Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.—Psalm 139:23–24

Repentance as Salvation in Christ by Faith

There are three reasons that the preaching of the gospel of gracious salvation in Jesus Christ and faith in that gospel are necessary for true, heartfelt repentance in light of the holy law of God as summarized in the ten commandments.

The first reason is that, according to the word of God, the gift of salvation, including repentance and faith, is tied to the name of Jesus Christ as proclaimed in the gospel (Acts 4:12). The preaching of the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16). The preaching of the gospel is the wisdom of God that makes foolish the wisdom of the world (1 Cor. 1:18–21), so that those who are saved by the gospel know it (the knowledge of experience) as the power of God to their salvation. It is the gospel that brings salvation according to the living and abiding word of God, which word is communicated through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 1:23–25).

The second reason is that the Holy Spirit applies the power of Christ to the elect through the preaching of the gospel. As the Heidelberg Catechism places the doctrines of Lord’s Days 32 and 33 in their proper order, it teaches that true conversion, including repentance, is the result of Christ’s renewing the believer after Christ’s own image by the Holy Spirit. True conversion follows deliverance through faith in Christ alone.

These first two reasons are related to one another because grace must be truly proclaimed to be grace. If repentance were to be out of the law, by the law, or of the nature of the law, by the very definition of the law, repentance must have two aspects that are the opposite of grace. Repentance must then be of man—a human effort or a human achievement—and repentance must merit. The nature of the law is what man must do apart from God. The nature of the law is merit. “Do this and live.”

How important it is to keep repentance away from the law as the law and to see repentance always as the fruit of the grace of the gospel of salvation in Christ alone! If repentance were of the law or according to the law, repentance would always have the same character as the sham of good works according to the law without faith and without the gospel. Repentance according to the law is legalistic and cannot rise to the level of the perfection that the law requires. That kind of repentance must lead to despair or rebellion that will turn repentance into impenitence. Another possibility of repentance in relation only to law is that repentance is merely an outward, superficial sham and self-oriented appearance. It is the fasting that seeks and rests in the praise of men (Matt. 6:16).

It is necessary to issue a sharp warning against legalistic, law-centered, and law-conforming repentance. This is the repentance promoted by hyper-Calvinism. Hyper-Calvinism denies the public, promiscuous preaching of the gospel and legalistically limits the preaching of the gospel, with the summons to believe on Christ, strictly to those who demonstrate some kind of ability to believe the gospel. (In this respect hyper-Calvinism is the mirror opposite of the well-meant offer. While the well-meant offer, building upon the public and promiscuous preaching of the gospel, arrives at a general love of God and a desire to save all those who hear the preaching, hyper-Calvinism demands that the particularity of God’s love in election limit the number of those who are to hear the preaching of the gospel.) How is this limitation of hyper-Calvinism practically applied? The law without the gospel is to be publicly and promiscuously preached. When certain persons under that preaching of the law show signs of distress, being burdened by the law, it is taken as a sign of God’s Spirit working according to the decree of election. So the elect are given repentance by the preaching of the law. After the condition of repentance is met by those distressed persons, only then may they hear the preaching of the gospel. The understanding is that they will then believe in Christ Jesus, as he is offered conditionally to them in the gospel. Practically, then, this doctrine of hyper-Calvinism ascribes repentance to the law separated from the gospel.

The warning must be clearly sounded. This doctrine of hyper-Calvinism is the necessary result of drawing an absolute division between repentance and faith and requiring repentance as a necessary condition to faith. This view of repentance, making it prior to faith, keeps repentance from being a proper repentance before God, such a complete and thorough humbling of the sinner as a sinner before God. Legalistic repentance is the necessary result: shallow, superficial, and pleasing to the flesh.

A very similar kind of repentance is to be seen in the same light, and the same warning must be given about it. That is a repentance that is a substitute for true repentance. It is a legalistic repentance in that it earns the favor of men and is pleasing to the flesh; and because it is false and not from the heart, it is displeasing to God as a sham of true repentance. This repentance is the mere doctrine of repentance. It is a thorough understanding of the true doctrine of repentance. Its language is the language of knowledge. Its language gives all place to the knowledge of sin and the depths of depravity. This mere doctrine of repentance can even confess total depravity and plumb the depths of the law and the application of the law to the human condition according to the consequences of Adam’s fall into original sin. It can know intimately what repentance is as true, heartfelt sorrow for sin and a heartfelt determination no longer to sin. It can lecture on repentance. But it substitutes mere knowledge for reality, intellectual depth for the depths of the heart. What makes this substitute for true repentance so displeasing before God is that it is actually an expression of intellectual pride. It is the opposite of a broken spirit and a contrite heart, which are the well-pleasing sacrifices of God (Ps. 51:17).

