Jesus told the man with the withered hand to stretch forth his hand; it was the man's duty to stretch it forth, not to wait for strength from God to do it. Jesus told the man sick of the palsy to take up his bed and walk. It was that man's duty to obey the command, not to pray for power to obey. Depend wholly upon God? Yes, as you depend wholly upon wind when you sail, yet need to keep your sails properly set. “Work out your own salvation” comes first in the apostle's exhortation; “for it is God who worketh in you” follows (Phil. 2:12, 13); which means that our first business is to use our wills in obedience; then we shall find that God has gone before us to prepare us to obey.
Mat. 11:12—“the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force.” Conversion is like the invasion of a kingdom. Men are not to wait for God's time, but to act at once. Not bodily exercises are required, but impassioned earnestness of soul. Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:49-56—“Not injustice and violence, but energetic laying hold of a good to which they can make no claim. It is of no avail to wait idly, or to seek laboriously to earn it; but it is of avail to lay hold of it and to retain it. It is ready as a gift of God for men, but men must direct their desire and will toward it.... The man who put on the wedding garment did not earn his share of the feast thereby, yet he did show the disposition without which he was not permitted to partake of it.”
James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 12—“The two main phenomena of religion, they will say, are essentially phenomena of adolescence, and therefore synchronous with the development of sexual life. To which the retort is easy: Even were the asserted synchrony unrestrictedly true as a fact (which it is not), it is not only the sexual life, but the entire higher mental life, which awakens during adolescence. One might then as well set up the thesis that the interest in mechanics, physics, chemistry, logic, physiology and sociology, which springs up during adolescent years along with that in poetry and religion, is also a perversion of the sexual instinct, but this would be too absurd. Moreover, if the argument from synchrony is to decide, what is to be done with the fact that the religious age par excellence would seem to be old age, when the uproar of the sexual life is past?”
(c) From the fact that the word “conversion” means simply “a turning,” every turning of the Christian from sin, subsequent to the first, may, in a subordinate sense, be denominated a conversion (Luke 22:32). Since regeneration is not complete sanctification, and the change of governing disposition is not identical with complete purification of the nature, such subsequent turnings from sin are necessary consequences and evidences of the first (cf. John 13:10). But they do not, like the first, imply a change in the governing disposition,—they are rather new manifestations of a disposition already changed. For this reason, conversion proper, like the regeneration of which it is the obverse side, can occur but once. The phrase “second conversion,” even if it does not imply radical misconception of the nature of conversion, is misleading. We prefer, therefore, to describe these subsequent experiences, not by the term “conversion,” but by such phrases as “breaking off, forsaking, returning from, neglects or transgressions,” and “coming back to Christ, trusting anew in him.” It is with repentance and faith, as elements in that first and radical change by which the soul enters upon a state of salvation, that we have now to do.
Luke 22:31, 32—“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat: but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not; and do thou, when once thou hast turned again [A. V.: ‘art converted’], establish thy brethren”; John 13:10—“He that is bathed [has taken a full bath] needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit [as a whole].” Notice that Jesus here announces that only one regeneration is needed,—what follows is not conversion but sanctification. Spurgeon said he believed in regeneration, but not in re-regeneration. Second blessing? Yes, and a forty-second. The stages in the Christian life are like ice, water, invisible vapor, steam, all successive and natural results of increasing temperature, seemingly different from one another, yet all forms of the same element.
On the relation between the divine and the human agencies, we quote a different view from another writer: “God decrees to employ means which in every case are sufficient, and which in certain cases it is foreseen will be effectual. Human action converts a sufficient means into an effectual means. The result is not always according to the varying use of means. The power is all of God. Man has power to resist only. There is a universal influence of the Spirit, but the influences of the Spirit vary in different cases, just as external opportunities do. The love of holiness is blunted, but it still lingers. The Holy Spirit quickens it. When this love is wholly lost, sin against the Holy Ghost results. Before regeneration there is a desire for holiness, an apprehension of its beauty, but this is overborne by a greater love for sin. If the man does not quickly grow worse, it is not because of positive action on his part, but only because negatively he does not resist as he might. ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock.’ God leads at first by a resistible influence. When man yields, God leads by an irresistible influence. The second influence of the Holy Spirit confirms the Christian's choice. This second influence is called ‘sealing.’ There is no necessary interval of time between the two. Prevenient grace comes first; conversion comes after.”
To this view, we would reply that a partial love for holiness, and an ability to choose it before God works effectually upon the heart, seem to contradict those Scriptures which assert that “the mind of the flesh is enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7), and that all good works are the result of God's new creation (Eph. 2:10). Conversion does not precede regeneration,—it chronologically accompanies regeneration, though it logically follows it.
1. Repentance.
Repentance is that voluntary change in the mind of the sinner in which he turns from sin. Being essentially a change of mind, it involves a change of view, a change of feeling, and a change of purpose. We may therefore analyze repentance into three constituents, each succeeding term of which includes and implies the one preceding: