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Acts 20:17–21
“I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (vv. 20–21).
God has revealed an ordo salutis—an order of salvation—that gives to us the logical sequence in which the benefits of Christ come to us. It begins with foreknowledge, which consists in God’s setting His love on His people, followed by unconditional election or predestination unto life, which is God’s choice of those whom He loves for salvation. Then comes the outer call, or the preaching of the gospel, during which God at His appointed time gives His effectual call that draws the elect to Christ. The result of the effectual call is regeneration, or a new heart, that enters into conversion, the first part of which is saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:29–30).
Conversion includes not only saving faith in Jesus but also what Westminster Shorter Catechism 87 calls “repentance unto life.” We will look more closely at what repentance unto life includes in our next study. Today we will consider the relationship of faith and repentance.
First, faith and repentance are both necessary for true conversion and for living an authentic Christian life. We see this in passages such as Acts 20:17–21, where Paul tells the Ephesian elders that he proclaimed both “repentance toward God” and “faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 21). There is no turning toward Christ in faith without a corresponding turn away from sin in repentance. If we think of conversion like a coin, one side is faith and the other side is repentance.
Second, while we cannot separate faith and repentance, we must distinguish them and not confuse them. John Calvin helps us understand why this is the case. He comments that faith and repentance “cannot be separated; because God doth illuminate no man with the Spirit of faith whom he doth not also regenerate unto newness of life. Yet they must needs be distinguished. . . . For repentance is a turning unto God, when we frame ourselves and all our life to obey him; but faith is a receiving of the grace offered us in Christ.” Further, “the doctrine of repentance containeth a rule of good life; it requireth the denial of ourselves, the mortifying of our flesh, and meditating upon the heavenly life.” In other words, repentance involves changing our lives, but that cannot happen without first trusting Jesus. Saving faith simply receives Jesus and rests on Him alone, and thus it is the way by which we take hold of salvation. Repentance is necessary, but it is not how we receive Christ. Really, we should consider it as a fruit of faith, since one cannot truly repent unless one first believes that God will save repentant people who believe on Jesus.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Faith and repentance are distinct but inseparable graces, but faith has a kind of logical priority. This is because true repentance can take place only in the context of believing in Christ, as Dr. Sinclair Ferguson notes in The Whole Christ. Without faith that receives Christ, our repentance will be not gospel repentance but rather efforts at mere self-improvement.
For further study
- 1 Kings 8:46–53
- Ezekiel 14:6
- 2 Corinthians 7:10
- 2 Peter 3:9
The bible in a year
- Isaiah 22–23
- Ephesians 4