Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Grace in Focus. Perhaps the word repentance does not appear in John’s Gospel, but isn’t the concept present? That’s the question we will discuss today here on Grace in Focus. Glad you’ve joined us! This is a radio broadcast and podcast ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org. There you can find out about our online seminary. You can go through the application process and get ready to study with us next semester. We offer an MDiv degree. It’s free to those maintaining a 3.0 grade average, so come and study with us. We also want you to know about our annual National Grace Evangelical Society Conference. I’d love you to make plans to be with us next May 18th through 21st, 2026 at Camp Copass in Denton, Texas. Get all the details, faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s question and answer discussion here are Bob Wilkin and Sam Marr. 

SAM: Bob, we’ve got a question from Alberto on repentance. The question is, your program teaches that repentance is not required for salvation, especially in the Gospel of John because it’s an evangelistic book. My question is, doesn’t the Gospel of John teach the concept of repentance, not just believe in Jesus? 

BOB: Okay, I’ve written an article on this and if you go to faithalone.org, you can see that article and I give a lot more details than I’ll be able to give here. But let me say that no, the concept of repentance does not occur. Let me give you an illustration. Let’s say that I was an expert on World War II generals and I wrote a book and I didn’t mention George Patton. Could someone argue, no, you didn’t mention Patton, but you had the concept of Patton in there. Well, I’d say no, unless you had some particular place where you were talking about him, but you chose not to mention his name, but it was obvious you were talking about. If you didn’t mention his name and you didn’t allude to his actions, then you’re clearly not talking about him. 

Well, when you’re in the Gospel of John, there’s no mention of repentance, metanoia, the noun, metanoeo, always the verb. But on top of that, even the concept is not there. The closest you could get to would probably be something like John 3:19-21, which, after Jesus evangelizes Nicodemus, He challenges him to come out into the light and to confess Christ publicly and be an open witness for Christ. And after John 3:21, we get John 3:22-36, which is all about John the Baptist, who’s the prime example of someone who had come out in the light and was confessing Jesus. But John 3:19-21 is not a call to turn from sins. It’s a call for Nicodemus to come out in the light. He was a brand new believer. He was in fellowship with God. He didn’t need to turn from his sins. What he’s being called to do now is to do something positive, which is to confess Christ publicly.

And in fact, I think that explains other passages in John’s Gospel. There’s a couple of secret believer passages that relate to Nicodemus. This passage, John chapter 7, and John chapter 19, all three places where it says, “he came to Jesus by night”. That’s repeated in John 7, that’s repeated in John 19. And the point is, he didn’t want his interest in Jesus public. And then when he did come to faith over in John 7 he doesn’t make it clear before the other members of the Sanhedrin that he’s a believer in Jesus. And even when he claims the body of Jesus with Joseph of Arimathea, again, he doesn’t confess his faith in Christ. 

Here’s the other issue, Alberto, I would say, let’s say we had some place in John’s Gospel where the concept of repentance is found. Then the question would be, does that passage say you need to do that in order to be born again? Even if the concept were in John’s Gospel, which it’s not, but even if it were, John 3:16 doesn’t say anything about repentance. John 3:14, 15, 16, 17, and 18, it’s all about believing. A hundred times in John’s Gospel, the word believe occurs. There’s more than 20 times the believing is specifically tied with will never hunger, will never thirst, will never die, will never be cast out, will never perish, has everlasting life, shall not come into condemnation. None of those have repentance in there. We don’t have a “believe and repent” in John’s Gospel. 

What you have is the only condition of everlasting life is faith and that’s true, of course, in Acts 16:31, when Paul’s directly asked, “What must I do to be saved?” his answer is “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.” He said nothing about repentance. The book of Galatians is where Paul is defending his gospel of justification by faith alone, apart from works. Guess how many times the words repent and repentance occur there? Zero. And the concept of repentance occurs zero times in Galatians as well. If you think about Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it’s the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” This by grace through faith salvation is the gift of God. There’s no mention of repentance and Ephesians 2:8-9. 

Same thing in Revelation 22:17, basically the last evangelistic verse in the Bible, “Let anyone who desires come and let him who comes take the water of life freely”, and the word “freely” is as a gift without cost. And there’s no repentance there either. Now the word repentance does occur in the book of Revelation, but it’s in chapters 2 and 3 where it’s talking about believers who needed to repent so that they could be overcomers. It also occurs in Revelation 9 concerning the unbelieving world was not repenting, and as a result the judgments continued unabated and the same thing in chapter 16, the unbelieving world was not repenting so the judgments continued. 

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BOB: I have a book called Turn and Live, and Alberto, I’d highly recommend you get it. That expression “turn and live” comes from Ezekiel chapter 18 and Ezekiel 31. And in both places, God says “turn and live” because God does not desire your death, and He’s talking about physical life and physical death of Jews within Israel, but the principle applied to Gentiles in the Old Testament or anybody today. 

