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To repent does mean a change of mind; but then
it is a thorough change of the understanding and all that is in the mind, so that it
includes an illumination, an illumination of the Holy Spirit; and I think it includes a
discovery of iniquity and a hatred of it, without which there can hardly be a genuine
repentance. We must not, I think, undervalue repentance. It is a blessed grace of God the
Holy Spirit, and it is absolutely necessary unto salvation.
The command explains itself. We will take, first of all, repentance. It is quite
certain that whatever the repentance here mentioned may be, it is a repentance perfectly
consistent with faith; and therefore we get the explanation of what repentance must be,
from its being connected with the next command, "Believe the gospel." Then, dear
friends, we may be sure that that unbelief which leads a man to think that his sin is
too great for Christ to pardon it, is not the repentance meant here. Many who truly
repent are tempted to believe that they are too great sinners for Christ to pardon. That,
however, is not part of their repentance; it is a sin, a very great and grievous sin, for
it is undervaluing the merit of Christ's blood; it is a denial of the truthfulness of
God's promise; it is a detracting from the grace and favour of God who sent the gospel.
Such a persuasion you must labour to get rid of, for it came from Satan, and not from the
Holy Spirit. God the Holy Ghost never did teach a man that his sins were too great to be
forgiven, for that would be to make God the Holy Spirit to teach a lie. If any of you have
a thought of that kind this morning, be rid of it; it cometh from the powers of darkness,
and not from the Holy Ghost; and if some of you are troubled because you never were
haunted by that fear, be glad instead of being troubled. He can save you; be you as black
as hell he can save you; and it is a wicked falsehood, and a high insult against the high
majesty of divine love when you are tempted to believe that you are past the mercy of God.
That is not repentance, but a foul sin against the infinite mercy of God.
Then, there is another spurious repentance which makes the sinner dwell upon the
consequences of his sin, rather than upon the sin itself, and so keeps him from believing.
I have known some sinners so distressed with fears of hell, and thoughts of death and of
eternal judgment, that to use the words of one terrible preacher, "They have been
shaken over the mouth of hell by their collar," and have felt the torments of the pit
before they went thither. Dear friends, this is not repentance. Many a man has felt all
that and has yet been lost. Look at many a dying man, tormented with remorse, who has had
all its pangs and convictions, and yet has gone down to the grave without Christ and
without hope. These things may come with repentance, but, they are not an essential part
of it. That which is called law-work, in which the sinner is terrified with horrible
thoughts that God's mercy is gone for ever, may be permitted by God for some special
purpose, but it is not repentance; in fact, it may often be devilish rather than heavenly,
for, as John Bunyan tells us, Diabolus doth often beat the great hell-drum in the ears of
the men of Mansoul, to prevent their hearing the sweet trumpet of the gospel which
proclaimeth pardon to them. I tell thee, sinner, any repentance that keeps thee from
believing in Christ is a repentance that needs to be repented of; any repentance that
makes thee think Christ will not save thee, goes beyond the truth and against the truth,
and the sooner thou are rid of it the better. God deliver thee from it, for the repentance
that will save thee is quite consistent with faith in Christ.
There is, again, a false repentance which leads men to hardness of heart and despair.
We have known some seared as with a hot iron by burning remorse. They have said, "I
have done much evil; there is no hope for me; I will not hear the Word any more." If
they hear it it is nothing to them, their hearts are hard as adamant. If they could once
get the thought that God would forgive them, their hearts would flow in rivers of
repentance; but no; they feel a kind of regret that they did wrong, but yet they go on in
it all the same, feeling that there is no hope, and that they may as well continue to live
as they were wont to do, and get the pleasures of sin since they cannot, as they think,
have the pleasures of grace. Now, that is no repentance. It is a fire which hardens, and
not the Lord's fire which melts; it may be a hammer, but it is a hammer used to knit the
particles of your soul together, and not to break the heart. If, dear friends, you have
never been the subject of these terrors do not desire them. Thank God if you have been
brought to Jesus any how, but long not for needless horrors. Jesus saves you, not by what
you feel, but by that finished work, that blood and righteousness which God accepted on
your behalf. Do remember that no repentance is worth having which is not perfectly
consistent with faith in Christ. An old saint, on his sick-bed, once used this remarkable
expression; "Lord, sink me low as hell in repentance; but"—and here is the
beauty of it—"lift me high as heaven in faith." Now, the repentance that
sinks a man low as hell is of no use except there is faith also that lifts him as high as
heaven, and the two are perfectly consistent one with the other. A man may loathe and
detest himself, and all the while he may know that Christ is able to save, and has saved
him. In fact, this is how true Christians live; they repent as bitterly as for sin as if
they knew they should be damned for it; but they rejoice as much in Christ as if sin were
nothing at all. Oh, how blessed it is to know where these two lines meet, the stripping of
repentance, and the clothing of faith! The repentance that ejects sin as an evil tenant,
and the faith which admits Christ to be the sole master of the heart; the repentance which
purges the soul from dead works, and the faith that fills the soul with living works; the
repentance which pulls down, and the faith which builds up; the repentance that scatters
stones, and the faith which puts stones together; the repentance which ordains a time to
weep, and the faith that gives a time to dance— these two things together make up the
work of grace within, whereby men's souls are saved. Be it, then laid down as a great
truth, most plainly written in our text, that the repentance we ought to preach is one
connected with faith, and thus we may preach repentance and faith together without any
difficulty whatever.
