1. H. A. Ironside, Except Ye Repent (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1937), 7.
The Call to Repentance
aving examined how Jesus dealt with individuals and having studied the parables and figures He used to illuminate truth for the disciples, we now turn our focus to the rich doctrinal content of the message He proclaimed to the multitudes. Here we will explore the principal themes that flavored Jesus' discourses, and weigh the popularized gospel of today against the Savior's own teaching. In the process, we will attempt to gain a clearer understanding of the terminology Jesus employed. Most of the current controversy regarding the gospel hinges on the definitions of a few key words, including repentance, faith, discipleship, and Lord. In this final section, we will study those terms and see how Jesus Himself used them.
We begin with a chapter on repentance, because that is where the Savior began. Matthew 4:17 records the dawning of Christ's public ministry: "From that time [the imprisonment of John the Baptist] Jesus began to preach and say, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.' " I noted in chapter 5 that the opening word of that first sermon characterized the theme of Jesus' entire earthly ministry. We have further observed that He described His own objective thus: "to call . . . sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:31). Repentance was a recurring motif in all His public sermons. He stood boldly before the stiff-necked multitudes and proclaimed, "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish" (13:3, 5).
The Missing Note
When was the last time you heard the gospel presented in those terms? It is not fashionable in the twenty-first century to preach a gospel that demands repentance. How did the message of today become so different from the gospel according to Jesus? As early as 1937, Dr. H. A. Ironside noted that the biblical doctrine of repentance was being diluted by those who wished to exclude it from the gospel message. He wrote, "The doctrine of repentance is the missing note in many otherwise orthodox and fundamentally sound circles today."1 He
1. H. A. Ironside, Except Ye Repent (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1937), 7.