We must now consider this idea of “a command” to repent. A command is rooted in the authority of the one who speaks. A command is something different than a request or invitation. One is at liberty to turn down a request or invitation. People in positions of authority sometimes express their commands in the form of a “polite request”, but we know that it is in reality a command. Commands proceed out of authority. The army sergeant need only declare an order and the soldier must im­mediately carry out that order or command. To command is to speak with God given au­thority. One who commands has the right to punish those who do not obey his com­mand. This is, above all, true of the com­mands of God. His demands are absolute and unconditional. When through the preaching of the gospel. God commands the sinner to repent of his sin, that com­mand is absolute and unconditional. The command to repent is to be complied with on the threat of eternal punishment for the disobedient. Hell is the lot of the impeni­tent. God does not beg, plead, invite, offer, hope or wish that the sinner repent; but He is God and God alone. The God of Scripture, our God and Father for Christ’s sake, is no beggar.

Our second question with which we began our article (Beacon Lights, January 74) and which still awaits an answer is: does God confront every man who ever lived with the demand to repent? I must be careful to point out that the subject un­der discussion is the demand of God that the sinner repent as that demand is part of the gospel of Christ. In the preaching of the gospel there is this demand that the sinner repent. It is true, of course, that even apart from the preaching of the gospel there is this demand that the sinner repent. It is true, of course, that even apart from the preaching of the gospel there is a call of God to the fallen rational moral creature that be turn from his sin, serve and glorify God (Rom. 1:20-22, Rom. 2:14-15). God maintains Himself in His Holiness over against the sinner even apart from the gospel. God does this through the things that are made and by an operation of the Spirit of God, with the result that man is without excuse. But this act of God in the maintaining of Himself in His Holiness over against the sinner through the things that are made is not the subject under dis­cussion here. We wish to limit ourselves to the preaching of the gospel and, in partic­ular, its demand that the sinner repent.

Does God confront every man who ever lived with the demand of the gospel that he repent? The answer is, no! There have been many thousands and millions of rep­robate persons throughout the ages who never heard the command of the gospel of God through Christ — repent! This is just the plain fact of history. Throughout the old dispensation generations of Egyptians, Philistines, Canaanites, Syrians and many nations of the east, lived in sin and corrup­tion and died not having heard the gospel of God. Consider also the circumstance of teeming thousands of Europe and Asia be­fore the gospel was preached among these nations. Of these nations Paul writes in Ephesians 2:12. “That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the com­monwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, no hope, and without God in the world.” Not an enviable circumstance. They perished in their sin.

But how is this sober fact to be ex­plained? Does God deliberately prohibit and preclude the possibility of the preach­ing of the gospel of repentance in some areas of the world at various specific times? Our spiritual fathers explain it by saving that God sends the messengers of the gos­pel, “to whom he will and at what time he pleaseth: by whose ministry men are called to repentance and faith in Christ crucified” (Canons, I, 3). Do you doubt that what the fathers teach is scriptural? Consider the apostle Paul’s experience: “Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia. After they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not.” Here we read that God by His Spirit prohibited Paul from preaching the gospel of repentance at a specific time and in a specific area.

God is Sovereign. He will have His Word preached when and where His people are to be gathered. Paul was led to preach the gospel in Macedonia, for there the Son of God was to gather His Church.

What a tremendous privilege then it is that we may hear the gospel of repentance preached to us week after week. Repent and believe the gospel of Christ! Remem­ber we are Gentiles, of whom Paul had written that, historically, we were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now the gospel is preached and we are given eternal life through Christ! Do you ever give thanks to God for His mercy and grace to us in that the gospel of repentance is preached in our midst? And not only is the gospel preached in our midst, but also God by His Spirit and grace draws us ir­resistibly and infallibly unto Himself through the means of His Word preached. Be thankful!

We have a few more things which I would like to discuss with you about this subject of repentance. Many people claim that the demand of God that the sinner repent is unjust. Especially do they be­come resentful when it is stressed that the one who must repent is dead in sin and unable of himself to do any good and, therefore, incapable of repentance by him­self.

Is the demand for repentance just? In our introductory remarks above we pointed out in what attitude we ask this question? Allow me to repeat: We ask this last ques­tion, of course, in faith acknowledging that God is just in all His works and righteous in all His ways. We may not in pride set ourselves up as judges of the works of God applying our standards of conduct to Him. But we ask this question re the justice of this demand in order that we may lead ourselves into the givens of Scripture on this point.

