Bill wrote: > Is repentance part of the Gospel? Yes This answered my question, Bill, thank you. It was nice icing on the cake to read the rest of your thoughts. Nevertheless, I'm not sure that your standard framework of thinking readily sees repentance as part of the gospel. What I mean is that it seems to me that you are kind of being pushed toward admitting that repentance is part of the gospel because of what you read in the Bible, but your standard framework of thinking pushes the preaching of repentance away from being up front and center like it was in the ministry of Jesus and his apostles. You gave some cultural reasons why you think this ought to be so, but I have a little different perspective that I would like to share below.
Bill wrote: > When repentance is preached as the introduction to > the good news of Jesus Christ to people whose > background is not rooted and grounded in the grammar > of God's correspondence with humanity, which is > inclusive of most people in the western world today, > the bottom line is this: it is being preached out of context. I think we view society very differently. About 85% of those in the United States profess to be Christian. One would be hard pressed to find anyone in our society who has not heard of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, I do not find much question about what we mean when we use the word repentance. Oh, you can be sure that when I preach I explain it. I want to be sure they understand exactly what I mean, but most people seem to have a good idea about the word before I even start. My preaching style is one where I tend to ask questions before making a point. For example, I will ask the crowd, "how many of you know what repentance is." I let them answer. That tells me what my audience knows and what they don't know. I do the same thing in the Sunday School class that I teach. Do you want to know what word it was that gave students the most trouble this week? It was the word "worldliness." I have had this come up before too. Just as the word "gay" has changed in meaning over the last 50 years, so this word is shifting in primary usage. The word has more general usage nowadays to describe someone well traveled and educated in the different cultures of the world. So when they read a sign with it listed as a sin, it provokes dialogue. What could possibly be wrong with worldliness? Isn't worldliness a good thing? Bill wrote: > There is no repentance apart from Jesus Christ and > to expect people to repent who do not know him is > to demand of them the impossible. "Repent? What > the hell for? and What does that even mean?" Perhaps you are talking about total repentance of all sins. In regards to specific sins, many people repent without it being any kind of response to the gospel of Jesus Christ. People regret sins and stop doing them all the time, in many religions, and even atheists will do this. It really is not as foreign a concept as you seem to make it. In fact, I think one of the reasons that repentance forms the foundation for preaching the gospel is because it is probably the term people can most relate toward. Faith is much more difficult to understand and practice by someone in sin. Faith is something they do automatically when they repent after realizing that they are completely helpless and lost and in need of a Savior. That realization comes from the message that they need to repent, and in attempting to comply with that message, they are led into faith in their Savior, Jesus Christ. Bill wrote: > The confusion I see over the topic of preaching repentance, > is based in a failure on the part of most Christians to realize > that repentance, when it was preached in the New Testament, > was directed almost exclusively (I am inclined to leave off the > "almost" but have not fully research it) to people who were > already people of God: it was preached to God's people, > the Jews; or to people who knew Christ -- relationally, if > not also via personal encounter -- and had put their faith > in him. Aw, Bill, the message was primarily to the sinners, not to the theologians and scholars who explained things away with their minds. In my experience, the problem has nothing at all to do with confusion. It has to do with the fact that people love their sin. They follow the prince of this world. Their loyalty is not to God. This week a man attempted to mock me while I was preaching. He had a science fiction work called, "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide," by Douglas Adams. He held it up high and made lots of nonsensical chatter behind me, attempting to disrupt my message. After I finished my train of thought, I turned to him and said, "Young man, do you have something important to add to our discussion here? Please come forward and present your message." I yielded some time to him and he came forward and again rambled about nothing of substance. He was really trying to mock me while I was speaking, so his theatrics without me preaching at the same time was kind of foolish. So I asked for the students who had heard of the author of this book, Douglas Adams, to raise their hands. Nearly everyone instantly raised their hands high in the air. Then I asked them how many of them had heard of Jesus Christ? Only two or three hands went up. I kept saying, "if you have heard of Jesus Christ, please raise your hands." Now you and I both know that probably every single person there had heard of Jesus Christ. Why did they not raise their hands with the same enthusiasm? It is because they were ASHAMED of Jesus Christ, and you can be sure that I made that point to them, and taught them what Jesus Christ warned about those who were ashamed of him. So it really is not a