Conversion requires repentance, speaker says

By Karen L. Willoughby for UI Connections

SALT LAKE CITY – About 120 people recently learned more than most probably hadn’t considered about biblical conversion.

Southern Baptists and others from across the state of Utah attended a three-session lecture Aug. 22 on the difference between choosing God and God choosing them, and why that difference matters. It was the tenth colloquium sponsored by the five-year-old Salt Lake School of Theology and hosted this time by Risen Life Church.

A colloquium is “an important, high-level discussion,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Guest speaker was Michael Lawrence, Ph.D., author of several theological titles – including Conversion: How God Creates a People – and pastor of Hinson Baptist Church in Portland, Ore.

The evening started with a full pulled-pork dinner, capped by peach cobbler, catered by R&R BBQ and served by Risen Life kitchen volunteers.

A short time of worship, led by Sean Patrick, worship pastor at Risen Life Church, accompanied by his guitar, and a few words of welcome by Salt Lake School of Theology co-founder, Jared Jenkins, Ph.D., senior pastor of Risen Life Church, left the bulk of the three-hour event to Lawrence.

“The act of becoming a Christian is called conversion,” Lawrence began, “but how does someone actually convert? Regeneration precedes conversion, and regeneration is God’s work, not ours.”

Lawrence pulled no punches as he talked. 

“According to the Bible, we cannot change ourselves, but we must change, and so it’s really good news that God has devoted himself to making that change happen. We need to be made new, not nice.”

Lawrence referenced John 3, where Nicodemus wants to be made “nice,” and Jesus knows the Pharisee needs to be made “new.”

“If the point is to be a better person than I was yesterday, why do I need religion?” Lawrence asked rhetorically.

“It’s the Spirit of God who takes all the benefit of what Christ has done – His life, His righteousness, His grace – and applies it to us, changing our nature, making us alive – born again – so that we turn to Christ in faith and love Him and trust Him and follow Him.”

After a 7-minute break, Lawrence began the second session.

“Christian conversion is fundamentally and first God’s work. But how do we know that God has regenerated someone? The Bible is clear that conversion is our work too. 

“We must respond and become Christians. And the way we do that is to repent and believe.”

When people turn repenting and believing into a personal decision, it is nothing more than a religious lifestyle choice, Lawrence continued. True repentance comes from God piercing hearts with an awareness of the result of our sin: Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross.

“The basic idea of repentance is to turn, and that’s exactly what Paul describes in 1 Thess. 1:4-10. A turning away from idols and a turning to God. According to Paul, repentance is fundamentally about a complete reorientation of our hearts, so that we no longer worship our idols, but instead the object of our worship is God.”

An idol is anything we can’t live without, Lawrence said. 

Repentance is not the same thing as penance or moral resolve, Lawrence continued. “Penance is doing good things in an effort to make up for the bad things you did. But even if we clean our behavior up, our hearts can still be devoted to our idols.

“Real repentance will result in a changed life. Repentance is the result of being convicted of the sinfulness of our sin. The only way we can do this is if God gives us a new heart. But when He does, this is what a regenerate heart does: it repents, turns to God to love and serve Him.  

“When we separate repentance from conversion, it’s like we’re giving people a vaccine against the gospel,” Lawrence said.

“What does this sort of person look like, someone who’s been taught to presume they’re saved when they’re not? Someone who wants to go to heaven but has no time for Christians or the local church here on earth. Someone who likes Jesus, but didn’t sign up for the rest: obedience, holiness, discipleship, self-sacrifice.

“To become a Christian is to take up our cross, to take up a life of repentance,” Lawrence said.

“By giving His life as a sacrifice in place of our lives, by standing as our substitute and enduring God’s judgment for our sin, that’s what Jesus accomplished on the cross: a rescue. And to prove that God accepted this sacrifice, Jesus was raised from the dead.

“Too many well-meaning Christians have taken Romans 10:9 – If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. – and reduced it to a formula, believing as long as it’s sincerely said, it works. Friends, that’s not faith, that’s magic. As if the words somehow had power independently.”

Faith is whole-hearted trust and dependence upon God to keep the promises of the gospel, Lawrence continued. This is what a regenerated heart has: belief that shows itself as a changed life. As James said, a faith without works, a faith without a changed life, is a dead faith, no faith at all.

“This is what saving faith is: a dependence that reaches out and clings to Christ and does not let go.”

“Decisions can be harvested, manipulated, easily collected, insincerely made. But not disciples. And friends, church family, that’s what Jesus told us to go and make. Not decisions, but disciples, life-long followers of who endure hardship, take up their cross, and follow Jesus.” 

Lawrence spoke on 1 Peter 2:9-12 for the evening’s final session.

“Not only has God accomplished our salvation, but He also sovereignly applies that salvation to us through His sovereign saving call: He gives us ears to hear it; He gives us a new heart to respond to it; He gives us the twin graces of repentance and faith to grasp hold of it.”

Lawrence describes “graces” as gifts from God. 

“So why exactly then does our theology of regeneration matter? Peter tells us. God did this so that you may declare the praises of Him who called you. That’s ‘you, plural.’ God wants all of you to praise Him for His salvation, but Jesus didn’t just die for you. He died for all His people, and that’s who God wants to hear from.

“If God is going to have a people who praise Him for His salvation, then we need to be a people who have actually experienced that rescue.”

There is no such thing as belonging before believing, Lawrence said. There can be attending before believing, a measure of involvement before believing. But no belonging. And no praising. 

To borrow an illustration from Jonathan Edwards, the speaker said, “if salvation is honey, God doesn’t want people who know that honey is sweet. God wants people who have tasted the sweetness.”

If our churches aren’t filled with believers, then God is robbed of the praise He desires and deserves, Lawrence said.

But it doesn’t just matter for God. “Our theology of regeneration matters for us,” Lawrence continued. 1 Peter 2:9-12 observes that our sinful desires war against our souls.  

“The truth about sin and the Christian is that the guilt of sin is removed, and the power of sin is broken because of the cross. But the presence of sin remains, and it’s not a trivial matter. Sin means to murder us.

“If we’re going to war against the sin that wars against our souls, we need fellow church members who get how hard the fight is, who know how to help and encourage us, who understand the life and death responsibility to spur one another on in faith.

“The presence of sin remains, and we are the walking wounded. We need each other’s help, which means we need churches filled with people who are in the battle with us.” 

Notice verse 12, Lawrence continued. Peter doesn’t want us to battle against sin and live godly lives just for our own sake. He wants us to do so for the world.

“But how will the world see us and believe God if when they look at us we look just like them? If the world looks at the church and just sees a religious version of itself, they can have no confidence that there is a God who can give them hope for something different. 

“If the world looks at the church and sees people posturing and pretending, then no doubt they walk away saying it’s all just a lie. But if the world looks at the church and sees people whose lives are genuinely changed and changing because of the gospel, Peter is confident that some of them will glorify God on that day. 

“Your local church is part of God’s evangelism plan for Utah, and for the world,” Lawrence concluded. “We are the world’s assurance that Jesus got up from the dead. Our genuinely converted lives, our authentically Christian community, our dependence upon grace rather than technique, we are God’s apologetic to unbelief.”

Salt Lake School of Theology depends on funds provided by the UISBC State Missions Offering to support their ministry, including assistance in funding Colloquium discussions that provide deep theological truth made readily available for those in attendance. Thank you for giving to the State Missions Offering and for promoting this offering with your congregation. More information is available at https://uisbc.org/smo