What is preparationism?

It is well to note, however, that repentance is preached with remission of sins; nor can we exaggerate its importance if we do not misuse it to depreciate God's work of grace by Jesus Christ our Lord. Many, no doubt, misuse it, and more misunderstand it; but repentance abides a necessity for every soul which looks out of its sins to the Saviour. He has finished the work by which comes remission of sins to the believer; but it is not the faith of God's elect where the soul overlooks its sinfulness, where the Holy Spirit does not produce self-judgment by the Word of God applied to the conscience. Faith, without such a recognition and self-loathing and confession of our sins and state, is only intellectual, and will leave us to lie down in sorrow when we most need solid ground and peace with God. Repentance, on the other hand, is no preparation for faith, but the accompaniment of it, and is alone real where faith is of God. It is deepened, too, as faith sees more clearly.

Repentance toward God then is not the gospel of His grace, nor is it remission of sins, but is that inward work in the conscience by the Holy Spirit's use of the word, without which the privileges of the gospel are vain and only hurry on the soul the more rashly to destruction. The low views which make repentance a human work as a preface to faith are no less objectionable than the so-called high views which merge all in faith making repentance no more than a change of mind. Neither legalism nor antinomianism are of God, but the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ. Truth does not spare the flesh or its works, faith and repentance bow in self-loathing to Christ, and grace reigns through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

"True faith is the work of the Holy Ghost in the soul, revealing the object of faith in divine power; so that the heart receives it on divine testimony, as divine truth, and a divine fact. … It is really identical with the communication of a new life by the power of the Holy Ghost, through the word. Hence, we are said to be the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus; to be born of the Spirit, and to be begotten by the word of truth. Faith is the divinely-given perception of things not seen, wrought through the word of God by the Spirit. … If the word reveals a divine person in grace, He becomes the object of trust; if a work, its efficacy becomes the ground of confidence. But the trust and the confidence is not the faith. Faith is then the real vivid perception of what cannot be known by sight: — God — Christ — anything revealed of God being the object. If there is merely a mental conclusion, as in the end of John 2, or assent to a proposition, it is worthless. If it is the revelation of the object of faith to the soul, by the Holy Ghost, it is real and living; and this only is true faith. Further, though all rightly preached together, we must not confound faith in the person, and faith in the work of Christ. The latter alone can give peace to the conscience (unless the direct revelation of God as by Nathan to David, or Christ to the woman that was a sinner); but the former is always held out as the first proper object of faith; while Scripture declares, that whosoever believes on Him, is under the benefit of His work. Faith in Him is quickening and saving. Peace of conscience according to God's declaration, belongs to those who do believe in virtue of His work. The difference connects itself with the question of repentance. … All who know what grace is, believe that faith precedes repentance, and everything else that is good and right in man. Otherwise he would have what is good, before he believed the truth at all; he would have it without God. And as to repentance, substantially, the whole moral change, the essence and substance of his return to God would have been effected without any truth at all. For if he repents through the truth, he must believe the truth in order to repent. … I judge repentance to be a much deeper thing than is thought. It is the judgment of the new man in divine light and grace, on all that he who repents, has been, or done in flesh. … Hence, repentance will in one sense deepen all one's life, as the knowledge of God grows." ["Further Remarks upon Righteousness and Law" pp. 39-45. J. N. D.]

1878 176 Acts 5:31, Acts 17:30, Romans 2:4. — "Ens" is quite right. To say that the command to believe and repent belongs to and flows from the law is not scriptural, but the fruit of theology. Others in their desire to set forth the freeness of grace, have fallen into the Sandemanian trap of denying the distinctively moral character of repentance, and thus reduce it to a changed mind about God. Whereas grace works so that in faith the eye of the soul looks to Christ as the Saviour, and in repentance that eye looks at self and judges what it is and has done as before God. Faith and repentance are inseparable: if one is divinely given, so is the other; if the repentance is human, the faith is no better.

