Repent and Believe the Gospel, and Repent and Believe the Gospel, and Repent and Believe the Gospel, and . . .

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel."

Mark 1:14-15

This call to "repent and believe the gospel" was the heart of Christ's message to a dark world drowning in the mire of indifference to sin and unbelief. For His disciples the fruition of this call would unravel itself over the course of three years, as they spent time with their Teacher, at His feet, learning and beholding, learning and beholding etc. The call to repent and believe would find it's culmination in the eerie events of a trial, a beating, and the supernatural consequences of a divine homicide of a slaughtered God Man and His tomb.

For our sake he made him who knew no sin to be sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:21

That is the gift; never ending grace from God towards sinners, through the channel of His crucified Son, is the consequence of trusting in the Cross. I know this . . . don't I? I do, but, the roots go deeper than that for me and for all of us who call ourselves followers of Christ.

Obviously, initial believe upon Jesus is never enough, an initial "beholding" of Jesus as Savior, God and King is not enough, a moment of grace is not enough for a lifetime filled with doubts, failures, and different manifestations of unbelief. We need "grace upon grace" (John 1:16). Like the father of the boy with the unclean spirit, we who believe need daily help in our unbelief (Mark 9:24) and in that we need to "keep with repentance" (Matthew 3:8;Luke 3:8; Acts 26:20).

Jesus' call to "repent and believe the gospel" is not merely a call to be saved, it is a call to be saved and be "being saved" (1 Cor 1:18; 2 Cort 2:15). It is a call "to repent and believe the gospel" and continue to repent and believe gospel. Every one of my failures is filled with shards of unbelief in some facet of the Gospel of Christ. So, in response to my failures I need to repent, turn from them and turn to and believe in the one who has never failed or missed the mark. This is the "rinse and repeat" of my life (and every Christian's life). Repenting and believing in the Gospel is how we deal with the failures of life. If we don't handle them that way, they will deal with us harshly. 

This blog was for me; if you read it and were sharpened, gently rebuked or encouraged then you shared in grace with me.