Let me state the problem briefly, Scrip­ture teaches that man is born in sin (Ps. 51:5), that he is unable to do the good (Rom. 8:7), that the natural man is spirit­ually under the power of the Prince of the power of the air, Satan (Eph. 2:2), that man is by nature spiritually dead in sin and thoroughly corrupt so that there is no good in him (Rom. 12:5, Eph. 2:4, Rom. 3:10ff). Is such a man able to comply with the following demand of God? “Repent, turn from your evil way and turn unto me. Love me, serve and glorify me with the whole of your being and in all what you think, say and do. You answer: “a man can only heed such a command if God Himself cause the dead sinner to live and then cause that living sinner to repent by the power of God’s saving grace in him.” Such a person is a regenerated, called, elect sinner, who walks in the way of daily repentance.

But, what if the sinner is left in the sphere of sin and death? Then the answer is, “no, he is not able of himself to repent.” “Well then,” the flesh asks (yours and mine), “is God just when he demands of the sinner that which he cannot perform?” Is fallen man responsible for his sin when he not only will not but is not able to repent of himself? You understand that in reality the sinner never says: “Oh, I would like to repent, I want to serve God, but I am just not able to do so.” No, the sin­ner’s experience is this, I love the way of violence, I love the world and the things of the world, my desire is to satisfy my every lust and desire: and besides, I find repulsive the way of peace, I despise the cross of Christ, I hate any conception of a righteous and sovereign God. My desire is to seek SELF. But such a sinner, when he stands before the clear testimony of the Word of God, attempts to evade the demands of God by claiming that God’s demand that the dead sinner repent is un­just.

Now there are ways devised by which we can accommodate the objections of your and my flesh and the objections of unbelieving men. Maybe we, too, ought to deny the doctrine of total depravity and take rather the position that man is spirit­ually only sick. Oh, we then must do that very subtly by keeping the term total depravity, but give to that term a dif­ferent meaning and set up a false distinc­tion between total depravity and absolute depravity. By doing that we could deceive ourselves in time and hold to the lie that man is spiritually sick but not dead in sin by nature. Man then would be spiritually healthy enough to repent of his sin by his now strength or with a little nudge from God’s resistible grace. Our flesh can appreciate that kind of “theology.”

The trouble with our little scheme is that Scripture everywhere teaches that man is born dead in sin, so dead that he cannot keep the law of God (Rom. 3:10-18), so dead in sin that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart are only evil con­tinually (Gen. 6:5). Take note, this is the state and condition of every man by nature, of both the elect and reprobate. Repent, God says to that man as he comes under the preaching of the gospel. Is God just? Before you answer listen to Psalm 145:17, “The Lord is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works.” Be still my soul and know that God is God alone.

But how must you and I understand God’s justice in relation to his demand that the guilty sinner repent? Note! The natural man’s present spiritual inability to heed the command of God does not free him from the responsibility to repent from his sin and turn in service to God. Man was created such that he was to serve God with those things God had given him, i.e., the whole of creation. God created man good and up­right in true righteousness, holiness and in true knowledge of His Creator. Man was created in the image of God, and, there­fore, was perfectly able to love and serve and glorify God forever. Read Lord’s Day 3 of the Heidelberg Catechism and Colossians 3:10 and Ephesians 4:24. But man de­spised his excellent gifts given him by God. Man willfully cast himself down into the service of sin. “But being in honor, he (man) understood it not, neither knew his excellency, but willfully subjected him­self to sin, and consequently to death, and the curse, giving ear to the words of the devil. For the commandment of life, which he had received, he transgressed: and by sin separated himself from God, who was his true life, having corrupted his whole nature: whereby he made himself liable to corporal and spiritual death. And being thus become wicked, perverse, and corrupt in all his ways, he hath lost all his excellent gifts . . .” (Belgic Conf., article XIV).

Man died. We died in Adam. Man lost the image of God and turned to serve sin and Satan. But simply because man does not want nor is able to serve God, does that free him from his responsibility to do so? Man is certainly obligated to serve God, for that was the very purpose of his creation. God, in harmony with perfect justice, still has a claim on the depraved sinner. In the preaching of the Word God says to the fallen in sin and, therefore, guilty sinner, “repent!” That demand is most just. It is just, whether you or I like it or not.

My old man of sin in me must learn to be still. “Now we know that what things

soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that (purpose, M.K.) every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (Rom. 3:19).

(To be continued)