Such examples serve as a holy warning to us all, lest we too should only feel an excitement produced by terror, and should find the flame of piety utterly quenched when the cause of alarm is withdrawn. Some of us can trace our first serious thoughts to the bed of sickness, when, in the loneliness of our bedroom, ‘we thought about our ways, and turned our feet to your testimonies’ (Psalm 119:59). But this very circumstance was at the same time a source of doubt, for we said within ourselves, ‘Will this continue when my sickness is removed, or shall I not find that my apathy returns, when again I enter on the business of the world?’ Our great anxiety was not that we might die, but that if we lived, that we would find our holy feelings clearly gone, and our piety evaporated. Possibly our reader is now sick, and this is his trouble: let us help you through it. Of course, the best proof you can have of your own sincerity is that which you will receive when health returns, if you continue steadfast in the faith of Jesus, and follow on to know him.
Perseverance, when the pressure is removed, will discover the reality of your repentance. The natural wounds inflicted by Providence are healed soon after the removal of the rod, and therefore folly is not removed from the heart; but when Jesus strikes us for our sin, the wounds will smart even when the instrumental rod of correction is removed, while ‘Blows that hurt cleanse away evil’ (Proverbs 20:30). We, who had many mock repentances before we really turned to the living God, can now see the main spring of our error. Every thief loves honesty when he finds the jail uncomfortable; almost every murderer will regret that he killed a man when he is about to be executed for his crime: here is the first point of distinction which we beg our reader to observe.
That repentance which is genuine arises not so much from dread of punishment as from fear of sin.
It is not fear of being damned, but the fear of sinning, which make the truly humbled cry out for grace. True, the fear of hell, prompted by the threatenings of the law, do work in the soul much horror and dismay; but it is not hell that appears so exceedingly dreadful, but sin becoming exceedingly sinful and abominable, which is the effectual work of grace. Any man in his right mind would tremble at everlasting burnings, and especially when by his nearness to the grave the heat of hell does, as it were, scorch him; but it is not every dying man that hates sin—no one does so unless the Lord has had dealings with their souls. Say then, Do you hate hell or hate sin most? for, truly, if there were no hell, the real penitent would love sin not one bit more, and hate evil not one speck less. Would you love to have your sin and heaven too? If you would, you do not have a single spark of divine life in your soul, for one spark would consume your love to sin. Sin to a sin?sick soul is so desperate an evil that it would scarcely be straining the truth to say that a real penitent had rather suffer the pains of hell without his sins than enter the bliss of heaven with them, if such things were possible. Sin, sin, sin, is the accursed thing which the living soul hates.
Again: saving repentance will most easily manifest itself when the subjects of our thoughts are most heavenly.
By this we mean, if our sorrow only gushes forth when we are musing upon the doom of the wicked, and the wrath of God, we then have reason to suspect its evangelical character; but if contemplations of Jesus, of his cross, of heaven, of eternal love, of cove nant grace, of pardoning blood and full redemp tion bring tears to our eyes, we may then rejoice that we sorrow after a godly sort. The sinner awakened by the Holy Spirit will find the source of his stream of sorrow not on the thorn?clad sides of Sinai, but on the grassy mound of Calvary. His cry will be, ‘O sin, I hate you, for you murdered my Lord;’ and his mournful dirge over his crucified Redeemer will be in mournful words—
‘Twas you, my sins, my cruel sins,
His chief tormentors were;
Each of my crimes became a nail,
And unbelief the spear;
‘Twas you that pulled the vengeance down
Upon his guiltless head;
Break, break, my heart, oh burst mine eyes,
And let my sorrows bleed.’
You who love the Lord, give your approval to this our declaration, that love melted you more than wrath, that the wooing voice had more affect on you than the condemning sentence, and that hope impelled you more than fear. It was when viewing our Lord as crucified, dead, and buried that we most wept. He with his looks made us weep bitterly, while the stern face of Moses caused us to tremble, but never laid us prostrate confessing our transgression. We sorrow because our offence is against Him, against his love, his blood, his grace, his heart of affection. Jesus is the name which subdues the stubborn heart, if it is truly brought into subjection to the Gospel. He is the rod which brings waters out of the rock, he is the hammer which breaks the rock into pieces.
Furthermore, saving repentance will render the conscience exceedingly tender, so that it will be, pained to the core at the very recollection of the smallest sin.
Natural repentance cries out at a few great sins, which have been most glaring and heinous—and even more so if some visitor points them out as crimes of the blackest colour; but when it has executed one or two of these on the gallows of confession, it is content to let whole hosts of less notorious of fenders escape without so much as a reprimand. Not so the man whose penitence is of divine origin—he hates the whole race of the Evil One; like Elijah he will cry, ‘Let no one escape;’ he will cut up to the best of his power every root of bitterness which may still remain, nor will he willingly harbour a single traitor in his breast. The secret sins, the everyday offences, the slight errors (as the world would say), the harmless follies, the little transgressions, the small faults, all these will be dragged forth to death when the Lord searches the heart with the candle of his Spirit.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
