring forth meet fruits meet for believers instead of for repentance but since he told them to repent repentance is the appropriate noun to match the verb so it's just to show you that sometimes repentance is a necessary word and a better word to use in some scenarios an objection number five even though a preacher says repent of your sins to be saved you know maybe he still says to trust in Christ alone and that salvation is a free gift so he must still believe in faith without works for salvation but the thing is though he's saying that it's a free gift and you have to do such and such that that is not unique to evangelical Christianity the Catholics the joves witnesses and the Mormons do likewise they claim to believe that it's a gift salvation is a gift but it's it's a free gift but so this is what it comes down to it's a free gift but dot dot dot it's by faith not of works but dot dot dot it's not by our obedience but dot dot dot so i don't really see why repentance of your sins get gets a special exemption there so how are we supposed to know what they actually believe if they talk out of two sides of their mouth it's a free gift but you've got to do the sacraments it's a free gift but you've got to repent of your sins etc etc etc and so just to just to show you this in practice so here's a Catholic answers website and salvation so someone's asking hypothetically why do they try to earn their salvation when it's a free gift so it'll start off by saying Catholics fully recognize that Jesus died on the cross for our sins open the gates of heaven and that salvation is a free gift which no amount of human good deeds could ever earn and then it goes on to say yet they also know that there's certain conditions for entry for happiness in heaven like receiving his true flesh and blood by which they mean the Eucharist or communion keeping the commandments and etc etc etc so it all comes down to it's a free gift that you can't earn but you need to do all these things to have it so you know again talking out of both sides of the mouth it's a free gift but dot dot dot we can't earn it but dot dot dot so then let's see the Jehovah's Witnesses doing the same thing so on there watch tower online library an article titled is eternal life really possible i'm not going to read the whole thing because it's very long and boring but we have this statement here that the gift God gives us is eternal life so the Jehovah's Witnesses are saying that they believe that salvation or everlasting life is a free gift or a gift okay they then say they have another article on the watch tower online library saved not by works alone but by undeserved kindness so you know you have been saved through faith it's not owing to works in order that no man should have ground for boasting so it's not by works alone so they still believe it's by works but by undeserved kindness so first it's a gift then we're mixing our works with it and then when you go on their main website there's this article is eternal life possible and how do we gain it and it's just flat out works you need to get to know God by studying his word you've got to do this you've got to do that you you've got to you know gain it at God's favor there it is folks not even not even a mention of Jesus not even believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved Jesus doesn't even get a mention here now that's what the Bible says but that's not what they say it starts off with a gift it then starts well it's not your works alone but you know a bit of undeserved kindness as well and then it's just your works flat out they're doing it as well and then let's see the Mormons doing it so it starts off by saying immortality eternal life these are gifts it's a beautiful gift it's the greatest of all gifts this amazing gift it's a gift and then it talks about receiving it and then and basically what you must do to gain it so you know it explains what's required of us in order to receive eternal life bearing in mind this is the book of Mormon telling them telling them this it's not the Bible so after the baptism we enter through this straight and narrow path to enter the path you must walk down it you must press on with steadfastness so again it's all this works language you walk you press your efforts you keep doing it we must press forward enjoy to the end and then you shall have eternal life again not even a mention of believing on Christ just press on with the word of Christ but we again we're using either diluted or just sensationalized language again we're not giving clear instructions here and then in addition there's all this other stuff that you've got to do over here you know you've got to make sacred covenants you've got to do this you've got to do that for something that's a gift by the way and then enduring to the end you know you can't just receive it in an instant because Jesus says there's those who believe and you know have life there's those who don't believe in are already condemned you don't gain it in an instant there's all this ongoing thing that you've got to do and it just goes on and on and you're just striving for it so it's a gift but you've got to strive your whole life for it well that's not a gift that's like a prize at the end of a race so you see how all these different denominations of Christianity are doing this well we believe it's a free gift we believe it's by faith alone but dot dot dot and so my question is then why do these repent of your sins preachers get a special like you know exemption why aren't they lumped in the same category as the Catholics and the Jehovah's Witnesses because that's what they're all doing it's a free gift but you must have all these works of obedience it's by faith not of works but if you have the faith you'll already have the works so it's not by faith without works it's not by our obedience but you must surrender your life to Christ and turn from all your sins and blah blah blah how we're supposed to know what then to do because we keep getting mixed messages it's by faith alone or Christ alone but dot dot dot and even going back to Billy Graham you know we looked at him earlier saying there must be this change taking place well on his