It’s Kingdom Time! - Sermon On Mark 1:14-15 Series

So you cannot have repentance without faith. Nor can you have faith without repentance. There are many people who try to make that division. These are people who want to avoid legalism and preserve salvation through faith alone, not by works, but then they go too far and say, “Repentance is a work, therefore repentance is not required for salvation.” They say first you believe, and then, later on, down the road you get around to repenting. This is a very common teaching.

But you can never separate repentance and faith. Jesus even put repentance first – Repent and believe. You can’t have repentance come later on, down the road, but not at the beginning, because if a person claims to believe the gospel, and yet refuses to repent and turn from his sin back towards God, he proves that he doesn’t really believe the gospel. The gospel tells me that Jesus is better than this sin I’m committing. And if I say, “I believe that, but I’m still going to prefer this sin over Jesus,” that proves that I don’t really believe that Jesus is better.

And where you have unrepentance, that hinders the growth of whatever little bit of faith you might have. If you have some faith in your heart, but then you start hanging on to is a sin and refuse to give it up, that will prevent you from increasing your faith. And it will kill the faith that you have. So you need faith to have repentance, and you need repentance to have faith; they depend on each other and they build on each other. So what do we tell unbelievers? Do we tell them to believe first, or do we tell them to repent first, or what? We tell them the same thing Jesus told them: repent and believe. John the Baptist preached a message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in v.4. Then Jesus comes in v.15 and the first words we hear out of his mouth are: “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe” Then Jesus calls his disciples, trains them up, and sends them out to do what?

Mark 6:12 They went out and preached that people should repent.

After Jesus died and rose and went back to heaven, then what did the Apostles preach?

Acts 2:38 Peter replied, "Repent forgiveness of your sins.

Acts 3:19 Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out

That road building work of preparing hearts to receive the Messiah kept going after John’s death, after Jesus’ death, and it’s still going today. We’re still working to prepare people’s hearts to be receptive to the Lord’s coming by preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

There’s a new King in town, and before he brings down the hammer of judgment on all God’s enemies, he is offering full amnesty and forgiveness to all rebels – but to get that amnesty, you must come to him with a repentant heart. You can approach him, but you must do so with tears. And you must be willing to sever your ties with the enemy army and embrace this new kingdom completely.

Part of the Gospel

And please notice, when Jesus was calling people to repentance, he was preaching the Gospel. I point that out because there are many today who are trying to say that the gospel is only the information about Jesus’ death and resurrection. But that’s not true. We learn from Jesus that part of the gospel is the call to repent.