38 CAMPBELLISM on Repentance, S. A. Paine We now turn from the subject of faith to that of repentance. Repentance is also a Bible subject, and an interesting and delightful one when properly understood and applied.
In The Christian System on pg. 53, we have a definition of repentance as given by A. Campbell, which serves a purpose at this particular juncture. He says, “Repentance is an effect of faith; for who that believeth not that God exists can have repentance toward God?” If I have proven in the preceding chapter that the believer is a child of God, and Campbell is correct in saying that repentance is an effect of faith, then Campbell and I together have proven that repentance (evangelical) is confined to the children, the family of God. This is exactly our contention. This was completely admitted by Elder C. D. Nichols in the following answers to questions I submitted in debate with him:
Question 1. Does godly sorrow work the repentance of your proposition? Answer. Yes.
Question. 2. Can one have a godly sorrow without a knowledge of God? Answer. No.
Question. 3. What is the condition of the one who knows God? Answer. Saved.
In the above, gentle reader, you see an unqualified admission that one is saved before repentance. If one is saved he is a child of God, which conclusively proves that it is a child of God who repents, and not an alien. He is not repenting, because he is a child of God, but because the light and consciousness of the new life enables him to see the corruption of his past life in nature. The love and grace shed abroad in his heart produces an abhorrence and hatred for sin, and with sorrow for sin and love to God he resolves, and puts into practice the resolution, to refrain from evil, and do service to God which constitutes Bible repentance.
Campbellilsm would not be so detestable in doctrine if they would rightly apply it.
But we continue the quotation from Campbell. “Repentance is sorrow for sins committed; but it is more. It is a resolution to forsake them; but it is more. It is actual ‘ceasing to do evil and learning to do good.’ This is repentance unto life, or what is truly called reformation. True repentance is, then, always consummated in actual reformation of life. It therefore carries in its very essence the idea of restitution.”
Mr. Campbell very orderly mentions the steps of constituents culminating in repentance, which he called reformation. True, repentance is a reformation; but what is reformation? Reformation, let it be borne in mind, always relates to the life already possessed! Reformation is practical betterment, or improvement of a life possessed, but is never a means of procuring a new life. If so Darwinism is true as well as Campbellism, for they are identical on this point.
Men can form and reform good habits in life, but they must first possess the respective life, inasmuch as reformation is improvement, rather than the acquisition of life. Man, in his natural state, may reform and live a better man morally, and thus adorn the life possessed. So may a man in his spiritual state, if he reform his life by closer obedience and thus adorn that life. But the everlasting task our friends have is to show how repentance or reformation is a means in the production of a new order of life. This, I fear, will stand against them, unproven through the cycles of time.
But, Mr. Campbell goes further and says repentance carries in its very essence the idea of restitution. We therefore sum up his idea thus: The alien sinner by repentance restores unto God an equivalent for all that God holds against him for sinning, for that is what restitution is. This, it seems to me, is a very great blunder for a man of scholarship to give to the public. The impossibility of this rests upon the insolvency, and, as Mr. C. has previously stated, the “moral imbecility” of the sinner.
If I had been in the habit of telling my wife a lie ever since we were married, but I today reform and tell her, the remainder of my life, the truth and nothing but the truth, what is the result? Will the truths I tell atone for and make me innocent of the lies already told? Reformation will clean the present and future, but never can cancel back indebtedness.
Suppose I contract a debt of $1000. It is a just debt, but before maturity I become insolvent, financially imbecile. Now, when that debt becomes due, I wish my friends to tell us how the debtor is to pay it?
Their doctrine is, let him become very sorry for that failure, resolve to pay all debts contracted in the future, and carry out the resolution, and that will restore all injury done to his first creditor.
I wish to tell you, if it were possible for a sinner to be saved by that system, he would necessarily be saved with all his sins committed before repentance hanging over him. It is impossible for us to undo a single crime committed, and unless the blood of Christ covers and redeems from that sin, all the reformation on earth could not liquidate a single one.
To be justified, or a son of God, is one thing, and to enjoy all the comforts to which a son may be entitled is another. The blood of Christ applied to our hearts justifies and cleanses from sin, so that there can be no charge laid to God’s elect. It liquidates every trace of obligation in view of our ultimate glorification in heaven. But the happiness of a saint of God on earth depends in a measure upon their repentance—turning from the evil and meekly obeying their Heavenly Father. Their obedience did not make them children, nor does their disobedience destroy their sonship.