website there's this answer here that salvation is a free gift it then goes on to tell us that actually there is a cost but the cost is not towards it's Christ that paid the cross so towards it's it's a free gift it costs God the life of his son obviously but it's free to us we can't earn it you know but then that's contrary to what he says about did that change take place you must be willing to change your life so to what extent is it a free gift then it's a free gift but dot dot dot because all he says here is that we have to accept it he doesn't say on this article that we have to turn from our sins to get it we just accept it but that's not what he was saying in front of the camera in front of those thousands of people that he was talking to in that video clip and so you see again the mixed messages one minute it's all faith one minute it's a gift the next minute there's all these conditions attached and it's not a free gift anymore and so you know they say that they trust in Christ alone they say that salvation is a free gift but then you know other groups claim that as well but they still have these conditions and attachments to it now what i'm all for turning from sins and living holy but that's after someone's believed it's not to be saved and that's where we're not separating two things there now objection number six someone might say to me that throughout this study i haven't really grasped or addressed the difference between metanoia type repentance or metamilamy regret or change of mind because they are two different greek words in the new testament from where repent or repentance is translated from so earlier in this study when i quoted a verse from the greek showing the equivalency between the new testament greek and the old testament hebrew that was when i uh read hebrew 721 quoting Psalm 114 but it was as metamilamy and it's a non-salvation verse but then someone might say to me that all of the salvation verses when they say repent or repentance is metanoia or metaneo just depending on whether it's a noun or a verb now i i hate to even have to address this objection because frankly i don't speak greek so you know i i'm not authoritative on how the underlying greek should be translated i can't tell you here's how it should be translated because of my knowledge of greek right but the reason i have to address this is because there are also other people who don't speak greek who want to go back to the greek to tell you what it means to tell you that you're wrong about just reading something in plain english so you know this is where all of this in conjecture and embellishment comes from essentially so um basically the king james bible that i use it was translated by experts who could understand greek okay and they saw fit to translate both words as repent or repentance quite consistently in the in the new testament and so i'm just using the english bible showing repentance used in a variety of context so like when i reference the old testament and it says god repented i'm just using my english bible that a professional translation committee has translated from the underlying manuscripts um any information that i provide in response to this objection is second hand information okay i'm just relaying what i've read on the subject so like i said i don't speak greek i can't tell you how to translate greek i'm just reading what other people have put and then i'm just putting it to the table for you to have a look at okay so anybody who does speak greek you know by all means put some in the comments but don't just think that because you went to bible college you know greek i'm talking about someone who actually go to greece and actually you know talk with people there all right so to help illustrate this point that this is essentially the claim that the repent of your sins to be saved crowd will use so on the verses that i've got on the left these tend to be the sort of salvation verses that they would reference and they'll say we'll see right here this is what you might call the metanoia repentance or metaneo if it's a verb but but it's metanoia so this is the repentance where they define that as as repentance of sin turning from sin so you know things like x390 when it says repent you therefore and be converted they read that as repent of your sins because it's metanoia and this is essentially where people will go into all this deep stuff about how repentance means this and it means that and it's not just a change of mind but it's this change of character and all you know that embellished stuff and all that conjecture and then when there's other verses that i might reference to show repentance used in a non-sin context so like for example i just mentioned in the last slide hebrew 721 which is quoting the psalm saying the lord swears and will not repent you are a priest forever after all the order of melchizedek and so modern bibles like the esv or the nesp they won't translate repent there they'll translate change his mind because it's metamelemia or melami i'm not quite sure what the right pronunciation is but some of these verses these are not your typical go-to verses for salvation because obviously in the case of judas that's a bad example so again they'll change it to change his mind or felt remorse and then in second carinthians when paul says i do not repent the esv or something like that will just say regret so this is the claim being made that metaneo or metanoia is the repentance the turning from sin the self-reformation and all this stuff metamelemia is just little tiny changes of mind and regrets here and there nothing significant about these verses and so because these are all sources you go to salvation versus if you like these are not so that that's why they they make that that distinction and so i'll just show you as well an article making making this kind of claim and so there's this article here on this website exploring the truth by matt shiro and it's it's addressing this metanoia metaneo metamela all that kind of thing and so they introduce a basic definition of the words but i'm still don't quite know why they don't really start off defining metamelemia as well it's just metanoia and then metaneo