Bible study 5A: The Most Important Promise: How Do I Receive the Gospel? What Repentance is Not

Bible Study #5: How Do I Receive the Gospel? explains the most important promise—God’s promise to save those who repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ and the Apostles called on men to repent and believe (Mark 1:15; Acts 20:21). Other terms for receiving the gospel include conversion (Acts 3:19), receiving or coming to Christ (John 1:12; 6:37), taking the water of life (Revelation 21:6), looking to the Savior (Isaiah 45:22), eating the living bread from heaven, the Lord Jesus (John 6:51), pressing into God’s kingdom (Luke 16:16), and entering the flock of God through Christ, the door (John 10:9).

You cannot be saved by asking Jesus into your heart, baptism, going forward at the invitation, receiving the laying on of hands, taking communion, praying the sinner’s prayer, having unique emotional experiences, coming to the altar, seeing visions, signing a decision card, or speaking in tongues.

When you receive the gospel, you are born again (John 3:3), regenerated (Titus 3:5) and made a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17). You are adopted and justified. The new birth is not a process--those who are born again almost always know when they were saved.

Both repentance and faith express the single act of receiving or coming to Christ (John 3:18; Luke 13:3; Acts 11:18). Bible Study #5, How Do I Receive the Gospel? covers what repentance is not and what it is, and what saving faith is not and what it is.

Many people never truly repent because they are content with counterfeits from Satan (2 Corinthians 4:4). All of the following fall short of true repentance:

1.) Taking up the profession of Christianity is not repentance. You can profess that you know God and still be lost (Titus 1:16). Many preachers, prophets, miracle-workers, and zealous doers of good works in Christ’s name will be damned (Matthew 7:21-23)! Do you merely claim to be a Christian, or have you repented?

2.) Receiving baptism is not repentance. Simon the sorcerer was baptized but never repented (Acts 8:9-23), but a thief who was crucified with Christ on the cross genuinely repented (Luke 23:42-43). Whether you are baptized or not, you will perish unless you repent!

3.) Possessing mere moral righteousness or external conformity to the rules of piety is not repentance (Luke 18:11-14). You can deal justly with men, abstain from sexual immorality, perform many religious duties, and still be lost. You can escape the pollutions of the world by knowing truth about Jesus Christ (2 Peter 2:20-22), have a form of godliness (2 Timothy 3:5), pray long (Matthew 23:14), fast often (Luke 18:12), hear the Word gladly (Mark 6:20), and be zealous for the service and worship of God, though costly and expensive (Isaiah 1:11), and still be lost, having never repented.

4.) Having powerful, or even miraculous, spiritual experiences is not repentance (Matthew 12:39). You can have tremendous spiritual encounters or miraculous events, speak in tongues, see visions, experience healing, but burn in hell. Christ healed many who never trusted in Him (Luke 17:11-19). Judas did miracles (Matthew 10:4-5, 8).

5.) Chaining up or reforming inward corruption by education, human laws, or the force of affliction, is not repentance (2 Chronicles 24). You may act in a righteous way, but still lack the new birth. Times of trouble may lead you to seek God, yet without genuine repentance (Psalm 78:34-37).

6.) Illumination of spiritual need by the Spirit or conviction of sin alone, is not repentance (Hebrews 6:4-8). God may work in your life, enabling you to see your great need of the gospel, but unless you repented and believed, you are still lost.

7.) Partial surrender, or making conditions with God, is not repentance. Pharaoh gave in part way and tried to negotiate when God sent the plagues to deliver Israel from Egypt under the hand of Moses (Exodus 7-14). You cannot only partially give in to God but hold on to certain sins. You must unconditional surrender.

8.) Sorrow over only the results of sin is not repentance. Esau “found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears” (Hebrews 12:16-17). He hated the consequences of his sin, but he never repented. Scripture contrasts a “godly sorrow [which] worketh repentance to salvation” with “the sorrow of the world [which] worketh death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). It is right to hate the consequences of sin, but it is not enough. You will be damned unless you repent!

Not only will these not save, but other false hopes, such as your sincerity, God’s (apparent) answers to your prayers, experiences of peace and joy, someone else telling you that you were saved, or a powerful decision about salvation you made in a church service, will not save you.

Reject any false repentance and all other false hopes, and take heed to the Lord Jesus Christ’s solemn warning: “except ye REPENT, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3)!

Watch Bible study 5B and 5C: learn about true repentance and false and true faith.