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One of the most striking facts about the doctrine of repentance in the Bible is that this doctrine is totally absent from John's gospel. There is not even so much as one reference to it in John's twenty-one chapters! Yet one lordship writer states:
"No evangelism that omits the message of repentance can properly be called the gospel, for sinners cannot come to Jesus Christ apart from a radical change of heart, mind, and will."
Answer for yourself: Since John's gospel does omit the message of repentance, are we to conclude that its gospel is not the biblical gospel after all?
The very idea carries its own refutation. The fourth evangelist explicitly claims to be doing evangelism (John 20:30-31). It is not only the theology of the gospel of John that is deficient; it is the theology found in lordship salvation. Indeed, the desperate efforts of lordship teachers to read repentance into the fourth gospel show plainly that they have identified their own fundamental weaknesses. Clearly, the message of John's gospel is incomplete and inadequate without any reference to repentance whatsoever.
In fact it is even plain that John the evangelist avoids the doctrine of repentance at a point where it could have been introduced with ease. The point in question is found in the very first chapter, for it is in this chapter that the fourth evangelist reports a dialogue between John the Baptist and a delegation from the religious leadership of Jerusalem. After listening to John deny that he is either the Christ or Elijah, or "the Prophet," the delegation hears him identify himself as simply a "voice of one crying in the wilderness" an 1:19-23). Exasperated, they pose a new question: "Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?" (Jn 1:25).
As everyone who has read Matthew, Mark and Luke knows, John the Baptist preached a "baptism of repentance" (Mk 1:4; Lk 3:3; see Mt 3:11). At this critical moment in his dialogue with this influential delegation of Jews, we expect John to announce the purpose of his baptizing ministry in terms of repentance.
But this he doesn't do. Instead, he simply says:
I baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know. It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose (1:26-27).
Not a word-not a syllable-about repentance. And if ever there was a perfect place for the evangelist to inject this theme into his gospel, this is the place. But his silence is deafening!
Many Bible scholars have thought-no doubt correctly that the unnamed disciple of John the Baptist who is mentioned in John 1:35-40 was none other than the fourth evangelist himself. But if the evangelist was a personal "pupil" of the Baptist before he attached himself to this new teacher (Yeshua), his silence on the theme of repentance is made all the more amazing.
The silence of chapter one persists to the very end of the book. The fourth gospel says nothing at all about repentance, much less does it connect repentance in any way with eternal life.
Only a resolute blindness can resist the obvious conclusion: The writer of the Gospel of John did not regard repentance as a condition for eternal life where as the other Apostles did! If he had, he would have said so.
Answer for yourself: After all, that's what his book is all about: obtaining eternal life..is it not (Jn 20:30-31)?