I let Jesus in... or Why we must preach repentance

‘Our churches are graveyards of people who… “opened the door” but have never repented; they have never come to terms with Christ’s Lordship.’

John Chapman wrote those words 20 years ago in his excellent book Know and Tell the Gospel and, despite thousands of copies being sold and scores of us saying how good Chappo’s book is and adding it to our recommended reading list, it seems that few evangelists have taken much note of his words.

As a result we continue to dig graves and fill them up with people who have ‘prayed a prayer’, but who know nothing of the Lordship of Christ.

In Christ

I was struck some years ago hearing Sinclair Ferguson explain that the dominant description of the New Testament Christian is to be ‘in Christ’. Yet we continue to encourage people to ask Jesus into their lives. On the one hand it’s understandable why we do that. ‘In Christ’ is jargon (if you will forgive me calling such a magnificent description of the Christian’s status as jargon) and therefore it is something we need to explain to people. But our attempt to make the term more accessible can be deadly.

Stay with me for a minute and note the difference between being ‘In Christ’ and ‘Asking Jesus into my life.’

There is a sense in which ‘Asking Jesus into my life’ is a reasonable call to make; after all Colossians 1.27 describes the riches of the Christian mystery as ‘Christ in you—the hope of glory’. However, it’s not the dominant emphasis of the New Testament. And there are subtle but important implications in using this language. So, when I ask Jesus into my life, the thought is that here’s my little life, happily going along as it is, and I’m inviting Jesus to come and play a part in it. Maybe an important part, perhaps a vital part, but nevertheless, a part in the life I’m living — my life.

Huge difference

Compare and contrast that (as they told me to do at school) with being ‘In Christ’. As I become ‘in Christ’ then I am shifting my little life into the purpose and direction of Jesus’s plan for the universe. He is not coming into to my life, I am entering into his greater life. Suddenly my targets are his goal and my course his path. It makes a huge difference. It is no longer Jesus serving me, but me serving him.

As with all good theology, this is so much more than semantics or pedantic nit-picking. Getting this right affects the lives of real men and women and we’ve seen the result if we get it wrong.

Bill’s shock

I think of Bill, an articulate and able young Christian man. As we discussed his future direction at work he said to me rather incredulously: ‘You’re telling me that Jesus should be Lord at work!’ Up to that point in our discussion I’d taken that as a given. I’d talked to him about witnessing at work, about integrity at work, about relationships at work and then about not taking promotion at work if it would undermine his involvement at church and make him so busy that he wasn’t able to use his Bible teaching gifts, or if it would put him in a position that made him compromise his Christian faith or if it became the goal of his life. And that was when it hit him. Jesus was to be Lord of his career and his ambitions, his aims and his goals in life. And that was the point when our conversation took an entirely different direction and we began to talk about a Christian being ‘in Christ’. Bill was a real Christian, but when the evangelist told him to ‘ask Jesus into his life’ he did him no favours years down the track.

Rachel’s disaster

This same experience was more devastating still for Rachel. When she heard about Christ she was told to ‘open the door of her heart to Jesus’, which she did, happily. She started to go to church, but when an unbelieving boyfriend wooed her and they started dating and things got serious, she ended up sleeping with him. I’ve been in this job long enough to know that, sadly, that’s not unusual, even in ‘sound’ evangelical churches. But it was her words to me some months later that were such a sad indictment of the evangelist’s errors and the tragedy that ensues from not starting the Christian life with a clear grasp of the Lordship of Christ and the need for repentance.

When Rachel found herself pregnant she said to me: ‘I knew it was wrong to have sex before marriage, but just knowing it was wrong wasn’t enough to curtail such powerful feelings. I’d opened the door of my heart to Jesus, but I didn’t know what it meant to have him as Lord — not so that he ruled my life even when I didn’t want to go in his direction.’

It didn’t work?

Sadly, there are many more like Bill and Rachel who’ve made a response to Jesus, but never had repentance explained to them.

Think of all the people who’ve ‘given Jesus a go but it didn’t work’. The people who’ve ‘opened the door’ but have never repented, never come to terms with Christ’s Lordship. It’s not only not right, but it’s also not loving. As a friend of mine said recently: ‘I’m beginning to see how cruel liberalism really is’.

Having been in a new ministry job for a year he has seen how the failure in the past to call the congregation to repent (which has been presented as loving), has, in fact. allowed people to continue to live their lives their way and resulted in all sorts of messy situations that will now take years to unravel.

Conference

The Lordship-Salvation Controversy of the 1990s raised the issue for us, but it seems did not get to grips with what it means to call people to repent and believe. ‘Turning the Heart — Preaching Repentance Today’, the title of the 3rd Annual Evangelists Conference in October 2005 at All Souls, Langham Place, London (October 11) and City Evangelical Church, Leeds (October 13) will help us to grapple with this crucial issue. It’s an issue we must consider, because, as John Chapman told, ‘No repentance is true repentance which does not recognise Jesus as Lord over every area of life’.

Paul Williams is a curate at All Souls, Langham Place, London, and will shortly be moving to Sheffield to be vicar of Fulwood Parish Church.

For a brochure and more details of ‘Turning the Heart — Preaching Repentance Today’, The 3rd Annual Evangelists Conference 2005, contact The Good Book Company on 0845 225 0880 or at admin@thegoodbook.co.uk.