peopleoftheway, very interesting post...

this past weekend following our Way of the Master Basic Course at my church we had a discussion about repentance... namely - can a person be "willing to turn from sin" before they are born again. This was similar to another discussion at the end of last week on this board.

What's interesting is that Ray Comfort and Jack Chick agree on this definition ("a turning away from sin") of repentance... Even more interesting is that in Sam Waldron's exposition of the 1689 2nd London Confession he uses the same definition as well.

My pastor, a Ruckman supporter, does not like that definition at all. He would be in agreement with you all. He made the reasonable argument that how can a lost person "turn from sin" until they are born again. And a person is not born again until they place their faith in Christ. He even commented that he did not "turn away from sin" until after his conversion.

As I thought about the posts from Luke and others and the various definitions of repentance, I came a conclusion on something... And I would be interested to hear people's opinions...

One can only hold a definition of "turn away from sin" for repentance if they are a Calvinist. Reason being, a Calvinist places regeneration before repentance/faith in the ordo salutis. Therefore, from the Calvinistic perspective repentance is an evangelical grace given by God to a regenerated person. Whereas, the non-Calvinist cannot define repentance to mean a "turning away from sin" because the unregenerate heart would never do so. Therefore, the non-Calvinist would say that a person changes their mind about Jesus and places their faith in Christ, then they are born-again after which they can repent (turn away from sin)... Does this make sense?

By the way, for those not familiar with the ordo salutis, regeneration and repentance/faith occur for practical purposes at very very nearly same time. There is no "gap" of time between regeneration and repentance/faith. The only reason for seperating them is for theological discussion purposes.

For more info on the Ordo Salutis go here => http://www.theopedia.com/Ordo_salutis