Repentance is not just for unbelievers, it’s for believers as well. The point is the believer doesn’t need to repent unless he strays, that’s Luke 15, right? The sheep that strays, the coin that’s lost, the son that goes to the spiritual far country, as long as I’m walking in fellowship with God, I simply need to confess my sins and continue to walk in the light, and I don’t need to repent. 

For the unbeliever, repentance is a great thing, but it doesn’t give him eternal life. If an unbeliever is on the path of death and they’re continuing to get high all the time, they’re on a path that’s going to lead to a premature death, and if they repent, well, they can continue to live. Now, it’s a separate issue of them being born again. Does that make sense? 

SAM: It does and that answered a follow-up question, there’s a little bit more to Alberto’s email. I think he did a very excellent and thorough job of answering the question as it was stated, but the follow-up part of his question is, if you ask a serial killer or a sexually immoral person, if they believe in Jesus, then why should you believe they’re telling the truth? Like, if someone’s a serial killer, they say, yeah, I believe in Jesus, I have everlasting life. I think the majority of people will say, well, that can’t be true, because you’re a serial killer. 

BOB: Yeah, so let me say, I would be suspect of just about anybody that tells me they believe in Jesus until I find out what they mean by that. If I’m talking to the Pope, if I’m talking to a nun or a priest and they tell me they believe in Jesus, I doubt it. If I’m talking to an orthodox priest, they say, I believe in Jesus, I doubt it. If I’m talking to most Protestants and they say, I believe in Jesus, I doubt it. 

Why do I doubt it? It has nothing to do with their lifestyle. It has to do with—I know that well over 90% of people in Christianity believe in works salvation. So if I ask them, what do you mean, “I believe in Jesus”, what I’m going to find out is they believe that Jesus existed or they believe Jesus is the Son of God or they may even believe that Jesus died on the cross for their sins and rose again. But if I say to them, so what happens if you become an alcoholic and die away from the Lord? Oh, I’d go to hell. Well, then they don’t believe in Jesus in the John 3:16 sense do they? 

SAM: No. 

BOB: His point about the serial killer is a canard. A canard is a kind of a misleading statement because it doesn’t matter whether they’re a serial killer or Mother Theresa. They don’t get eternal life unless they believe in Jesus in the Biblical sense. And so, of course, we should be skeptical of anybody saying, I believe in Jesus. And we ought to ask them, what do you mean by that? Are you certain that you have everlasting life and you can never lose it? Even if you fall away, even if you become an alcoholic, even if you become a serial killer, would you still have eternal life? 

It sounds like Alberto is saying if he became a serial killer, he’d lose his salvation or he would prove he wasn’t really saved in the first place. Alberto, I hope that’s wrong. I hope you recognize that you have everlasting life. And even if you mess up big time, you can’t lose everlasting life. Anyway, I hope that helps but repentance is not a condition of everlasting life and we don’t base whether someone’s born again on the quality of their life. We base whether someone is born again on the root, not the fruit. 

That’s why the Kennedy question used to be, if you died and you appear before God, why should He let you into heaven?¹ If your answer is, because I’m better than most, I follow the golden rule. We say, no, no, you need to go back to John 3:16. But if they say, well, it’s only because I believe in Jesus and he guarantees my eternal salvation, he guarantees me everlasting life, I’ll never perish. Great. But we need people to understand. It’s not just if you died today, why should God let you into heaven? The question is, if you died 40 years from now, as an alcoholic and a murderer, unrepentant, where would you go? And if their answer is, I’d still go to be with the Lord, then they get it. 

SAM: And I think that’s good news and that’s why we believe, because it’s a promise that Christ made. And if that promise isn’t true 40 years from now, then why would it be true now? 

BOB: Exactly. It’s a promise that’s based on faith in Him, whoever believes in Him will not perish, but has everlasting life. It has nothing to do with repentance. It has nothing to do with the quality of our life. It has everything to do with His faithfulness, not our faithfulness. Well, good question, Alberto, we’re out of time, but remember, keep grace in focus. Amen. 

ANNOUNCER: We invite you to check out our Monday, Wednesday, and Friday five minute YouTube videos at YouTube Grace Evangelical Society. You will love the content and learn a lot. Maybe you’ve got a question or comment or feedback. If so, please send us a message. Here’s our email address: it’s radio@faithalone.org, that’s radio@faithalone.org. Please make sure your question is as succinct and clear as possible, that would be a great big help.

On our next episode: Will some believers have zero good works at the Judgment Seat of Christ? Please join us for that and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.

¹ Evangelism Explosion was started in 1962 by D. James Kennedy, and was best known for  its two “diagnostic questions” that can be asked unbelievers as a means of determining a “person’s spiritual health”, and of stimulating an evangelistic conversation: 1.) Have you come to the place in your spiritual life where you can say you know for certain that if you were to die today you would go to heaven? and 2.) Suppose that you were to die today and stand before God and he were to say to you, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” what would you say?