Steve Brown on repentance

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MarieP

Puritan Board Senior
The SBTS library was given some issues of Steve Brown's Key Life magazine, and the lot fell to me to catalog them (apparently no other library has them!)

A piece of paper fell out of one, and what I read on it really disturbed me. I already was sighing over what I've heard about Brown and Key Life. I googled, and sure enough, it was a quotation from Brown:

“Repentance is so often misunderstood. Repentance is not changing; it is God’s way to change us. The Greek word for ‘repent’ refers to ‘changing one’s mind.’ It isn’t changing one’s behavior as is often taught. If it is that, then there are times we can repent and other times (especially in obsessive or besetting sin) when it is simply impossible.

For years, I taught that repenting was not just asking for forgiveness for spilling the milk… it was getting a mop and cleaning it up, and then going to the store to buy some more milk for the person who owned it. So, because I believed that, I could not repent of some bad stuff in my life and I thereby robbed myself of one of the most important and wonderful teachings of the Bible. God changes us and sanctification is as much a work of God’s grace as is justification.

Thus, I teach that repentance isn’t changing. It is ‘knowing who you are, who God is, what you have done and going to Him with it.’ At that point the ball is in God’s court and He begins an amazing work of the Holy Spirit in making us more and more like Jesus.

If repentance is something different than what I have just described, I don’t have a prayer. Nobody else does either, even if they don’t admit it.”

I'm at a loss for words! How is this considered Reformed in any sense of the word? This is even further afield than what I've heard Tullian say!

What happened to "dependent responsibility"?

And there's a 2nd Commandment violation in half of the several dozen issues we have.
 
Of course, what is missing, at least in this excerpt, as the Spirit makes you more like Jesus,
you clean up the mess you made of someone else's property, go to the store and buy a generous replacement,
ask if there is anything else you can do, pray that the person would prosper, follow up later to see how that person is doing, and look for an opportunity to share the Gospel, later, with that person....

I'm not sure where this person is getting his theology from. It sounds like Contemporary Grace error. It is not from Scripture.
 
It sounds like he is trying to say, 'If you tarry til you're better, you will never come at all.' I don't pretend to understand the full context of these discussions, but that point is a valuable and needful one.
 
Whereas faith believes, repentance acts; perhaps we might call the latter "faith in action." We so closely associate faith and repentance, that they are the "heads and tails" (two sides of one coin) of Conversion.

Question 87. What is repentance unto life?
Answer. Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience.

Repentance is a saving grace and gift from God revealing an essential reorientation of the soul. The grace of repentance manifests through specific turning from-and-to, in comportment with particular awarenesses and holy attitudes and motivations. It is not so much changing, as the change of changes.

I agree with the criticism that the printed commentary sounds reductionist: understanding repentance as pure attitude, mental/soul assent, "knowing" (in his own term). As if it were correct to call mere affirmation of the divine will apart from the actual turning "repentance." I feel as though the author still views repentance totally as a (past or future) accomplishment, of grace, in particulars.

What the author was (apparently) teaching in earlier situations isn't any better, seeing how that turned repentance essentially into a work, of ours, which "rectified" a bad situation. However, leaving the error behind for what sounds like a "let-go-and-let-God" redefinition doesn't do justice to what the grace of God does, in fact, accomplish.

Resuming a "besetting" sin doesn't mean a believer was "unsuccessful" in repenting. No, the believer repented imperfectly and then fell, and so must repent again and again, even all his life. The life of the Christian is the life of daily repentance. The heart that says (acknowledges) it cannot repent of A, B, or C--though it is aware that those things are sin as defined by Scripture--is setting terms for its own compliance. "God, any departure from sin will happen if and when you do more than you have done presently. Teaching me really isn't enough to get me to do more than possibly nod."

True repentance is repulsed the thing that displeases God, even if there is but slow extrication from the pit of its slime. Even if such sin seems to gain an upper hand in the fight, deceives and submits the saint. If repentance is presented as "victory" against sin, then indeed no one "has a prayer." Repentance, in such a case, is far out of reach. But if it is only defined as "attitude adjustment," then it hardly seems worth talking (or praying) about.

:2cents:
 
He also forgot to mention that coming at all is already the powerful work of God begun in us. I had the idea that repentance is single act or a succession of isolated acts, until I was nearly 30: I was telling Ruben about how the quote takes this view after reading it yesterday. Yet he called on people to repent, and did not reduce sanctification to his idea of repentance (repentance in this comment is only a beginning of change -- not just of the mind, but of conformity to Christ). It's better to come at all with our wretched helpless filth about us, and cry out of our depth to God for mercy, than to hang back because we aren't yet fit or able to change -- even able to despise our sin enough. God is our only hope for that, but He hears those who cry to Him. It's good for me to be reminded of that daily. It is too easy to hang back from our Saviour.
 
It is disappointing to discover this man is PCA, and a professor at RTS Orlando.

Contemporary Grace error is sweeping Reformed churches as they exchange the Confessed theology for this kind of easy-believism distortion of the grand meanings in Scripture.

It is being taken seriously by the naive who know not Scripture nor their Confessed theology nor the cost of dying to self. It tickles the ears of the self-seeking. A lot of money is being made on this nonsense.

We have reason to believe God will rebuke it sharply. Let judgment of it begin in the house of God.

1 Peter 4:17

17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
II Peter 2



2 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

2 And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.

3 And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.

4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;

5 And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;

6 And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;

7 And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked:

8 (For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds)

9 The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished:
 
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