Genuine salvation is always accompanied by repentance. They are locked together. Without repentance there is no salvation. It isn’t the repentance that causes salvation. Instead, it is our response to God regenerating our hearts. We are saved by grace through faith. It is a gift from God that always results in a new life that is marked by repentance.
9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Luke 19:9-10 (NASB)
If you listen to the vast majority of “gospel” preaching these days, the statement by our Saviour in the passage I place at the top of this post will appear to be somewhat backward. The reality that is preached from those pulpits is that salvation is a product of Human reason after hearing a sermon that shows the wonderful benefits of allowing Jesus to come into the hearer’s life. It is all Man’s choice or decision based solely upon a person’s own ability to reason.
The result of this form of preaching the gospel is that people do respond to the call to become a Christian based upon Jesus coming into their lives just to make them better. It is like those Long Distance Phone wars several years ago. At that time I had switched our long distance service to one that advertised that they were Christian based. One Sunday afternoon I received a call from a tele-marketer who offered to switch me back to A.T.&T. at a much reduced rate. I told him no. He then asked me, “Don’t you want to save money?” I told him that money was not the issue. The issue was that his company actively promoted certain things that I was against. His response was a total disbelief that anyone could make a decision like. All of the bullets in his gun were based on saving money. He was used to everyone jumping ship from whatever long distance company they had a contract with just to save a few bucks. “Don’t you want to save money?”, he asked. The 21st Century preacher asks, “Don’t you want to go to Heaven when you die and for Jesus to make your life better?”
Genuine salvation is not a transaction to trade in one set of values to acquire new ones that guarantee a better life. We don’t add Jesus to our lives thereby becoming Christians. We don’t take Jesus out for a test drive to see if we really want to be a Christian or not. Let’s look at a Biblical example of salvation coming to one who was lost and bound for Hell until He met Jesus.
1 He entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 And there was a man called by the name of Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector and he was rich. Luke 19:1-2 (NASB)
The “He” in v1 is Jesus Christ. He was traveling to Jerusalem for the last time. The Last Supper, His arrest, trial, and crucifixion awaited Him just a few days hence. His journey took him through Jericho. The New King James renders the words from v2, “And there was a man called by the name of Zaccheus” as “Now behold there was a man named Zacchaeus.” The words “there was” are in italics. That means there are no corresponding Greek words in the manuscripts for them. The correct reading, therefore, for v2 would be, “Now behold, a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich.”