which is just the verb of it anyway so i'm not not quite sure why he's not added a third one for metamelemia but there you go so it then goes down to to make the these notes essentially this is what again this is what the claim is that the verb metamelemia is just a change of mind which may produce regrets or remorse but but not necessarily a change of heart it is essentially what they're saying so like you know because it's it's repentance of judas as we've already looked at today but then you've got like metanoia or metaneo which is changing one's mind and purpose and the results of after knowledge and all you know blah blah blah all of this fancy stuff and again you know all of this loaded definition about about what it all means and so this is just a short example of essentially what they do that they define metamelemia and metanoia is completely different types of of repentance essentially and so just just to show you in practice how this can impact our bible doctrine right about what repentance means and how we're saved well earlier in this study we use Matthew well i used Matthew 21 32 as a approved text that John's repentance preaching of repentance was to change what what you believe so believe on the one that's coming after John not not turning from sins the underlying Greek in Matthew 21 32 is metamelemia whereas in the actual narration of of John's preaching it's metaneo so then you know building on that claim that's being made opponents assert that they're not directly connected so they'll then say that modern bibles are right to translate 21 32 in Matthew differently breaking that connection so let's just have a look at it again in practice so these are our John the Baptist verses you know he said saying repent for the kingdom of heaven as at hand he said that in 3 2 uh Matthew 3 2 in Mark 1 4 he said uh John did baptizing the wilderness and preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins and then Matthew 3 8 John says bring forth therefore fruits meat for repentance so there are you metanoia are you metaneo repent verses that John's preaching he's preaching repentance he's telling people repent metaneo metanoia so i then looked at Matthew 21 32 earlier in the study where Jesus says to the chiefs priests and so on when you had seen it so when you had seen the publicans and harlots believe uh his preaching repented not afterward that you might believe him but that's metamelonize not metanoia so the ESV will instead read you did not change your minds so the repentance of your sin uh for salvation crowd will say that this here this Matthew 21 this repentance here this change of mind here is not connected to the repentance that that John preached and so they'll say that the king james bible is causing confusion by translating it this way the ESV is right to make a distinction so if i as somebody reads the king james read Matthew 21 32 i would see jesus saying you did not repent oh jesus is talking about repent well John preached repent you repented not afterward that you might believe him and so then i read that thinking oh John was preaching repentance of what you believe okay not turning from sin but then because the ESV reads you did not change your mind you would not then make a connection between that verse and the repentance that John actually preached so they'll say that the changing of mind to believe was not the actual repentance right problem is without though folks is i also used a second proof text acts 19 for disputes this because acts 19 for users metanoia not metamelemy so it's proving that the context of John's repentance itself is belief so proving that even in the greek metanoia does not automatically mean turning from sin or a dramatic lifestyle transformation so let's just read it acts 19 for using metanoia then said Paul John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance there it is saying unto the people that they should turn from their sins know that they should believe on him which should come after him that is on christ jesus so whether we have someone using metamelemy or whether we have someone using metanoia that doesn't change the fact that the repentance that john preached is believing on the christ that would come after him so you can see our people are just trying to play tricks with you because you don't speak greek and even they don't but they you know they can just look up a few other people saying this stuff and they try and trick you that they're two fundamentally different things when here they're just alternative words used in the exact same same context so this is where we need to break it down like is there a dramatic difference between metanoia and metamelemy well i don't speak greek i'm just going to show it on a concordance for you you make up your own mind okay so then looking it up in a concordance if you go on biblehub.com let's start with metaneo so here it gives a breakdown of the component words that that make that that larger words that's that's where it comes from so we start with meta well that's that's the change there change after being with so that that's the change and it's got its own concordance reference so meta is the change it's metaneo or metanoia well then that's what comes next that the neo or the noia that's the think so it's change what you think or change your mind all right change of mind that's a very rudimentary fundamental meaning of the word before we start reading articles about these preachers embellishing what it means okay that's just a very basic level that's what the word means meta change noia or neo of your mind or what you think okay we then look at metamelemi right well again it starts with meta that's the change well we just know that from looking we already know that from the previous look up but then it's what comes after because instead of noia it's now mellow well that's here it says care or be concerned with so the metaneo was the change your mind or what you think the metamelemi was the change of concern or what you care about okay change of mind change of care so without adding all of this extra packaging and embellishment around these words if we just take them at a very rudimentary understanding that's