2000 – Resolution Against ‘Identificational Repentance’

WHEREAS in recent years, a practice known as “identificational repentance” has become popular which is the practice of individuals or groups who had no responsibility, authority or adequate knowledge repenting for someone else and asking forgiveness for them, and

WHEREAS this practice has been adopted by the current sitting pope when he ‘repented’ for the past “excesses of the Inquisition” by Catholicism without even condemning the atrocities of the Inquisition as a whole, and

WHEREAS though it may fit into the theological inconsistencies of the Mormon mindset which allows for the baptism of the living to secure an atonement on behalf of the dead, it has no place in the Biblical theology of the Fundamental Christian, and

WHEREAS no one may efficaciously repent for someone else but we must all stand before the Thrones in either our own sins or in the imputed righteousness of Christ, and

WHEREAS though it may behoove one to repudiate the sins of one’s fathers, there is no advantage to repent on their behalf since the original persons, in most cases, are long since dead and “it is appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgment.’

WHEREAS identificational repentance becomes, in effect, a mere smokescreen of false piety and pride and thus nothing more than non-sensical word play designed to placate the conscience.

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that The Independent Baptist Fellowship of North America meeting in its tenth annual conference in Sellersville, Pa., on June 20th through the 22nd in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ 2000, hereby calls upon faithful Christians to acknowledge the hypocrisy of “Identificational Repentance” and personally to stand in the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ alone. May we humbly repudiate the sins of our fathers and purpose to learn from the error of their ways. May we in addition cleave to the truths of the Holy Scriptures that they embraced and purpose to stand on their shoulders with even greater clarity as we seek to win souls for Christ and to disciple believers in the Way of Christ.