Acts 11:18 Commentary (Zane Hodges)

Repentance is truly a misunderstood doctrine. Many well-intentioned people blur the critical distinctions between the doctrines of soteriology and repentance. This can have tragic and fatal results both for the unsaved and the saved.

I disagree that repentance is merely "a change of mind" as some in Free Grace theology have advocated. I believe repentance is a radical turning from sin unto righteous activities (Like John the Baptist preached: The low made high and the high low so that they are on the same level ground, the crooked made straight, and the rough ways smooth).

Yet, repentance is not a condition for eternal life! Please view my comments here that provide an airtight defense and argument for this assertion : Repentance and the Soteriology of the Apostles John and Paul.

Repentance when added as a condition for salvation brings with it fatality and anguish:

1) If one is told that He must repent in order to be saved, this repentance then becomes a condition for eternal life. It is now become impossible for this man to trust fully in Christ for eternal life, for he is told that repentance is a condition! What this does is make salvation contingent partially on him and not fully on Jesus Christ! This leads us to the "You can't be saved unless:" gospel of Lordship Salvation. It becomes one of many personal requirements made necessary for eternal life. To repentance is added commitment, surrender, giving of all, paying the cost, etc. What these do is to take one's eyes off of Jesus and put them on self! This can be fatal, for when the man should be exercising faith and reliance upon Jesus alone for his eternal well-being, he now necessarily considers his own self and actions as necessary provisos in order to attain eternal life.

2) When repentance is taught as a necessary requirement to salvation it can have drastic effects on Christian assurance of salvation. "What if I didn't repent enough?" James Boice says that the least we can give is "all"! This understanding can create debilitating doubts in the regenerate one who was told that salvation is contingent upon us paying the cost and giving everything up for Jesus. When he realizes new areas in his life that he hadn't repented of, he wonders if there are even more areas that he must turn over to Christ as well, and thus is a endless regress of doubts. He was told he had to give all, but he keeps learning how much more of himself he must give and wonders either if he repented enough at his "conversion" or if God had really granted unto him the required repentance.

Doubts of one's salvation can shut down true and meaningful Christian service. I beleive that the foundation for all service to God in the Christian life is the bedrock certainty of one's possesion of eternal life. And when "commitment"/Lordship salvation is preached, it necessarily brings with it fatal blows to certain Christian assurance.

Following is an article on Acts 11:18 from Zane Hodges' book "Harmony with God: A Fresh Look at Repentance" (Redencion Viva 2001, pgs 117-119). This book in its entirety can be found in 3 installments Chafer Theological Seminary Journal - Back Issues

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Finally, it is worth considering the observation made by the believers at Jerusalem after they heard Peter’s account of his visit with Cornelius. Their comment was: Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life (Acts 11:18).

Needless to say this text has been read as if it meant “repentance to eternal life”! It has then been urged that this shows that repentance is necessary for eternal salvation. But this view will not bear scrutiny.

To begin with, the word “eternal” is not really here. Although eternal life can be referred to by the word “life” alone (very notably in John 20:31 and elsewhere in the Fourth Gospel), we cannot make this assumption automatically. The word is a perfectly good Greek word for “life” in the various senses in which the language could use it. We must always interpret in context.

Secondly, if we thought that the reference in Acts 11:18 was a reference to eternal life, then we are left with a surprising and implausible idea in this context. We must infer in that case that the Jerusalem Christians just now realized that Gentiles could be eternally saved! But this is so unlikely as to be almost fantastic.

After all, had not the Lord Himself commanded the Gentile mission in His Great Commission to the apostles (Matthew. 28:19; Mark 16:15)? In fact, even the Old Testament taught that Gentiles could be saved (see the quotations in Romans 15:8–11). In the Jerusalem church, of all places, this truth must surely have been known. Indeed, before he spoke, Peter is not criticized for preaching to Gentiles, but for eating with them (Acts 11:3)!

Peter had treated these Gentiles as though he found them fully acceptable since, apparently after his sermon, he had sat down to eat with them. But this implied that they were also fully acceptable to God, and yet all they had done was to repent of their paganism and believe in Christ. They had not become Jewish proselytes!

But the fact that they were indeed fully accepted by God had been signaled by His giving them, says Peter, the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 11:17). In this respect, they were more readily blessed than the Palestinian Jews had been!

We must remember that the Jews at Pentecost did not get the gift of the Spirit until after baptism. But God did not require even this of Cornelius in order for him to be baptized by God’s Spirit. It was thus evident that the Gentiles had entered the same “life experience” that believing Jews enjoyed, that is, they were fully blessed by the God with whom they were now obviously in harmony. We might say, “They entered into the Christian life.”

Here we need to recall the words of the father of the Prodigal Son. Upon his son’s return home, the experiential separation of father and son had ended, so that his dad can say to his unhappy older boy, Your brother was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found (Luke 15:32, underlining added).

Repentance, we may say, is the wayward sinner’s first step toward “coming to life” after his experience of alienation and separation from God. Experientially this is true both for the unsaved sinner and for the saved sinner. Coming home to God, and enjoying His presence, is a form of resurrection and it is a true and vivid experience of life! As Paul would put it later, For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live (Rom. 8:13, underlining added).

The believers at Jerusalem knew to what the father of the Prodigal Son was referring. But they were surprised that “life” in this sense could be enjoyed totally apart from any conditions related to the Mosaic law. The truth they acknowledged here, however, was later to come under challenge (see the view of the believing Pharisees in Acts 15:5), and it was to be officially resolved by the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:4–29). But at this moment, the believers are delighted and they glorified God (Acts 11:18) because the Gentiles had entered into full and genuine Christian living.