What Peter says in effect is this — If you repent, and are baptized in the name of the One, whom you refused and murdered, seven short weeks ago, you will receive like blessing with us — you will receive the Holy Ghost. Why is the truth put in this way? I think there cannot be the shadow of a doubt as to the wisdom of the Lord in guiding His servant to put it this way. He does not tell them to believe in Jesus. That may be needful when you come to Acts 10. He does not tell them to trust in Jesus. No, He peals out the clarion note of John the Baptist — unheeded in his day — Repent. There must be repentance. No man ever yet had to do with God unless there was repentance. I do not deny that faith is a requisite to blessing also, but faith is the reception of a Divine testimony. These men had faith. They believed that Jesus was exalted. What was the result? "They were pricked in their hearts." What next? "Repent," says Peter. You may ask, What is repentance? I believe it is the judgment which the soul passes on itself, as, in the light of God's presence, it learns what the truth is — the truth about God, the truth about Jesus, and the truth about my sins, and my sinful state. Repentance is taking God's side against myself, Repentance is the teardrop in the eye of faith. I would to God I saw that tear-drop in every eye before me tonight. It was in the eyes of those Peter addressed. Repentance holds a large place in the preaching of the apostles. It would be well if, now-a-days, it were more pressed. There must be the judgment of what I have done, and what I am. It is a blessed moment in his history when a man repents — when he judges himself. It is my accepting the testimony of God as to the state of my heart, and owning my utter ruin, in truthfulness and uprightness.

Ploughing up of heart and conscience — a preparation we know little of — is doubtless the first thing (Rom. 1:16 — Rom. 3:20). Then Christ is set before the soul; and when there is rest, and we have come into Christian liberty, then we are free to learn (Rom. 3:21 — Rom. 8:39). Light displaces darkness. The work of Christ being before God in all its unchanging and eternal efficacy, the Holy Spirit produces in the soul desires Godward. He gives a real sense of the existence and the presence of God, a true view of our present state and what our solemn future might be. We are led to see things not merely as they affect us, but in their relation to God. The fear of God is created, which is the beginning of wisdom. We realize that to be God, God should be holy, He should be just. We get a growing sense of the holiness of His throne and of indwelling sin. Hence in Acts 13:26, it is said, "Whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent." I think we should be ready to acknowledge the sovereign and gracious ways of God, who uses various instrumentalities in awakening souls. The testimony of an itinerant or open-air preacher may be used to awaken; then perhaps God permits the awakened soul to go elsewhere, to get peace through hearing the Gospel preached more fully. Herein is that saying true, "One sows and another reaps," for it is God that is working all the time.

And the effect of this is to bow self to the dust, in the sense of this overwhelming grace. This is that change of mind called repentance. But shall I tell you, my reader, that you must thus repent before you come to Christ? No, I should as soon think of asking you to feel warm first, before you come to the fire, if I saw you perishing in the cold and storm.

Thus what to the superficial reader seems strange if not tiresome repetition is in reality the witness of God's rich mercy and His loving the poorest with great love. But such a scripture ought also to be a serious guard from that levity which modern revivalism accentuates, though it has ever been the snare of those who are carried away onesidedly with the freeness of grace to forget its fulness. In reaction from a systematic putting under law as a preparatory course for due reception of this gospel, they confound conversion with salvation, and as it were argue the interested soul to believe and say, I am saved! I am saved! before the soul has any genuine sense of sin before God. Those who are strong have no need of a physician but such as are sick; and if the wounds are deep, it is well if they be probed without haste to cover them up. Repentance is most important, lest a crop of such faith arise as James 2 refuses to own. Consider the Prodigal in Luke 15 and indwelling sin dealt with, as well as sins.

When the soul is thus gripped it is reached. It must then repent. No doubt the call to repentance is not the gospel; but neither is the plough the seed-basket! But repentance is as preparatory for the gospel as the furrow is for the seed.

When conviction is wrought in the conscience, how unspeakably happy then to unfold the heart of God and the value of the atoning death of Christ, and all that flows from Himself on high! But the preparation for this, as for all blessing, is found in repentance before God.

Man must take his true place before God, and that is the place of self-judgment, contrition of heart, real sorrow for sin, and true confession. It is here the gospel meets him. The fullness of God ever waits on an empty vessel, and a truly repentant soul is the empty vessel into which all the fullness and grace of God can flow in saving power. The Holy Ghost will make the sinner feel and own his real condition. It is He alone who can do so: but He uses preaching to this end. He brings the Word of God to bear on man's conscience. The Word is His hammer, wherewith He breaks the rock in pieces — His plowshare, wherewith He breaks up the fallow ground. He makes the furrow, and then casts in the incorruptible seed, to germinate and fructify to the glory of God. True, the furrow, how deep soever it may be, can produce no fruit. It is the seed, and not the furrow; but there must be the furrow for all that.