21 - Conversion (Faith and Repentance)

 What is true repentance? What is saving faith? Can people accept Jesus as Savior and not as Lord?

In part 21 of our 34-part theology series, we learn about our response to the gospel call. We may define conversion as follows as our willing response to the gospel call, in which we sincerely repent of sins and place our trust in Christ for salvation. Up until this point in our series, it is God alone who has been taking the initiative to reconcile us to Himself in spite of our sin and rebellion. Now, we see that God effects regeneration in us and reconciliation to Himself through our sincere repentance and saving faith. This Doctrine of Conversion is the subject of lesson 21 of 34 lessons on biblical doctrine in this series. Anyone who reads the Bible on a regular basis has begun to develop a “theology” of who God is and what he has revealed of Himself to man down through history. But is it organized to the point where you can confidently say “this is what the Bible teaches” on a particular topic, or do you just base your beliefs on random verses that could well be misunderstood because they are taken out of context? My confidence in going out to share the Gospel with strangers comes largely from my study of “Systematic Theology”, which I’ll define as learning what the whole Bible teaches us about a given topic. I’m confident that I’m not misrepresenting God as revealed in his Word, and I’m confident when people make unbiblical claims about God that challenge my own beliefs. I’m increasingly amazed by the consistency of the Bible, written by so many human authors but without contradiction, that I can only conclude it was written by divine inspiration. I’ve gained so much personally from my systematic study of theology that I’m teaching a 34-week class on it at church, based on Dr. Wayne Grudem’s books “Systematic Theology” and “Bible Doctrine”. I’m excited to dig deeper personally as I prepare the outlines and lessons, and I want to take as many people along with me on this journey as possible. So I am recording the class and posting the videos to my YouTube channel, and making downloadable PDF chapter outlines and audio recordings available on a Google Drive folder as well. Care to join me? Links to my YouTube channel and shared resources are as follows: YouTube Channel: YouTube.com/c/JeffReiman Shared Resources folder: https://tinyurl.com/yxy2kb56