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Soul Winning Saturday, December 3

Ambassador Baptist College, Sunday night, December 18

Christmas Day, Sunday, December 25 - Only one service @ 11 AM

What we believe @ SALVATION

In the last message that I preached in this series, we considered the fact that:

We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ “died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried; and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”

Continuing on...

We believe that a person is saved when he repents of his sin and exercises faith by accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior.

A person is saved when he repents of his sin...

Repentance

Years ago, I had a couple - members of SCBC - come to me and tell me that they were leaving the church.

Part of their “reason” for leaving SCBC was that they had begun listening to a Youtube “Bible teacher” and they no longer believed in repentance in the same way that I taught and preached.

John the Baptist preached a message of repentance.

Jesus Christ, during His earthly ministry, preached a message of repentance.

Christ’s message?

Jesus sent the disciples out to preach a message of repentance.

Peter, on the Day of Pentecost, preached a message of repentance.

Paul testified to King Agrippa that he preached a message of repentance.

The message of repentance is not merely a New Testament truth.

It is/was an Old Testament message.

Jonah preached a message of repentance to the people of Nineveh.

You may say, though, “Pastor Campbell, there’s nothing about repentance in that message?!?!”

Notice how the king of Ninevah responded to Jonah’s message:

Jonah 3:5–8 (KJV 1900)

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

For word came unto 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, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:

But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

And, consider how Jesus compared His generation with that of Jonah’s day:

Not only is repentance an Old and New Testament message it is...

The Command to Repent

In Acts chapter 17 when Paul was in Athen and preaching upon Mars’ Hill he said:

Why has God commanded that all men - everywhere - repent?

There is a day of judgement coming!

So, I can confidently attest to the fact that repentance should be a part of the message which we preach.

With that, though, we should consider:

What is “Repentance?”

If you were to look up the words repent and repentance in Webster’s 1828 dictionary, you would find the following:

Repent

To feel pain, sorrow or regret for something done or spoken;

To change the mind in consequence of the inconvenience or injury done by past conduct.

Repentance

Sorrow for any thing done or said; the pain or grief which a person experiences in consequence of the injury or inconvenience produced by his own conduct.

Real penitence; sorrow or deep contrition for sin, as an offense and dishonor to God, a violation of his holy law, and the basest ingratitude towards a Being of infinite benevolence.

Those definitions have changed.

If you were to look up the repentance on dictionary.com,

you would find the following:

deep sorrow, compunction, or contrition for a past sin, wrongdoing, or the like.

regret for any past action.

This is why it is important to define our words because the popular definition of repent and repentance misses the mark of the Biblical definition and meaning of repent and repentance.

Lexham Theological Wordbook (μετανοέω)

μετανοέω (metanoeō).

vb. to repent, change one’s mind.

In the NT, generally refers not simply to changing one’s mind but to turning back to God.The original meaning of metanoeō is “to change one’s mind.”

In pre-Christian Greek, however, it could also refer to regretting a particular act....in Jewish thought it took on the meaning of comprehensively turning back to God, and this is the primary meaning in the NT.

We can think of repentance in 3 steps:

An individual is convicted of their sin.

(They feel regret for their actions.)

An individual has a change of mind because of the truths of Scripture.

An individual turns from trusting themselves and their good works to trusting completely and solely in Jesus Christ for salvation.

I like how Evangelist John VanGelderen puts it (in our Good News Gospel tract):

It is not depending on Jesus plus yourself, good works, or baptism.

It is a simple choice to depend only on Jesus to save you from sin and Hell.

Like a child simply trusting his father by jumping into his arms, jump into the open arms of Jesus, and trust Him to save you.

He will give you His very own eternal life.

A person is saved when they repent of their sin...

We believe that a person is saved when he repents of his sin and exercises faith by accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior.

…And exercises faith by accepting the Lord Jesus Christ...

In the last message which I preached in this series I touched on the Calvanistic belief in man’s total inability (or total depravity).

Evangelist and Bible Teacher, Paul L. Freeman (who is now with the Lord) wrote:

The teaching of Five-Point Calvinism is that man is totally unable to do anything to obtain salvation.

Calvinists state very emphatically that man cannot repent or believe the gospel.

Their teaching is that man cannot believe until he is born again.

This new birth is brought about by God who chooses certain individuals and regenerates them.

Those whom He regenerates are then capable of believing by virtue of their new birth.

Man does not have a free will by which he is able to come to Christ for salvation.

We believe that salvation is a gift of eternal life wholly by the grace of God without any merit or works.

That contradicts our doctrinal statement; that contradicts God’s Word.

And these verses are just from the Gospel of John!

George Bryson, in his book, The Dark Side of Calvinism, stated (specifically about John 1:12-13 but applicable to all of these verses):

Does it not seem almost too obvious that John is telling his readers that receiving Christ, which he equates with believing in Christ, is the prerequisite to becoming a child of God, or of being born again?

The Calvinist has turned this passage (John 1:12-13) on its head by saying that God makes you a child of God so that you can believe and receive Christ.

The reason the Calvinist reverses the order is because of Reformed Theology and not what he finds in the text itself.

No where in Scripture are we told that God must first give us faith before we can exercise that faith in Him and that is exactly what Calvanists - those who believe in Reformed Theology - believe and teach.

Theologian Lorraine Boettner, an authority on Reformed Theology (Calvanism), stated:

A man is not saved because he believes in Christ, he believes in Christ because he is saved.

And yet, all of the verses which I just shared with you from the Gospel of John show that eternal life follows the sinner’s believing in Jesus Christ!

Faith comes before salvation!

An individual is convicted of their condition, based upon the work of God’s Word and the Holy Spirit; they repent - they have a change of mind; they turn from trust in themselves and good works to exercising faith in Jesus Christ’s finished work upon the cross!

So, if you have been tempted to follow Reformed Theology and the teachings of Calvinism, I challenge you to consider what Loraine Boettner wrote:

Prove any one of them (the five points of Calvinism) true and all the others will follow as logical and necessary parts of the system.

Prove any one of them false and the whole system must be abandoned.

We believe that a person is saved when he repents of his sin and exercises faith by accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior.

Declare the Gospel!

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If you can’t get to the online bulletin to post a prayer request, you can text your prayer request to the church’s phone at (704) 542-5536.

Mrs. Patricia Jordan

Liam Treloar - The grandson of Pastor Tom Barliment (Mollie’s pastor).