Having shown you what this repentance is not, let us dwell for a moment on what it is.
The repentance which is here commanded is the result of faith; it is born at the same time
with faith—they are twins, and to say which is the elder-born passes my knowledge. It
is a great mystery; faith is before repentance in some of its acts, and repentance before
faith in another view of it; the fact being that they come into the soul together. Now, a
repentance which makes me weep and abhor my past life because of the love of Christ which
has pardoned it, is the right repentance. When I can say, "My sin is washed away by
Jesu's blood," and then repent because I so sinned as to make it necessary that
Christ should die—that dove-eyed repentance which looks at his bleeding wounds, and
feels that her heart must bleed because she wounded Christ—that broken heart that
breaks because Christ was nailed to the cross for it—that is the repentance which
bringeth us salvation.
Again, the repentance which makes us avoid present sin because of the love of God who died
for us, this also is saving repentance. If I avoid sin to-day because I am afraid of being
lost if I commit it, I have not the repentance of a child of God; but when I avoid it and
seek to lead a holy life because Christ loved me and gave himself up for me, and because I
am not my own, but am bought with a price, this is the work of the Spirit of God.
And again, that change of mind, that after-carefulness which leads me to resolve that in
future I will live like Jesus, and will not live unto the lusts of the flesh, because he
hath redeemed me, not with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with his own
precious blood—that is the repentance which will save me, and the repentance he asks
of me. O ye nations of the earth, he asks not the repentance of Mount Sinai, while ye do
fear and shake because his lightnings are abroad; but he asks you to weep and wail because
of him; to look on him whom you have pierced, and to mourn for him as a man
mourneth for his only son; he bids you remember that you nailed the Saviour to the tree,
and asks that this argument may make you hate the murderous sins which fastened the
Saviour there, and put the Lord of glory to an ignominious and an accursed death. This is
the only repentance we have to preach; not law and terrors; not despair; not driving men
to self-murder—this is the terror of the world which worketh death; but godly sorrow
is a sorrow unto salvation though Jesus Christ our Lord.
This brings me to the second half of the command, which is, "Believe the gospel."
Faith means trust in Christ. Now, I must again remark that some have preached this trust
in Christ so well and so fully, that I can admire their faithfulness and bless God for
them; yet there is a difficulty and a danger; it may be that in preaching simple trust in
Christ as being the way of salvation, that they omit to remind the sinner that no faith
can be genuine but such as is perfectly consistent with repentance for past sin; for my
text seems to me to put it thus: no repentance is true but that which consorts with faith;
no faith is true but that which is linked with a hearty and sincere repentance on account
of past sin. So then, dear friends, those people who have a faith which allows them to
think lightly of past sin, have the faith of devils, and not the faith of God's elect.
Those who say, "Oh, as for the past, that is nothing; Jesus Christ has washed all
that away"; and can talk about all the crimes of their youth, and the iniquitous of
their riper years, as if they were mere trifles, and never think of shedding a tear; never
feel their souls ready to burst because they should have been such great
offenders—such men who can trifle with the past, and even fight their battles o'er
again when their passions are too cold for new rebellions—I say that such who think
sin a trifle and have never sorrowed on account of it, may know that their faith is not
genuine. Such men as have a faith which allows them to live carelessly in the present who
say, "Well, I am saved by a simple faith"; and then sit on the ale-bench with
the drunkard, or stand at the bar with the spirit-drinker, or go into worldly company and
enjoy the carnal pleasures and the lusts of the flesh, such men are liars; they have not
the faith which will save the soul. They have a deceitful hypocrisy; they have not the
faith which will bring them to heaven.