matter of confusion of words. Preaching really has so little with what we say or how we say it. Mostly it is simply representing Christ and not being ashamed of him. That is why you don't find many theologians preaching. They will teach in the university, they will even invite us street preachers to come speak to their classes, but rarely will you find them preaching. Their expertise is in the area that is not really all that important in preaching. One does not need to be wise and educated to preach in public. One must only be unashamed of the Lord and willing to represent him to the public, despite the ridicule and shame that comes from doing so. I'm sorry if my anecdotes are unappreciated by some on TruthTalk, but I really must share at least one more that is related to this point. Tuesday, a young hispanic man at the university said he was Catholic. So I asked him if he believed that homosexuality was a sin. He would not answer. We went round and round about it, with some other Catholics in the crowd trying to help him stand up for the Catholic position. I kept telling the crowd, "this man says he is Catholic, but I am wondering if I am a better Catholic than he is because I will say that homosexuality is a sin and he will not." This man would interrupt me and say, "no, I AM a Catholic. Please don't say that I CLAIM to be Catholic... I AM Catholic." So I would say to him, "ok, well, answer me then, is homosexuality a sin." His face would blush and the man looked like he was in agony because he could not bring himself to say that it was. He was speechless but in agony. I said to him, "if the pope were here right now and I asked him this same question, what would he say?" Still, the man could not bring himself to admit it, although he seemed to realize that he should take that position. Another Catholic tried to help, saying that yes, the pope would say it was a sin. Of course, I pointed out the young man's problem. He had one foot in the world and wanted to keep one foot in the church at the same time. He wants his foot in the church to keep him saved, but he wanted to be at peace with the rest of the world. This is an unrealistic expectation. To be a friend of God means to be an enemy of this world. Bill wrote: > To preach repentance to people who do not have > this contextual background is to place upon them > a death sentence. It is to throw the whole weight > of salvation upon their shoulders and to expect > of them what no one apart from Christ has ever > accomplished: "I have to do something in order > to be saved, but I have not the will to pull it off." > Hence, if it is taken seriously at all, the weight of > that decision will crush them -- if not today, then > someday soon. Good line of thought here, Bill. But let's think a little more carefully about whether or not this effect is a bad thing. Isn't this the approach God took by sending the law a thousand years before Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit? It seems to me that all too often, people in our culture try to skip this step. The preaching of grace today certainly does not have the same impact as it did upon a culture steeped in the law and legalism. This is one of the reasons that public ministry invariably turns toward the sowing ministry that emphasizes God's nature and demands of the law, along with mixing in some reaping messages about repentance and faith toward God. Face it, we do what works, not what doesn't work. If you go out in the highways and byways and preach love and grace, few if any are interested. They have heard this message ad infinitum. On the other hand, if you preach the message that Jesus preached, that they need to repent of their sins and enter the kingdom of God now because the judgment is coming, then you have an impact. Then you see people come under conviction, you see the religiously inclined and some hardened sinners get angy and filled with envy and hatred, and you see fellow believers giving a hearty amen and begging you to come back again. Right before your eyes, the wheat and the chaff become separated, the sheep and the goats are divided. I hope I have not taken too much of your time. I don't think we are really that far apart on this matter, but perhaps my comments will provoke some additional considerations on your part. My prayers and blessings are with you and your family. God bless. David Miller. ----- Original Message ----- From: Taylor To: TruthTalk@mail.innglory.org Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 11:13 PM Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] What is the gospel? Hi David, I want to begin by apologizing to you, but I am not going to be able to give your questions the attention they deserve. I wrote most of last night (in between short posts to others), thinking I was approximating what I needed to say in order present a satisfactory response; however, upon reading my reply, I realized that I was still leaving much unsaid. Nevertheless the problem boils down to this: either an appropriate answer is going to take more time than I have to offer, or I am going to have to condense my thoughts, knowing that they will not fully -- or perhaps even adequately -- address your inquiry. I'll attempt to do the best I can with the latter. I think Dean said quite well one of the points I would like to make: If one is going to preach the condemnation of the law of sin, then he or she must give the sinner a way out, which is Christ; for to fail to do so is to leave a soul in torment, and not in a state of grace (thanks Dean). This it seems to me is the locus of failure in most of the preaching on repentance which I have encountered. It is certainly at the center of my concerns against "street preaching." When repentance is preached as the introduction to the good news of Jesus Christ to people whose background is not rooted and grounded in the grammar of God's correspondence with humanity, which is inclusive of most people in the western world today, the bottom line is this: it is being preached out of context. There is no repentance apart from Jesus Christ and to expect people to repent who do not know him is to demand of them the impossible. "Repent? What the hell for? and What does that even mean?" The confusion I see over the topic of preaching repentance, is based in a failure on the part of most Christians to realize that repentance, when it was preached in the New Testament, was directed almost exclusively (I am inclined to leave off the "almost" but have not fully research it) to people who were already people of God: it was preached to God's people, the Jews; or to people who knew Christ -- relationally, if not also via personal encounter -- and had put their faith in him. These were people to whom the utterance had meaning. It was meaningful because it was already contextualized in the language of God. To them, repentance meant not only a turning away from something -- as Dean puts it, "the law of sin" -- but a turning to the one whom they already knew as God. The great difficulty they had was in turning to Jesus Christ as the One who was that God. And as you know, many of them refused to do so. And so, to those people, "repentance" was firstly a change of mind, a turning away from old beliefs and a turning to a new way of thinking about God. The task of repentance for them entailed a restructuring of their thinking about who this God was in whom they had believed. Theirs was to begin to think of God in a way which placed Jesus at the heart of God's identity. It was thus a first order paradigm shift. Repent for what? Repent about this man you know as Jesus of Nazareth. Change your mind about him. He is your Messiah. To preach repentance to people who do not have this contextual background is to place upon them a death sentence. It is to throw the whole weight of salvation upon their shoulders and to expect of them what no one apart from Christ has ever accomplished: "I have to do something in order to be saved, but I have not the will to pull it off." Hence, if it is taken seriously at all, the weight of that decision will crush them -- if not today, then someday soon. Is repentance part of the Gospel? Yes, the NT is replete with directives to repent. But repentance is not a means by which or through which people are saved. It is Jesus Christ who is our Savior. Salvation is in him, complete with mediation on our behalf. Repentance is therefore our response to the greatest news the world has ever heard; it is our response to the good news of Jesus Christ. Amen. I think I'll cut is off with that, David. To go further would be to get into things we have discussed many times in the past. I hope this begins to address your questions and to give you some indication as to my thoughts in relation to this subject. I am sorry that I do not have more time to spend on this, but I have dozens of papers to grade, on top of wanting to spend some time with Tanya and Andy, not to mention I'm over sixty posts behind in my ready :>) Thanks DavidM. I hope you are not displeased with me. Bill ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <TruthTalk@mail.innglory.org> Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 4:38 AM Subject: [TruthTalk] What is the gospel? > Bill wrote: > > no, it didn't seem to me that they ever really > > got to the Gospel. "Christ," it seemed, was > > but a segue to the soul of their message: > > "Repent, or be damn!" > > I have seen a few street preachers that focus on this message too, and > others who seem to speak of nothing but abortion. Right now I am focused > on > preaching against an official state sanctioned department of immorality at > the University of Florida called the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and > Transgendered) Affairs department. Sometimes students ask me why don't I > address some other sins or other issues. Well, the Lord sent me on this > mission and right now I am focused upon one thing, at least up through > March > of this year. They should talk to the Lord about why if they have a > problem > with it. I will for a minute or two address some other pressing issue, > but > I am always pressed in my spirit not to turn aside from the mission God > has > put on my heart. As I engage the students in dialogue and debate, I am > always saying, "let's get back to why I'm here today..." > > My question to you is this. The message, "Repent or be damned," is this > not > part of the gospel that Jesus preached? Is it not a part of the gospel > that > most ministers neglect greatly? You seem to speak about this message as > being excluded from the gospel when you say, "they never really got to the > gospel." > > I realize that you might want to go to definitions about the word gospel > meaning "good news," but good news is always in a context. If people do > not > know they are damned by their sins, which is prevelant in this culture of > lawlessness, then an emphasis of salvation is not a message of good news. > It is simply a message of an archaic religion that most people find > unnecessary for life. > > Considering the actual record we have of what was preached, starting with > John the Baptist, moving to Jesus, and then to his apostles, is the > message, > "Repent or be damned" really not part of the gospel? What do you think? > > Peace be with you. > David Miller. ---------- "Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man." 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