I was doing some cleaning in my office, putting away loose papers, throwing away needless things, and admiring my many (many!) Christmas decorations, when I came upon a scrap of paper with my handwriting on it. At some point in the distant past I wrote this note to myself, intending to use it in a sermon or devotional. I’m not sure; I have absolutely no memory of it. Here it is…
If you can’t read my writing, you are not alone. Here’s what it says:
A different perspective on the plan of salvation
Repent = you can only repent in the past tense. Repent(ing) asks God to wash you of what you did.
Belief = why you repent
Baptism = when you are washed the first time (puts you in the place where [you can keep repenting, to ask God to wash you of what you did whenever you stumble]).
So, I think I know what I was getting at here…
When you want to be saved, you believe, which motivates your repentance. In other words, belief in Jesus carries with it an understanding of His perfect righteousness and, in turn, our own imperfect unrighteousness. As a result, we almost can’t help but appeal to God, in shame, seeking to be made better. That appeal is (part of) repentance. From there, we are baptized to wash away our sins (Acts 22:16), but what then? What comes next? We live. And while we live, we will invariably make another mistake, we will stumble, and we will fall. What then? Must we be baptized again, over and over, every time we sin? No, repentance is available to us. We use repentance to look back on our sins and appeal to God to undo them. What baptism does is put us in the place where we can go to God, at any time, and have our sins undone with repentance.
I understand the simplicity that comes with describing salvation as a series of steps we climb: belief, to repentance, all the way up to baptism. But it’s an imperfect model. It doesn’t say anything about continued repentance. Sometimes the stair-step model includes something like “live faithfully” at the top, but that phrase doesn’t say anything about what to do when we aren’t living faithfully. That’s where repentance comes in.
Repentance does not need to be viewed solely as “step two” on the journey to salvation. It needs to be seen as much of an ever-present part of our lives as belief or confession.
~Matthew