their elements that's what they mean okay that's the foundation that these words start from before we complicate it so then if we just compare these words in the concordance we see a very simple difference between the two it just comes down to either change of mind or change of care all right at a rudimentary level that's the difference but the thing is folks even in english we can use both terms to fundamentally say the same thing just saying it in two different ways so in the greek metaneoia metamelemi you've got your change and that may be of mind or of care we've just seen that well then we have in english okay i could see in english you know what i don't mind if you want to stay out late tomorrow you can do what you like okay or i could say you know what i don't care if you want to stay out late tomorrow you can do what you like okay i can say either one of those two things right and i've got once again the mind or the care that's really the only difference between those two statements now we would probably use i don't care in a more negative context look you know i don't care that that might be more negative and maybe i don't mind is more neutral at least in written form but obviously in verbal form that that just depends on how you say it if i say both of those statements in a nice way it really makes no difference which statement i say because the substance of what i'm saying is exactly the same right i haven't got a problem with you doing the next thing i don't mind i don't care it doesn't matter to me it's not an issue okay i can use either word there's not some fundamental profound difference between i don't care and i don't mind like oh you know what's he thinking there okay it's just the same thing using two different words so you know my my rhetorical question to you folks is that why do we assume that in greek these different distinctions become mystical and magical that you know a change of mind has all this profound powerful loaded meaning for for no particular reason you know people think that like he he brew or greek from the bible is like a really magical miss mystical language all this deep emotion that just can't be conveyed in other languages like english or spanish but the thing is folks you know greek is it's no more remarkable or deep or mysterious than any other language okay bible translators are not scrambling around trying to find all these different ways in english or spanish or chinese that we can translate these words because greek is not that deep and complicated word is made to think it is because we don't speak greek and then the person speaking at the front can make up whatever rubbish they like and you're not really in a position to question it and so i'm just i just want to show you a couple of things to just show you how stupid this whole thing is okay so i've got an example here of secular literature using metanoia as a simple change of of mind okay no deep hidden profound meaning behind it about self-reformation and turning from your sins and repenting in southcloth you know southcloth and ashes there's none of that here okay this is secular literature it's called plutarchs moralia specifically volume two because there's quite a lot of volumes sometimes if you're looking at land it's quite hard to find the right one it's paragraph 163f and this is dated as far as i'm aware sometime in the first century so around about the same time or only a little later than when the new testament was compiled okay and it's just showing that repentance meant a change of mind at the time it did not have such dramatic overloaded you know amazing meaning behind it so this is the extract from um i just took a picture from the pdf if you want the full thing you'll just have to search that but it then gives you the english translation and the translator has put and when again they change their minds and they sought for him and found him not and so on and so forth and this is just talking about a newborn baby all right there is nothing here about sin there's nothing here about turning your lifestyle around there's nothing about you know falling over your knees and crying and just begging god and you know never doing it there's nothing like that here it's just the the metanoia change of mind that's what it translates as okay he didn't use metamelemy he didn't use some you know that's what he said that's what he meant that's all it means folks change of mind you see how it's just a simple word if we if we just don't embellish it with all these boring articles written by you know whoever they are that write these things and if you just run this greek word on google translate it would return they repented past tense whereas the translator has put change their minds okay so again change their mind repented repentance isn't some dramatic thing it means a change of mind so you know we see quite clearly that if it weren't for these fancy theologians embellishing the definition by quoting other fancy theologians metanoia or metanea repentance would just be a simple change of mind of and it can just be about anything it doesn't have to be sin it can literally be about anything so you can only use the surrounding context to tell you what's being changed about okay so if the bible says repent and believe the gospel the believe the gospel is the context of the repentance okay you can't just add all these words into the word repent it just means change your mind and believe the gospel i've already dealt with that you know we dealt with that way you know much earlier in the video you've already got that point by now and again i'll just show you one more example to show you how stupid the whole thing is so if you've heard of the septuagint that's basically an ancient greek translation of the old testament now just as a side disclaimer i reject that because you know my authority is on the hebrou masoretic text which is what the king james bible is translated from so as a bible i don't give authority to the septuagint but it's still useful just to show how a greek translator would translate the underlying hebrou okay so it's still useful for that purpose for what we're doing today so we can see both metaneo and metamelemite used