Faith and Repentance: Which Comes First?, by Dr. Sinclair Buchanan Ferguson

It might be reasonable to say that public Heralds are the most criticized portion of the Lord’s Church, and sadly it frequently comes from professing Christians. The area that I am most criticized for by professing Christians, is that I often preach repentance. Professing Christians that are opponents of preaching repentance, will even wrongfully call proponents of repentance “false teachers” for allegedly teaching a “works salvation.”

Those charges are often erroneous. I often respond with, “Repentance is not the cause of salvation, repentance is because of salvation, for there is no salvation without repentance.”

Dr. Sinclair B. Ferguson puts it this way, “In grammatical terms, then the words repent and believe both function as a synecdoche — the figure of speech in which a part is used for the hole. Thus, repentance implies faith and faith implies repentance. One cannot exist without the other.”

Though I am not practicing today, as a California State Licensed Private Investigator (CA Lic. 23442), a big part of some investigations where surveillance. I’ve always wondered what a video would tell, if I were to place an opponent to repentance under surveillance for one week (or just one day). One thing’s for sure, the Lord knows.

Nonetheless the following is an excellent article written by the well-noted scholar, Dr. Sinclair B. Ferguson. In the below article Ferguson walks a balanced Theological line parsing this truth.

Faith and Repentance: Which Comes First?