Repentance--A Divine Work
"Godly sorrow worketh repentance."
2 Corinthians 7:10
Charles Spurgeon
Genuine,
spiritual mourning for sin is the work of the Spirit of God. Repentance
is too choice a flower to grow in nature's garden. Pearls grow
naturally in oysters, but penitence never shows itself in sinners except
divine grace works it in them. If thou hast one particle of real hatred
for sin, God must have given it thee, for human nature's thorns never
produced a single fig. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh."
True
repentance has a distinct reference to the Saviour. When we repent of
sin, we must have one eye upon sin and another upon the cross, or it
will be better still if we fix both our eyes upon Christ and see our
transgressions only, in the light of his love.
True sorrow for sin
is eminently practical. No man may say he hates sin, if he lives in it.
Repentance makes us see the evil of sin, not merely as a theory, but
experimentally--as a burnt child dreads fire. We shall be as much afraid
of it, as a man who has lately been stopped and robbed is afraid of the
thief upon the highway; and we shall shun it--shun it in
everything--not in great things only, but in little things, as men shun
little vipers as well as great snakes. True mourning for sin will make
us very jealous over our tongue, lest it should say a wrong word; we
shall be very watchful over our daily actions, lest in anything we
offend, and each night we shall close the day with painful confessions
of shortcoming, and each morning awaken with anxious prayers, that this
day God would hold us up that we may not sin against him.
Sincere
repentance is continual. Believers repent until their dying day. This
dropping well is not intermittent. Every other sorrow yields to time,
but this dear sorrow grows with our growth, and it is so sweet a bitter,
that we thank God we are permitted to enjoy and to suffer it until we
enter our eternal rest.