as a greek translation of the underlying hebrou in reference to that's right god's repentance and this is if i mean if this doesn't do it for you what does it just solidifies that even in a bible translation itself the greek word can simply mean a change of course or mind not necessarily of sin and so the two examples that i hand picked here i've used them frequently throughout this video we had genesis six seven when it said for it repents me that i have made them so that's the repentance of god making the earth and that's the metamelemite type of repentance but then in jonah three ten when it said god repented you know of the evil that he would do onto that city that's the metanoia or the eo type of repentance you know we just went through a hebrou concordance much earlier in the video and we just saw that underlying hebrou appearing on all these different verses in all sorts of different contexts about the repentance so people will say oh the king james is wrong to say that god repented because god doesn't have anything yeah well tell that to the people who translated the underlying hebrou into greek in jonah three ten then okay so you know it should just show you how ludicrous this whole thing is they're just how they're trying to trick you you know do not be deceived by this fraud folks it exists for one purpose only and it's to put works back in the gospel one way or another that's all it is all right don't fall for it and then objection number seven yeah you might wonder well if repentance for salvation is actually quite a simple concept as i have claimed throughout this video why did it take me several hours actually to do a studio video to explain it well the thing is you know i could explain repentance for salvation about five seconds the thing is though with this video i'm really this series i want to be as thorough as possible because the abuse of this word is so rampant and it causes a stumbling block for most christians and you know this is something that should be one of the simplest concepts in the bible and it's actually been made the most complicated by frankly men who have puffed up speech and want to sound smart and theological to be seen of men or to self justify the return of life and sneak works back into the gospel but the thing is though folks they they masquerade us faith alone all right and they're corrupting the simplicity that's in christ and so you know this series biblical salvation settled once and for all it's supposed to be thorough we are settling salvation once and for all to give you the tools to stand up for the bible and to answer the passages that these false prophets will use and abuse and to take every possible excuse they will try and come up with including the deceptive go back to the greek treaks all right now you know at this point if people still insist on posting comments this video like what about this what about that you know you are falsely defining repentance because i still think repentance it means this that well the thing is folks you know i don't know what else to do for you i've put so many hours into this i've tried to cover absolutely everything that i possibly can and i think is people are still going to engage in what about ism you know what about when jesus said if you love me keep my commandments well yeah i'm all about that but what's that got to do with this though you know it's just what about ery is all it is this would not be a complicated subject if people would just repent of their false repentance and just stop embellishing this otherwise very very simple word and so in conclusion genuine repentance is genuine belief if you have faith trusting in christ onto salvation as jesus told you to you have everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation absolutely as a saved believer do turn from your sins and grow in holiness every day so that god may bless you and you will not he will not chastise you sorely folks don't get me wrong because jesus did say go and sin no more and look turning from sins is a good thing i'm not saying it's a bad thing at all i'm not saying we shouldn't do it i've never advocated that now i will get straw man and falsely accused of saying that but not at all turning from sins is absolutely a good thing but please get these please if there's just one thing you can take away from this it is not the reason why you are saved onto everlasting life i'm glad you're turning from your sins i'm glad you've stopped the drinking i'm glad you've stopped the smoking but don't say that that's why you're going to heaven because you're a worker of iniquity if you think that so to repent of your sins to be saved it's a false gospel it's simply found nowhere in the bible if you insist that repenting of your sins to be saved is absolutely essential to salvation well then you can point the finger at jesus on judgment day and you can tell him that he didn't preach the gospel properly throughout john's gospel okay because he never told anybody to do that so you have a work salvation whether you admit it or not and i get that jesus said go and sin no more but when he said that he never actually mentioned the gospel to that person okay he never mentioned eternal life so put things in its proper place if you love me keep my commandments well who are the people that love him well he told that to his disciples they believe him okay believe on the lord get saved then love jesus and following his commandments but don't conflate those two things keep them separate that's what's so important about this and so this has been a long if you've watched the whole thing kudos to you because it's been so long it's took me hours to do this and you've been very patient with me and i'm sorry it's gone on for so long i'm sorry if i've kept repeating myself i'm sorry that i'm not brilliant at these videos and i stumble on my words and i say things wrong but the thing is with all that being done i do sincerely hope that this video has genuinely made this subject easier for you i hope it's giving you an answer for every possible objection you might have or here repentance is a simple subject it really shouldn't require a video as long as this really i mean i haven't