I remember, and so do you, gentle reader, when I was a child under the guidance and supervision of my father and mother, and often I would do that which they had forbidden, which would incur their displeasure and punishment. I loved my parents and realized and hated the wrong I had done; hence a sorrow would arise in my heart, accompanied with a resolution to do better, and when that resolution was carried out, everything was peace. That reformation was commendable and my efforts were augmented; but the reformation did not make me a child of that parentage, nor did my disobedience destroy my life relation to them. In all our relations of life every deviation demands a reformation, but the reformation never changes the primary order of life.
Most of the repentance mentioned in the Bible referred to an amendment in form of worship. When God’s people reached the end of types and shadows and came to the church of the first born it was a very hard matter to wean those who had come up under the law from its forms and ceremonies, and hence it was very needful to preach repentance. They having been married to the law, it was difficult to convince them of the death of the law as their husband, and of the necessity them being “married to another, even unto Christ.”
John the Baptist was “sent from God” to “make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Notice he was not sent to prepare, but to make ready those who were prepared. He was to make them ready by teaching them the sublime truth that the kingdom was at hand. Christ was soon coming to plant his church on earth, and would demand that they follow him in the ordinances of his house. By this warning those who were prepared (children of God) could be ready for the Bridegroom, by repenting, forsaking the shadow (law), and adhering to the substance which was Christ.
Hence, John “came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The repentance found in John’s ministry had not the remotest reference to sinners repenting in order to their eternal salvation. Everyone, who is adhering to any form of worship other than the gospel form, needs to repent, not in order to be regenerated, or born again, but that they may become loyal subjects of the church of Jesus Christ. In fact, all of God’s children, who are not in the church, as they hear the gospel admonition should repent, turn from their manner of life and seek and enter the kingdom. On Pentecost, those who were pricked in the heart were commanded to “repent and be baptized” etc.
But notice that the pricking did not prepare the heart, but only evidenced the fact of its former preparation. Neither were the hearts of all present pricked by the apostle’s preaching, for some “mocked, saying, these men are full of new wine.” You cannot by preaching prick a heart of stone, and such is the sinner’s heart. But the heart must be mellowed by a touch of God’s power, and then, and not til then, can a gospel impression be made. It is said that God gave Saul “another heart,” and that he was “turned into another man.” 1 Sam. 10:9.
Job said, “God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me,” Job 23:16. God said by way of promise, “I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh; that they may walk in my statutes and keep mine ordinances and do them,” Ezek. 11:19. This was demonstrated on Pentecost as on other occasions.
Our friends say that the sinner must keep the commandments and ordinances in order to get the new heart, but God says he gives the heart that they may do them. The very fact that Peter’s preaching reached the hearts of some, was proof they had a God-given heart in regeneration, a heart of flesh; and predicated his command to repent on that fact. Remember that the Epistles of Christ as ministered by the apostles were “not upon tables of stone, but upon the fleshly tables of the heart,” 2 Cor. 3:3. So the repentance of Acts 2:38 was not to prepare, but to make ready those God had prepared to live in the church.
Paul while at Athens beheld the city given to idolatry; he saw people worshiping at a human shrine, bowing to the workmanship of their own hands. In the face of all this Paul stated that they were worshiping God, but ignorantly. God had given them a heart of worship, and now gives them the truth by the mouth of Paul, telling them both how he is, and is not worshiped to divine acceptance. This is the beauty of the gospel; it tells the anxious ones just how to serve God. In this connection, comes that wonderfully emphasized text! “And the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent,” Acts 17:30.
We know that the repentance of this text relates to form of worship on the part of God’s people, with no allusion to dead sinners or those who are not exercised by the Spirit of worship. The gospel appeals to every ignorant worshiper to repent. That is all that any man can legitimately draw from the proposition. Remember that every time evangelical repentance is required it is at the hands of a child of God. No matter what his deviation may be, he needs to repent The child of God out of the church needs to repent and be baptized, and live with God’s people, and then to repent of every subsequent sin of his life. (Writings of S. A. Paine; ppg 27-30)