And then, there be some other people who have a faith which leads them to no hatred of
sin. They do not look upon sin in others with any kind of shame. It is true they would not
do as others do, but then they can laugh at what others commit. They take pleasure in the
vices of others; laugh at their profane jests, and smile at their loose speeches. They do
not flee from sin as from a serpent, nor detest it as the murderer of their best friend.
No, they dally with it; they make excuses for it; they commit in private what in public
they condemn. They call grave offences slight faults and little defalcations; and in
business they wink at departures from uprightness, and consider them to be mere matters of
trade; the fact being that they have a faith which will sit down arm-in-arm with sin, and
eat and drink at the same table with unrighteousness. Oh! if any of you have such a faith
as this, I pray God to turn it out bag and baggage. It is of no good to you; the sooner
you are cleaned out of it the better for you, for when this sandy foundation shall all be
washed away, perhaps you may then begin to build upon the rock. My dear friends, I would
be very faithful with your souls, and would lay the lancet at each man's heart. What is
your repentance? Have you a repentance that leads you to look out of self to Christ, and
to Christ only? On the other hand, have you that faith which leads you to true repentance;
to hate the very thought of sin; so that the dearest idol you have known, whatever it may
be, you desire to tear from its throne that you may worship Christ, and Christ only? Be
assured of this, that nothing short of this will be of any use to you at the last. A
repentance and a faith of any other sort may do to please you now, as children are pleased
with fancies; but when you get on a death-bed, and see the reality of things, you will be
compelled to say that they are a falsehood and a refuge of lies. You will find that you
have been daubed with untempered mortar; that you have said, "Peace, peace," to
yourselves, when there was no peace. Again, I say, in the words of Christ, "Repent
and believe the gospel." Trust Christ to save you, and lament that you need to be
saved, and mourn because this need of yours has put the Saviour to open shame, to
frightful sufferings, and to a terrible death.
III. But we must pass on to a third remark. These commands of Christ are of the most
reasonable character.
Is it an unreasonable thing to demand of a man that he should repent? You have a
person who has offended you; you are ready to forgive him; do you think it is at all
exacting or overbearing if you ask of him an apology; if you merely ask him, as the very
least thing he can do, to acknowledge that he has done wrong? "No," say you,
"I should think I showed my kindness in accepting rather than any harshness in
demanding an apology from him." So God, against whom we have rebelled, who is our
liege sovereign and monarch, seeth it to be inconsistent with the dignity of his kingship
to absolve an offender who expresseth no contrition; and I say again, is this a harsh,
exacting, unreasonable command? Doth God in this mode act like Solomon, who made the taxes
of his people heavy? Rather doth he not ask of you that which your heart, if it were in a
right state, would be but too willing to give, only too thankful that the Lord in his
grace has said, "He that confesseth his sin shall find mercy"? Why, dear
friends, do you expect to be saved while you are in your sins? Are you to be allowed to
love your iniquities, and yet go to heaven? What, you think to have poison in your veins,
and yet be healthy? What, man, keep the thief in doors, and yet be acquitted of
dishonesty? Be stained, and yet be thought spotless? Harbour the disease and yet be in
health? Ridiculous! Absurd! Repentance is founded on the necessity of things. The demand
for a change of heart is absolutely necessary; it is but a reasonable service. O that men
were reasonable, and they would repent; it is because they are not reasonable that it
needs the Holy Spirit to teach their reason right reason before they will repent and
believe the gospel.
And then, again, believing; is that an unreasonable thing to ask of you? For a
creature to believe its Creator is but a duty; altogether apart from the promise of
salvation, I say, God has a right to demand of the creature that he has made, that he
should believe what he tells him. And what is it he asks you to believe? Anything hideous,
contradictory, irrational? It may be above reason, but it is not contrary to reason. He
asks you to believe that through the blood of Jesus Christ, he can still be just, and yet
the justifier of the ungodly. He asks you to trust in Christ to save you. Can you expect
that he will save you if you will not trust him? Have you really the hardihood to think
that he will carry you to heaven while all the while you declare he cannot do it? Do you
think it consistent with the dignity of a Saviour to save you while you say, "I do
not believe thou art a Saviour, and I will not trust thee"? Is it consistent with his
dignity for him to save you, and suffer you to remain an unbelieving sinner, doubting his
grace, mistrusting his love, slandering his character, doubting the efficacy of his blood,
and of his plea? Why, man, it is the most reasonable thing in the world that he should
demand of thee that thou shouldst believe in Christ. And this he doth demand of thee this
morning. "Repent and believe the gospel." O friends, O friends, how sad, how sad
is the state of man's soul when he will not do this! We may preach to you, but you never
will repent and believe the gospel. We may lay God's command, like an axe, to the root of
the tree, but, reasonable as these commands are, you will still refuse to give God his
due; you will go on in your sins; you will not come unto him that you may have life; and
it is here the Spirit of God must come in to work in the souls of the elect to make them
willing in the day of his power. But oh! in God's name I warn you that, if, after hearing
this command, you do, as I know you will do, without his Spirit, continue to refuse
obedience to so reasonable a gospel, you shall find at the last it shall be more tolerable
for Sodom and Gomorrah, than for you; for had the things which are preached in London been
proclaimed in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and in
ashes. Woe unto you, inhabitants of London! Woe unto you, subjects of the British Empire!
