Does Your Mind Need Changing? Repentance Reconsidered -- By: Robert N. Wilkin

Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 11:1 (Spring 1998)
Article: Does Your Mind Need Changing? Repentance Reconsidered
Author: Robert N. Wilkin


Does Your Mind Need Changing?
Repentance Reconsidered

Robert N. Wilkin

Associate Editor
Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Irving, TX

Editor’s note: The following is a revised form of a paper delivered at the March 30-April 1 GES Conference on repentance, held in Grapevine, TX.

I. My Testimony:
Many Changes of Mind Concerning Repentance

While growing up in Southern California, I was heavily influenced by a religious boys’ club that taught an extreme form of Lordship Salvation. Repentance was a key part of my instruction. I was taught and believed that to be saved a person had to turn from his sins and progress in holiness.1 And, if he were fortunate enough to obtain salvation, then he had to maintain a sinless life to stay saved. One sin and salvation was lost, never to be regained.2

Then one day a friend from the club, John Carlson, challenged me with a pointed question: “Is it possible, Bob, that your view of the gospel might not be correct?” I accepted his invitation to go to a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting at the University of Southern California. After the meeting there were people using profanity and smoking.

Because of my past association with the boys’ club, it was unthinkable to me that these people could be Christians!

When I told John about my reservations concerning the spiritual condition of these people, he said, “Well, maybe there is such a thing as Christian growth.” As odd as it might seem, this was a revolutionary thought to me. I thought one had to be good to get saved and perfect to stay saved. To think that a person had to be bad to get saved and then stayed saved even after sinning was mind boggling to me.

Shortly after this I came to believe in Christ for eternal salvation, knowing that I was saved once and for all. I had learned from the Bible that eternal salvation was “not as a result of works, lest anyone should boast.”3

As best as I can recall, I didn’t even think about the issue of repentance when I came to faith—other than the wonderfully insightful comment by my friend John. I imagine if someone had asked me at the time, I would have said, “Paul said we’re saved by grace through faith and that it is not of works lest anyone should boast. If I had to repent to be saved, then I’d be able to boast. Repentance is a part of the Christian life, not something we must do to be saved.” I had changed my mind about repent...

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