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PREVIEW OF CHAPTER 3 - Our Regeneration by Faith: Repentance
Repentance is a consequence of faith, and has its foundations in the Gospel which faith embraces. The priority of faith to repentance means that the recognition of God’s grace precedes the sense of belonging to God (which equals faith), which in turn leads one to repentance.
Repentance does not stop at first turning, by way of regeneration, but also continues in the life of the believer through the mortification of sin, and the vivification of the life of the believer in Christ.
Faith and repentance are permanently bound together and demonstrate a conversion of the mind and a changing of the mind. It is a turning to God, first by fear in order to arouse the mind of the sinner of the judgment of God. Here we see that repentance is regeneration as our mortification is preparation in Christ’s death, and our vivification is participation in Christ’s resurrection.
Believers experience sanctification in this life, but they do not experience sinless perfection. For believers, sin has lost its dominion, but it still dwells in them and they struggle with it in mortification. These believers exercise an earnestness and carefulness towards following the Holy Spirit and to keep away from the devil’s snares.
The fruits of repentance are holiness of life, confession and remission of sins, and lifelong mortification. Repentance is God‘s free gift given to sinners and should be exercised. It is given by the Spirit to regenerate whom He wills and then the sinner acts in accord with that in the reflex act of faith to new life.
PREVIEW OF CHAPTER 4
The scholastic doctrine of penance is an aberration of the truth, and falls into error. It torments the conscience since it does not truly remit sins, and is calculated by the flesh instead of the Spirit of God. Confessing our sins to one another does not justify the Scholastic interpretation of auricular confession since this practice is not towards “priests” but other believers.
There are ample examples in the Bible of men confessing their sins to God and the necessity of it. There are also directives to confess our sins before men if there is a need for public confession (but only if it is required based on some scandalous sin). In this public confession it is seen in two ways: to the congregation – if they partook of a sin that affects the church, or of extraordinary confession when all the people are guilty of some sin before God (as Israel had done many times).
The power of the keys is provoked when the entire church sins and needs pardon, when an individual has committed a common offense, and when one discloses a secret sin to a minister of the Gospel. Such sins are to be forgiven in their respective situations, over and against the Romanist doctrines of confession. The Romanist confession has become a plague in the church creating a false sense of security for the people in their sin and not allowing them to be forgiven in reality, but rather work for their forgiveness, which is a delusion. Rather, absolution is conditional upon the sinner’s trust that God is merciful to him, provided he sincerely seeks expiation in Christ’s sacrifice and be satisfied with the forgiveness offered to him there.
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