Q. Does Repentance Come Before Faith?

Ans. There is none without it, for " without faith it is impossible to please God." A man may believe in Christ and yet not know the gospel, because he has not in the full sense repented. Repentance is the soul bowing under the judgment of God as to its condition. Here in Romans it is scarcely named, and yet the whole tenor of the first three chapters is to produce it. "Repent ye and believe the gospel," is in perfect order, for if Christ came to save the lost, one must take one's place as lost in order to find the salvation. Acts 10 illustrates the difference between life and salvation. A man is there shown us who fears God and works righteousness, and is accepted of Him' he is therefore converted, but has yet to hear words where- by he shall be saved. Salvation is a conscious thing. New birth is not necessarily so. A saved man is a different thing from being safe. Salvation is what the gospel only produces, deliverance, conscious liberty, and peace with God.
The law as the " ministration of death and condemnation," is designed to work repentance. The word "ministration" means that it does service in condemning and putting us to death. The law is not dead, but we are. (See margin ver. 6.) If we put ourselves under-it we shall find it living enough. We were married -to. the law naturally. We take the law to be fruitful to God, but find that its effect is the very opposite. All question of justification is settled before this, both of-sins and sin. People say that the law is the strength. of holiness, and that if you are free from it you will go, into unholiness. Scripture says that we are free from it to bring forth fruit to God. You cannot rightly have-Christ for fruitfulness except as dead to the law.