Repentance can be Viewed as a Homonym of Church

The whole Church has repented, because the called (ecclesia) from The World have turned toward Christ the Caller.  The assembly of the called ones have been called away from The World and toward Christ.  We have been summoned away from The World, and that summoning is irresistible.  Repentance in salvation is irrisistible.

What about the type of repentance that occurs in the life of someone after being born again?  This type of repentance is a mark of salvation, because God makes the saved to gain wider separation from sin - by the end of their lives, even though there might be decades of seeming separation from God in that Christian.  This is sanctification, which is distinct from salvation.  Romans 10:10 makes the distinction with the words, "with the heart, man believes to righteousness, and with the mouth, confession is made to salvation".  The belief in that verse is belief in the Resurrection of our Master Jesus Christ.  He was resurrected, and the same Holy Spirit resurrects us when we are saved; Paul says that we are given grace for our sin, but we shouldn't sin more to get more grace, because sin is not in our new nature, but our new nature is to be led by the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus.

So, the born again Church has already irrevocably repented.  Because we are of the nature of God, we want to do right instead of sin, and so we do, and since we do, it becomes a mark of who is and is not a Christian, but it is not the cause of our Christianity, and it doesn't show itself right away in every Christian.  Even a Christian who is given to some sin when they are dying holds onto Christ - and is held by Christ - in the deepest way that we cannot see, so let God judge our salvation while we righteously (and not on the surface) judge the things that we can discern.

We don't know that a person who is continually sinning is not a Christian!  That situation was handled in the scriptural passages concerning shunning, but as a brother and not an enemy, and Scripture handles our behavior toward these struggling Christians when it says we should forgive those who say "I repent" many times in a single day!  When those hurt us, we forgive them when they try to stop it.  That's the ongoing usefulness of the concept of repentance - not for salvation, but for resistance of sin and for spiritual growth.

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