got a i've been doing this in bit so i don't know the final amount of hours but you know six or so many hours it's just because there's been so much false teaching around this so many contradictory messages and double speak and what about is them and just confusion that it has been necessary to do a long video on this so um you know i hope that it's helped you and i hope that now you can understand it as well going forward the bible says unless you repent you will perish unless you turn from your sin you're gonna burn in hell what is repentance first of all we need to define what repentance is not repentance is not a work repentance essentially the word means a change of mind to repent of sin specifically sin according to first john three four says sin is transgression of the law so to repent of your sin means you change your mind about breaking god's law once you accept jesus into your life once you repent of your sins and you say you know jesus i accept you as your my lord and savior i i ask for your holy spirit you've got to repent all your sin so what you've got to do justin is repent of your sins hey what you've got to do in response to that is repent that is turn from your sins is repent don't just say i'm sorry but turn from those sins you've got to repent that means turn from all sins you don't need to repent your sins and you put your trust in jesus first you have to be willing to repent of your sin did that change take place i'm not talking about did you say oh lord i'm sorry that's not repentance oh lord i've sinned that's not repentance it means a change there are many false teachers out there teaching that repentance does not mean turning from sins they'll say that repentance just means to change your mind about who jesus is and believe in him and that you don't have to repent of sin and yes it's true that the greek word for repent is metanoia which just means to change your mind but the question is change your mind about what well it's to change your mind about sin some people will say that the exact phrase repent of sins isn't mentioned anywhere in the bible but this couldn't be further from the truth i mean yes the exact wording repent from sins isn't found in scripture that repentance absolutely does mean a turning from sin or changing your mind about sin don't let anyone deceive you on this i get messages from people from time to time which tell me that nowhere in the bible does it say that you need to repent from your sins to be saved but that's just simply not true the danger of believing that you don't need to repent from your sins to be saved is that you never end up becoming converted or born again so how do you know if you have truly repentance knowing whether or not your repentance is genuine is really not that difficult because someone that has truly repented won't continue committing those same sins recognize there is going to be some effort on your part which is necessary to complete your repentance and gain the victory over sin god supplies the power but you need to take practical steps and breaking your sinful habits repent of your sins and say that jesus is your savior i'd like to give you an opportunity to make jesus the lord of your life would you pray with me just say lord jesus i repent of my sins come into my heart i make you my lord and savior if you prayed that simple prayer we believe you got born again this is going to be an instructional video on uh how to repent of all your sins it happens when we turn from sins turn from sins repent oh sinner seek the lord repent of all your sin isn't that good did you know that the baptist churches are changing it now here's what they say oh sinner trust the lord be cleansed of all your sin what's happening what's changing you let me tell you what's changing they took the word what out repent they took repent out salvation is not believing a bunch of stuff about christ what is repentance is the turn from sin to dedicate oneself to the amendment of one's life webster's dictionary says all we have to do is to call on his name tell him that we have sinned be willing to repent repent is to turn and to leave that sin and to follow his son the lord jesus christ he uses that word nobody likes repent repent not only confess your sin forsake your sin repent run away from it then jesus comes up after us one old definition says repentance is to leave the sin i've done before and show that i learn this grieve by doing it no more no you don't get prepared for it you repent what does that mean it's a turning from sin that's what it is repentance is something you must do you know when john the baptist came on and he said repent for the kingdom of god is at hand he said bring forth fruit bring forth works that are in accordance with repentance that are suitable to repentance that are meat for repentance and they came to him and they said well okay we're soldiers what do we do we're tax collectors what do we do we're the common people what do we do and he didn't say do nothing there's nothing you can do he said basically turn away from sin leave it repentance is an action word it means that not only are you sorry for what you did but you're making a decision to turn and change and walk away from that sin but you don't have to repent of your sins be saved okay nowhere does the bible say to repent of your sins to be saved that's a works-based salvation does it say that in loop 24 i'm just asking does it say that it doesn't so it doesn't say repent of sins for repent for forgiveness of sins it does not say that no what does it say in loop 24 it just says that repentance okay and the forgiveness of sin should be preached i think the best definition of repentance i ever came across was from jim packer and he says this repentance is turning from all that you know of sin with all that you know of yourself to all that you know of god that real biblical repentance is a complete renunciation of all sin and a full intention to obey the commandments of jesus is that repentance is a turning from all known sin a person cannot be a christian a person cannot be saved a person cannot receive eternal life if he harbors in his life any known sin i use repentance as turning from sin because