It may be that you never realized that there was one message, one chief message, which it is the business of the Lord's churches to be proclaiming constantly and chiefly. It is this: that repentance and remission of sins should be preached. The Lord Jesus Christ clearly told his people what they should preach: that Christ had come to be a Saviour from sin. That is the beginning and the end of our message. Everything else is an explanation of this, how he achieved it, why he achieved it, what he does to those who he forgives and brings to himself, how he blesses them. The foundation of everything is that repentance and remission, the taking away of sins, is available through Christ Jesus the Lord. Christ is a Saviour from sin.
Again, it may not occur to us how serious this problem of sin is. Ever since mankind first fell away from God, there has been this tremendous sin problem and a tremendous gulf between God and man. Christ came in order to make it possible for that gulf to be bridged. He has come to do something to make it possible for those individuals, from every land and nation, every day and age, who would come to God for pardon and forgiveness in the name of Christ should have forgiveness. Sin is a tremendous problem because it blocks men off from the living God: human rebellion, human pride, human greed, human deceitfulness. Sin pollutes every human soul, alienates us, cuts us off from God, maims us and will finally destroy us. It is at the bottom of all the distortions and the crimes, all the ugliness of the human race, and the inequality; it all flows out of the corruption of sin, and finally the world will be no more and there will be a great day of judgment because of sin.
If you had a limb missing or some vital part of you not there, you would be very aware of it. You would realize that you were severely limited and handicapped, that you could only survive and exist by all kinds of appliances, medical aid and so on, and the assistance of others. Because of sin, because we are cut off from God, because we don't know his blessing, because our characters are warped and maimed and incomplete, we as people are incomplete. We have no God, no moral power. We have a soul within us, but it's severely disabled, and it cannot relate to God and know Him, speak with Him, receive His blessings until we are converted to God. We have a capacity to live in time and to enjoy it, but we have no eternal dimension, no eternal blessing. When this life is ended, we shall have to die everlastingly and be sent away from the presence of God.
Repentance must be there when we preach the gospel and we seek to persuade sinners to turn to the Saviour and we make known Christ. We certainly want the love of God to come across, the love and mercy and tenderness of God in the crucifixion of Christ for those who believe. But at the same time we must not skate over repentance. Always the Lord Jesus Christ when he preached, Luke tells us, was preaching repentance and remission of sins. Some people today who are Bible believers say, ‘Oh no, you mustn't tell people to repent. That is to add a false condition to conversion.’ It has to be said that that is utter nonsense. Repentance and remission of sins are vital. Remission means the taking away of sin. Repentance and the taking away of sin should be preached in Christ's name among all nations. That is the great commission nailed down in simple terms. There have been too many people given false assurance of their salvation because they were told that all you have to do is assent to the fact that Jesus Christ came and died for sinners, and there is no repentance in their response to the gospel. But without repentance there can be no salvation. If we ask, what is our greatest need as people? The answer of the Bible is this every time: our greatest need is the forgiveness of God.
Repentance has to start with learning something. The old Bible preachers used to call it illumination. You come to see the state you are in in the presence of God, not just the things you do, but the person you are. You begin to learn about yourself: how depraved every member of the human race is. It is as though God holds up a mirror, and shows us ourselves as we really are. Another part of repentance following on closely is that we begin to burn within. We begin to feel. It's not just an intellectual process. We begin to feel shame. Oh, that my sins could be washed away. We learn, we burn, and we begin to turn. We hate our sin, and we begin to turn away from this fallen life. We cannot give up our sins just like that: they have a hold on us. That is why we need to come to God. We cry out to God, and can say, ‘Oh, Lord, save me. Help me to leave the old life behind. Lord, change my heart. Lord, change me and purge me deeply within. Change my very character.’