By Bob Wilkini
My doctoral dissertation for Dallas Theological Seminary was titled, “Repentance as a Condition for Salvation in the New Testament.” That was forty years ago, in 1985. I argued that repentance in the New Testament is a change of mind, mostly about our sinful ways, but that in eleven passages it refers to a change of mind about Christ. In those passages, I suggested that repentance is a condition of everlasting life, if repentance is understood as a change of mind about Christ.
Between 1988 and 1991, we published six articles in our journal summarizing the findings of my dissertation. You can read them online at faithalone.org. Just search under “repentance and salvation.”
In 1989, Zondervan published Absolutely Free by Zane Hodges. In chapter 12, Hodges suggested that repentance is turning from our sins and that it is never a condition of everlasting life. He was on the GES board at the time. I remember the board’s discussing his view on repentance. Most of the board at the time were DTS graduates. Everyone except me was urging Zane not to publish that chapter. I was impressed by Zane’s arguments but not yet convinced that he was right. I still needed to work through those eleven passages; but the meditation began then.
Over the next seven years, I came to see that none of the eleven passages I had understood as teaching that repentance is a condition for everlasting life were, in fact, teaching that. My view of repentance and salvation changed in 1997. In 1998 we published a journal article (also available at faithalone.org) titled, “Does Your Mind Need Changing? Repentance Reconsidered.” It shows how and why I changed my view on repentance.
Even though I spent several years researching and writing my dissertation, and seven more years rethinking it, I did not write a book on repentance until 2019, thirty-four years after my dissertation on repentance was completed. The topic was complicated and hard to crystallize. But in 2019, I realized that I was now ready to tackle this subject.
I chose for my title the expression “turn and live,” which is found in several places in Ezekiel. Those passages give us a wonderful understanding of what repentance is and what the straying sinner gets when he repents. They not only give us the Old Testament understanding of repentance, but the proper understanding of repentance throughout the Bible.
Ezekiel has several verses that link turning from wickedness with living. These are sometimes cited as showing that the Old Testament taught repentance as a condition for everlasting life.
What do the contexts show?
You can see how the following verses could be misunderstood to teach that repentance is a condition for regeneration:
“Yet, if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered your soul” (Ezek 3:19).
“Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?” says the Lord GOD, “and not that he should turn from his ways and live?” (Ezek 18:23). “For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,” says the Lord GOD. “Therefore turn and live!” (Ezek 18:32).
“For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,” says the Lord GOD. “Therefore turn and live!” (Ezek 18:32).
…‘As I live,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?’ (Ezek 33:11).
However, the most natural understanding of these “turn and live” verses is that physical death was in view for those Jews who did not turn from their evil ways.
One must impose Lordship Salvation theology upon those texts to turn them into verses about how one escapes eternal condemnation.
Don’t Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, the blessings and curses chapters, teach the same thing? They teach that the wages of sin is death. Repentance is a remedy from premature death.
Charles Dyer comments on the death of a righteous person who falls away and fails to repent (Ezek 18:23-24):
God was not saying that a saved Israelite would lose his [eternal] salvation if he fell into sin. Both the blessing and the judgment in view here are temporal, not eternal. The judgment was physical death (cf. vv 4, 20, 26), not eternal damnation.ii
Similarly, in introducing his discussion of Ezekiel 18, Charles Feinberg notes, “The subject of justification by faith should not be pressed into this chapter; it is not under discussion.”iii Later, commenting on verse 9 (which refers to life’s being conditioned upon obedience to the Law of Moses), Feinberg writes,
This statement, we must caution again, does not have eternal life in view, but life on earth. Eternal life is not obtained on the grounds mentioned in this portion of Scripture.iv
Ezekiel 18 is not cited in the Gospel of John (or in any New Testament book). Surely if these were key verses showing that repentance is a condition of everlasting life, then John would have quoted the Lord Jesus saying so to someone like Nicodemus, the woman at the well, or Martha.
The Old Testament makes it clear that repentance is a condition for escaping temporal judgment and premature death. The Old Testament never taught that repentance is a condition for escaping eternal condemnation. Neither, of course, does the New Testament. The fact that neither repent (metanoia) nor repentance (metanoeō) occur in the only evangelistic book in the Bible, the Gospel of John, shows that it is not a condition of everlasting life. John’s Gospel and all of Scripture shows that faith in Christ is the one and only condition of everlasting life.
In John 3:16, the Lord spoke of those who “believe in Him,” not those who turn from their sins. Those who believe in Jesus have everlasting life. Straying believers or unbelievers who turn from their sins prolong their physical lives.
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Bob Wilkin is Executive Director of Grace Evangelical Society. He and Sharon live in Highland Village, TX. He has racewalked twelve marathons.
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i This article contains a portion of Chapter 3 of my book Turn and Live (pp. 22-23).
ii Charles H. Dyer, “Ezekiel,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary, Old Testament Edition, edited by John Walvoord and Roy Zuck (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), p. 1261.
iii Charles Lee Feinberg, The Prophecy of Ezekiel (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1969), p. 99.
iv Ibid., p. 101.
