Always Explain What It Means To “Repent“ If You Mention It To A Lost Sinner

Mark 6:5-6 and 12, “And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching. ...And they went out, and preached that men should repent.”

It is tragic that 99% of the people who read our text passage of Scripture from Mark 6:12 will wrongly assume that to “repent” means “to turn from your sins.” However, as I have already done for you, if you examine the passage carefully we find that the issue at hand is not one's sins; but rather, “UNBELIEF” as we see in Mark 6:6. What those people in Jesus' own country where He grew up needed to get to Heaven was to repent of their UNBELIEF, not their sins. 

Not one verse in the inspired King James Bible teaches to “repent of your sins” or “turn from your sins” to get to Heaven. Wicked religious men added those words to God's inspired Word. Proverbs 30:5-6, “Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.” Should God's saints repent of our sins? Yes, absolutely (2nd Timothy 2:19). But to be saved, someone need only repent of their unbelief (Matthew 21:32).

And yet, if you research the pseudo-Christian cults (e.g., Mormons, Roman Catholics, Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Church of Christ, et cetera), they all pervert the biblical meaning of repentance to teach that you must turn away from your sinful ways to get to Heaven. That is works, not salvation by God's grace through faith alone.

Romans 4:4, “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.” I love that Bible verse! If salvation has ever been merited by works at any time in human civilization, then God owed a debt to that individual, and it wasn't by grace. The Bible warns that this has never been the case. From this passage alone we KNOW that no one under the Mosaic law was ever saved by works, nor by partial faith plus works. According to Acts 10:43 remission of sins has always come only though faith in Christ.

The writer of the preceding counterfeit gospel tells the reader to “repent,” but he doesn't explain what that means. In today's wicked American culture where most churches falsely require people to be willing to forsake a lifestyle of sinning to be saved (which is reformation not repentance), it is absolutely necessary nowadays to explain what it means to “repent.”

I personally never use the word “repent” at all, simply because the Gospel of John (God's Gospel track according to John 20:31) doesn't mention the word “repent” even once. That is simply because repentance is automatically included with believing. That is, you have changed your mind from unbelief to belief when you trust Christ. Bible repentance simply means to “change your mind,” nothing more. The context of a particular Scripture passage provides the necessary supplemental information to know what we must change our mind about.

By deceptively merely requiring readers to “repent,” the reader can go either way in meaning and the questionable webpage creator knows it. Repentance means different things to different people, which is why it is so vitally important to explain what the word means if you ever use it. Like I said, I just don't mention repentance because it is not necessary.

A good illustration of repentance is flying from Chicago to Los Angeles. I can simply instruct you to fly to Los Angeles. It is not necessary for me to first tell you to leave Chicago, and then secondly go to Los Angeles. The same is true with leading someone to faith in Jesus. You can simply preach the Gospel (which means “Good News”) to a lost sinner, without first telling them to leave their unbelief. This is exactly why we find the word “believe” mentioned 85 times in the Gospel of John, but the word “repent” is not mentioned even once.

You don't repent AND believe to be saved; you repent TO believe. Repentance facilitates believing. Please do as Jesus commanded in John 5:39 to 'SEARCH THE SCRIPTURES,' because 99% of churches and religious colleges are WRONG today on Bible repentance and God's simple plan of salvation. There are not 50 different shades of the Gospel, there has alway been only one plan of salvation (Galatians 1:6-9).

If you tell lost sinners to “repent” without explaining to them what it means, you are sending them up a potentially deadly creek without a paddle. You are woefully ignoring the reality that “many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1st John 4:1b). Don't you dare ever tell someone to “repent” to be saved without explaining yourself, because 99% of Americans have been lied to by the religious cults, to think that repentance means to turn away from your sinful bad habits. By the way, the meaning of “repent” in our English dictionary is based upon the Roman Catholic understanding of the word, which is NOT the biblical Greek meaning.

Behavior modification has absolutely nothing to do with the new birth. A changed life is the “fruit” of the indwelling Holy Spirit after you get saved (Galatians 5:22-25). A change of behavior has NOTHING to do with repentance to be saved. Whatever changes God wants to see happen in your life after you get saved is His department alone, and you can be assured that He will attend to it. God is not an absent parent (Hebrews 12:6-8).

Our only part in getting saved is just to believe the Gospel (1st Corinthians 15:1-6). All that God asks is that you believe Jesus did it all for you through Calvary's cross. Nothing more is required or allowed dear sinner! The only thing that you and I contribute to our own salvation is the sin that made it necessary. Salvation is of the LORD (Jonah 2:9).

THANK YOU for reading my ministry blog. To God alone be all the praise, credit and glory.