Convicted murderer James French, moments before he was electrocuted in the Ohio penitentiary electric chair said to a group of reporters nearby, “Hey Fellas! How about this for a headline for tomorrow’s papers: ‘French Fries!’” Why are a dying person’s last words of interest to so many? Remember in the film Citizen Kane, the last words spoken by the dying publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane – “Rosebud”? Following his death, news reporters scrambled to discover the meaning of his final utterance. For family, the last words of a departed loved one are treasured because they were the last. The apostle Paul had final words to say to a young Ephesian church in (Acts 20:13-38). Like a father to his children, for that was what he was like to them, he utters his final instructions: “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” His official testimony always stressed these two points – repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. They are essential to salvation. Some things may be, but these must be. Certain things are needful to the well-being of a Christian but these things are essential to the very being of a Christian.
There is, of course, a repentance that is not towards God. For some, there is a repentance and sorrow when they are exposed for a wrong doing. They grieved not for the act itself but because they got caught and now must face the opinion of others. For others, there is a repentance which consists in grief because of the painful consequences of sin. The man who has been a spendthrift, a gambler and his money is gone, repents for his foolishness. This is not the repentance which the Spirit of God works in a soul.
True repentance is sorrow for the sin itself – it has not only a fear of the death which is the wages of sin but of the sin which earns the wages.
Repentance and faith must go together to complete each other. Compare them to a door and its frame. Repentance is the door which shuts out sin, but faith is the frame upon which its hinges are fixed.
A door without a frame to hang upon is not a door at all – while a frame without the door hanging to it is of no value whatever.
And these two He has made inseparable – repentance and faith.
Tim Hall is a pastor with Victory Way Church in Quesnel.