“Testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” – Acts 20:21
C.H. Spurgeon,
The penitent man sees that the greatest offense of all his offenses is that he has offended God. Many of you think nothing of merely offending God—you think much more of offending man. If I call you “sinners” you do not repel the charge. But if I called you “criminals” you would rise in indignation and deny the accusation. A criminal, in the usual sense of the term, is one who has offended his fellow man—a sinner is one who has wronged his God. You do not mind being called sinners, because you think little of grieving God. But to be called criminals, or offenders against the laws of man, annoys you. For you think far more of man than of God.
Yet, in honest judgment, it were better, infinitely better, to break every human law, if this could be done without breaking the Divine Law, than to disobey the least of the commands of God. Know you not, O Man, that you have lived in rebellion against God? You have done the things He bids you not to do and you have left undone the things which He commands you to do. This is what you have to feel and to confess with sorrow. And without this, there can be no repentance.
Near the vital heart of repentance, right in its core, is a sense of the meanness of our conduct toward God. Especially our ingratitude to Him, after all His favor and mercy. This it is that troubles the truly penitent heart most—that God should love so much and should have such a wretched return. Ingratitude, the worst of ills, makes sin exceeding sinful. Sorrow for having so ill requited the Lord is a Divine Grace. A tear of such repentance is a diamond of the first water, precious in the sight of the Lord.
True repentance is also toward God in this respect—that it judges itself by God. We do not repent because we are not so good as a friend whom we admire but because we are not holy as the Lord. God’s perfect Law is the transcript of His own perfect Character and sin is any want of conformity to the Law and to the Character of God. Judge yourselves by your fellow men, and you may be self-content. But measure yourselves by the perfect holiness of the Lord God and oh, how you must despise yourself! There is no deep repentance until our standard is the standard of perfect rectitude, till our judgment of self is formed by a comparison with the Divine Character. When we behold the perfection of the thrice holy Jehovah and then look at ourselves, we cry with Job, “Mine eyes sees You. Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
To sum up—evangelical repentance is repentance of sin as sin—not of this sin, nor of that, but of the whole mass. We repent of the sin of our nature as well as of the sin of our practice. We bemoan sin within us and without us. We repent of sin itself as being an insult to God. Anything short of this is a mere surface repentance and not a repentance which reaches to the bottom of the mischief. Repentance of the evil act and not of the evil heart is like men pumping water out of a leaky vessel but forgetting to stop the leak. Some would dam up the stream but leave the fountain still flowing. They would remove the eruption from the skin but leave the disease in the flesh.
All that is done by way of amendment without a bemoaning of sin because of its being rebellion against God will fall short of the mark. When you repent of sin as against God, you have laid the axe at the root of the tree. He that repents of sin as sin against God, is no longer sporting with the evil but has come to grips with it. Now he will be led to change his life and to be a new man—now, also, will he be driven to cry to God for mercy and in consequence he will be drawn to trust in Jesus. He will now feel that he cannot help himself and he will look to the strong for strength. I can help myself toward my fellow man and I can improve myself up to his standard. But I cannot help myself toward God and cannot wash myself clean before His eyes. Therefore I fly to Him to purge me with hyssop and make me whiter than snow. O gracious Spirit, turn our eyes Godwards and then fill them with penitential tears!
taken from: Two Essential Things
, Sermon No. 2073, March 3rd, 1889.