that is where we messed up everybody is separated from god because of sin i know that it's the sin the forsaking our ways okay if forsaking our ways and repentance is basically the same because if i wanted to say forsake your ways well something's gonna have to happen here something's gonna have to happen here and something's actually gonna have to happen out here in society so it's just like denying self this is what repentance is and no one out here can tell me that you do not have to change your lifestyle has to change to something of the will of god for this to work for salvation that's it repent turn from your ways it doesn't make a difference whether turning from sin is the byproduct of changing your heart your mind and heart thing it doesn't make a difference that's what you have to do that's the whole idea of repentance is turning from your ways and the reason why he argues that is he says if you go through the bible the person who repented the most in the bible is god every time you read you see god repented of this and god repented of that he says well god's obviously not dealing with sin since it's not since repentance has nothing to do with sin it has to do with changing your mind about something but he seems to miss a few things like verses like this revelation 9 20 it says in the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues listen to this yet repented not of the works of their hands that they should not worship devils and idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and of wood which neither can see nor hear nor walk neither repented they have their murders nor of their sorcerers nor of their fornication nor of their thefts it sound like repentance is connected to sin there that repentance is actually something connected to sin god expects that whenever you get saved you're supposed to get saved by what repenting and repenting means turning from sin revelation 16 9 through 11 and the men were scorched with great heat blaspheme the name of god which hath power over these plagues and they repented not to give him glory and the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seed of the beast and the kingdom was full of darkness and they nod their tongues for pain and blaspheme the god of heaven because of their pains and their source and repented not of their deeds sounds like it's connected to what you do not just to a change of belief and unbelief but be very careful said jesus because if you do not repent you too will all perish repentance is the daily work of the christian alone in jesus christ is preceded and followed by repentance a turning away from sin a hatred for the things that god hates and a love for the things that god loves now what are you called upon to do you say you go through the narrow gate how do you do that jesus said the time is fulfilled the kingdom of god is at hand what must you do and mark he tells us repent and believe the gospel you say brother paul i got saved by praying and asking jesus christ into my heart and i'm sure you did but you weren't saved by a magic formula or some words you repeated after someone else you were saved because you repented of your sins and you believed and not only did you do that in the past you continued to do it even until now because when jesus a proper translation of that verse he gave is this the kingdom of god has come the time is fulfilled now spend the rest of your life repenting of your sins and believing in me conversion is not like a flu shot oh i did that i repented i believed the question is my friend are you continuing to repent but when you're you're repented of your sins you've been forgiven by jesus christ you don't look forward to sinning you look forward to going out and evangelizing on friday night you look forward to going to church and going to prayer meetings you look forward to reading your bible you look forward forward to abstaining from the devil from rejecting the devil it is grace that saves us and the way to partake of that grace is by god granted repentance 672 2426 without repentance from sin wicked man cannot have fellowship with a holy god we are dead in our trespasses and sin ephesians 2 1 and until we forsake them through repentance we cannot be made alive in christ we turn from sin to the savior this is why all priests repent us towards god and fight towards our lord jesus christ act 2021 if belief is all that is necessary for salvation the logical conclusion is that one need never repeats even if you find yourself in serious sin yes go right to god and apologize like repent of your sins confess your sins to god that is we do that but we also recognize that we're called to go to the priest he's a god of redemption he's a god who wants to save i mean that's why he sent his son but at the same time nowhere in this book will you see people praying a prayer to accept jesus as their savior you'll see people who over and over said repent turn he'll say what but john 3 16 john 3 16 says god's the love of the world and whoever believes in him keep reading john 3 36 says he who who believes in the son has life he who does not obey the son shall not see life in the wrath of god abides on him the bible calls it repentance changing your mind and jesus says you can change your mind and when you change your mind it changes the way you feel when you change the way you feel it changes the way you act but i tell you if you don't repent of sins you also shall face a terrible death what kind of repentance is jesus talking about he's talking about the repentance for sins so that we can be saved you are expected by god not to just get forgiveness of your sins but to turn from a life of sin repentance repentance is not just confession when you come to god you leave your life of sin you live your life pleasing to god that is true repentance you need to repent of your sins pal that means simply you know the old time way of saying you know you need to have a changed attitude towards your sin they would say it's not needed for salvation and they would even go further and say it's not even needed for following jesus later on in your life you can be a christian you can stay a christian and you can never repent of your sin