This is a more important question.
In Luke 24:4747And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. (Luke 24:47) you have that “repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." There can be no question about that, but what has enfeebled preaching among ourselves and others is, there has been such a sense that repentance is preliminary to faith.
We are all apt to topple over from one side to another, and so the true place of repentance has become obscured, and its presentation enfeebled.
This is mischievous for the reason that the claim of God is left out or enfeebled by it.
God is now gathering His own in haste, if I may so speak; the Lord is coming, and woe be to us if we say He delays His coming.
God is gathering out hurriedly the joint heirs, and, as of old, so now it is, "save yourselves from this untoward generation"; that was when Jerusalem was going to be destroyed.
He now calls upon "all men everywhere to repent: because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained."
Repentance is God's claim upon people, and if in preaching I merely say, ‘God loves you, and you are a poor sinner, here is grace for you' (and that I surely would say), and then leave repentance out, it is leaving the man's conscience out.
Ques. What is repentance?
The judgment we have passed upon ourselves, and all that we have done, and have been, in God's presence under grace.
Even now, as under grace, there may be a legal repentance.
But if it is put before faith, it unsettles the whole ground we stand upon before God; it is then something that I am doing in my own heart, and that won't do. When I preach repentance, therefore, I must preach it in Christ's name, and so I said, “under grace."
As I get to God, I see what I am in true light, more and more clearly every day. It is infinite love, that, where sin abounded, grace did much more abound; but if I carry God's message to others, I must carry God's claim, and I say, if you don't repent and turn to God, you will be lost.
Yet if I call on people to repent, in the name of Christ, they must believe in Christ in order to repent. As a man you have to say to God and what state are you in before God?
If your heart is not changed, what have you that is at all fit for God?
But if I call upon a man to be in God's presence with God's claim upon him, and that in grace—perfect grace—then if he returns, he returns to God. Repentance ought to be preached as God's claim upon man, but as putting in that claim in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
God calls on all men to repent, but if they do not, they must come under judgment.
You cannot have your eye open on the Lord Jesus Christ, and not hate yourself as a sinner.