So must the gospel of Christ be placed at the center of the public worship of the church of Jesus Christ. So must that gospel occupy the same place in all the work of the church. The gospel must control and be the power of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper. So must the gospel be preached in the church in connection with the administration of the sacraments. So must the Reformed rules be maintained that the sacraments are only to be administered by men ordained to the office of the ministry of the word and sacraments and in the congregation where God’s people are gathered to hear the word of God. That gospel must also control the work of Christian discipline for the care of the sheep of the flock that go astray. Indeed, discipline must be carried out according to the law of God. The sheep are to be cared for by the rule of God’s word alone. The word of man must be rejected as wholly unsuitable for the sheep of God’s pasture. The law of God alone is to be used to show to the sheep where, how, and how far they have strayed. But the gospel must also be brought to bring the sheep to repentance over their sins. The law can never do it. Even the sheep gone astray must know that the power of God’s grace alone is their only restoration to the path of the divine word of truth. Not their sorrow. Not their repentance. Not their confessions.

Assurance for Repentance

The third reason that the preaching of the gospel and faith must come before repentance is the application of the gospel through faith to the consciousness and conscience of the elect child of God. The gospel of the forgiveness of sins gives the child of God the clear, gracious pathway back to his Father in heaven. The gospel of the forgiveness of sins for the sake of Christ alone gives the child of God the blessed knowledge that enables him to take that pathway back to his heavenly Father and to bring before the Father all the sins that he has committed and all his depravity that he carries as the fountain of pollution within. The child of God is assured that forgiveness is his: his to ask, his to receive, his to take with him in his heart and soul through all his life on the earth. He is able to say in the depths of his heart before God, “O wretched man that I am,” at the same time giving thanks to God for divine deliverance through the free gift of justification (Rom. 7:24–25).

At two distinct points the Heidelberg Catechism, in accordance with scripture, identifies the law as the proper means for repentance in relationship to the gospel of salvation in Christ through faith. In Lord’s Day 1 the believer makes his confession that his only comfort is belonging to Jesus Christ in life and in death. Immediately following that glorious, full confession, the Heidelberg Catechism states what is necessary for the believer to know in order to live and die happily in that comfort: “how great my sins and miseries are” (Confessions and Church Order, 83–84). The source of that knowledge, according to the following question and answer, is the law of God. This is the law that is identified as God’s moral law according to its summary given by Christ in Matthew 22:37–39. The knowledge of sin and misery according to the law of God follows upon faith’s confession of comfort. The comfort of the gospel of peace with God through Christ alone is that which enables the believer to explore the depths of his misery before God. It enables the believer to confess the depths of all his depravity before God. It enables him to confess his most heinous sins before God. The child of God knows that by the righteousness of Christ he is justified and forgiven.

In Lord’s Day 44 the Heidelberg Catechism makes the second distinct point. Why is the law to be “so strictly preached” to the believer in Jesus Christ? This question appears in the middle of the last section of the Heidelberg Catechism. It is asked of the believer who is delivered from his sins and miseries by the righteousness of Christ. It is asked of the believer who is fully conscious of his deliverance. It is asked of him in his walk of thankfulness to God for salvation. It is asked of the believer as he comes to the Lord’s house to gather with the company of the redeemed to hear God’s law strictly preached.

This first reason for the strict preaching of the law is so “that all our lifetime we may learn more and more to know our sinful nature, and thus become the more earnest in seeking the remission of sin and righteousness in Christ” (A 115, in Confessions and Church Order, 134). This reason for the strict preaching of the law of God is for the greater knowledge of the believer’s sinful nature. The believer, given the gift of faith by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, is graciously given the law for his help. He is to attend to the strict preaching of the law. His attendance is to know the law in its application to him. God’s law does not show the believer what kind of progress he has made. The law does not affirm how good a Christian he is. The Catechism’s point about the strict preaching of God’s law is to give the believer a greater understanding of his sin. With the gospel of Christ in his heart by faith, this knowledge does not bring about the believer’s condemnation. Nor does it lead him to doubt his salvation. The purpose of the law is not wrath but grace, to lead the believer again to the cross. The law’s purpose is to make the believer “the more earnest in seeking the remission of sin and righteousness of Christ.”

This same purpose of the law is evident in the Form for the Administration of Baptism. This form expresses the doctrine of holy baptism this way: since we have our baptism as an undoubted seal and testimony that we have an eternal covenant of grace with God, we are led not to carnal security in sin nor to despair over sin but to know that we always have forgiveness with God. Since by their baptism believers are to know that this covenant of grace is unconditional, this knowledge is their admonition and assurance that they will always find a God whose mercy is infinite, who is ready to forgive their sins and assure them of their pardon.

It is most striking that the first point of examination undertaken by believers before coming to the Lord’s supper is of the knowledge of their sins. “Every one [must] consider by himself his sins and the curse due to him for them, to the end that he may abhor and humble himself before God” (Form for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper, in Confessions and Church Order, 268). It is important that this specific point of knowledge stands in the service of coming to the table of the Lord to partake of the signs and seals of the body and blood of Christ. This examination is undertaken by the believer, exercising himself in Spirit-wrought faith, for the purpose of coming to the table of the Lord to be confirmed in the knowledge of his salvation.

Freed by the Gospel to Repent

The gospel gives this confidence of faith in the grace of God to his people in Christ. In this confidence they are to know themselves thoroughly in the light of God’s holy law. In this confidence they are to come to their merciful God in all the brokenness of their hearts over their sins and depravity.

True faith, so formed in the heart and soul of the believer by the work of the Spirit through the gospel of Christ, is all the strength of true repentance over sin. This true faith will refuse to come before God for forgiveness with vain, formal words upon the lips. This true faith will refuse to hide itself in mere assertions of the doctrine of repentance. This true faith, for the sake of the battle against sin, expresses itself in the prayer of Psalm 139:23: “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts.” True faith expresses its praise of God’s law for its ability to show what lies within. “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word” (119:9).

The assurance of God’s mercy from the gospel applied to his heart by the power of the Spirit is the confidence that allows the believer to plumb the depths of his heart and soul. He has the blessed assurance that, however deep he goes and whatever he sees there, he has the blood of Christ throughout his nature for its cleansing. It is his blessedness to know that, whatever filth he finds within himself with the light of God’s law, the gospel is with him to assure him that God will surely and certainly pardon it for the sake of Christ’s righteousness alone as he confesses that filth to God.

By the power of the gospel the believer is free to discover his sins. He is free to own them entirely and wholly before God. He is freed from the need to make excuses. He is freed from the need to diminish the heinousness of his sins or to diminish the accursedness of his guilt for his sins. He is free to be wholly broken in heart and wholly cast down before his God in Christ. He is free to lay hold on forgiveness without any ground in himself. He does not feel the need to declare before God anything about his confession of sin being meritorious or being the only way of receiving forgiveness. He has the mercy of God in all its glory by the cross of Jesus Christ proclaimed to him in the gospel of Christ. The believer has that mercy by faith alone in Christ alone.

This same knowledge of the gospel places the believing child of God in the proper frame of mind to take up the bitter fight against sin. His beginning point must be the same for justification as for sanctification: the cross of Christ proclaimed in the gospel. By faith the believing child of God is brought not just before the mercy of God promised in God’s word but also before the cross of Christ by faith, to know from that sacrifice his forgiveness of sins in the clearest and most direct way. By the preaching of that same gospel, the apostle Paul wrote about the churches of Galatia, “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you” (Gal. 3:1). The cross of Christ, seen and known by faith, is the seal and testimony of the forgiveness of sins. That same cross is also the power of the mortification of the old man, the power of true conversion. As proclaimed in the gospel, that sacrifice is the power to hate sin more and more and the power to fight against it in the power of the Spirit of Christ.

In light of the glorious gospel of the forgiveness of sins by the abundant mercy of God in Christ Jesus, Psalm 139 is of great value in repentance. This word of God leads the child of God on a journey first through himself, then through heaven and hell, through “the uttermost parts of the sea” and the depths of darkness, and then again through the believer’s frame from beginning to end. The result of this journey is an appeal to God, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me” (vv. 23–24).

How can this prayer be raised by the believer? How can he pray this from the heart? How can he so openly plead with God to turn him inside out, to show him everything about himself? How can he so zealously seek the application to himself of the perfect law of the holy and righteous God, and that as the work of God himself?

Only because the believer has the ground of the prayer that ends the psalm: “and lead me in the way everlasting.” Not in himself, not in his repentance, not in his confession, and not in the law of God. Only in Christ, in whom is all the righteousness of the law for justification. Only in Christ, who has removed all the curse and condemnation of the law by his sacrifice on the cross.