for if the truths which have been declared in your streets had been preached to Tyre and
Sidon, they would have continued even unto this day.
IV. But still, to pass on, I have yet a fourth remark to make, and that is, this is a
command which demands immediate obedience. I do not know how it is, let us preach as
we may, we cannot lead others to think that there is any great alarm, that there is any
reason why they should think about their souls now. Last night there was a review
on Wimbledon Common, and living not very far away from it, I could hear in one perpetual
roll the cracks of the rifles and the thunder of cannon. One remarked to me,
"Supposing there really were war there, we should not sit quite so comfortably in our
room with our window open, listening to all this noise." No; and so when people come
to chapel, they hear a sermon about repentance and faith; they listen to it. "What do
you think of it?" "Oh—very well." But suppose it were real; suppose
they believed it to be real, would they sit quite so comfortably? Would they be quite so
easy? Ah, no! But you do not think it is real. You do not think that the God who made you
actually asks of you this day that you should repent and believe. Yes, sirs, but it is
real, and it is your procrastination, it is your self-confidence that is the sham, the
bubble that is soon to burst. God's demand is the solemn reality, and if you could but
hear it as it should be heard you would escape from your lives and flee for refuge to the
hope that is set before you in the gospel, and you would do this to-day. This is
the command of Christ, I say, to-day. To-day is God's time. "To-day if ye will
hear his voice, harden not your heart, as in the provocation." "To-day,"
the gospel always cries, for if it tolerated sin a single day, it were an unholy gospel.
If the gospel told men to repent of sin to-morrow, it would give them an allowance to
continue in it to-day, and that would indeed be to pander to men's lusts. But the gospel
maketh a clean sweep of sin, and demandeth of man that he should throw down the weapons of
his rebellion now. Down with them, man! every one of them. Down, sir, down
with them, and down with them now! You must not keep one of them; throw them down
at once! The gospel challengeth him that he believe in Jesus now. So long as thou
continuest in unbelief thou continuest in sin, and art increasing thy sin; and to give
thee leave to be an unbeliever for an hour, were to pander to thy lusts; therefore it
demandeth of thee faith, and faith now, for this is God's time, and the time which
holiness must demand of a sinner. Besides, sinner, it is thy time. This is the only
time thou canst call thine own. To-morrow! Is there such a thing? In what calendar is it
written save in the almanack of the fool? To-morrow! Oh, how hast thou ruined multitudes!
"To-morrow," say men; but like the hind-wheel of a chariot, they are always near
to the front-wheel, always near to their duty; they still go on, and on, but never get one
whit the nearer, for, travel as they may, to-morrow is still a little beyond them—but
a little, and so they never come to Christ at all. This is how they speak, as an ancient
poet said—
O sons of men, always to be blessed, to
be obedient, but never obedient, when will ye learn to be wise? This is your only
time; it is God's time, and this is the best time. You will never find it easier to
repent than now; you will never find it easier to believe than now. It is impossible now
except the Spirit of God be with you; it will be as impossible to-morrow; but if now you
would believe and repent, the Spirit of God is in the gospel which I preach; and while I
cry out to thee in God's name, "Repent and believe," he that bade me command you
thus to do gives power with the command, that even as Christ spake to the waves and said,
"Be still," and they were still, and to the winds, "Be calm,", and
they were quiet, so when we speak to your proud heart it yields because of the grace that
accompanies the word, and you repent and believe the gospel. So may it be, and may the
message of this morning gather out the elect, and make them willing in the day of God's
power.
But now, lastly, this command, while it has an immediate power, has also a continual
force. "Repent ye, and believe the gospel," is advice to the young beginner,
and it is advice to the old grey-headed Christian, for this is our life all the way
through—"Repent ye, and believe the gospel." St. Anselm, who was a
saint—and that is more than many of them were who were called so—St. Anselm once
cried out "Oh! sinner that I have been, I will spend all the rest of my life in
repenting of my whole life!" And Rowland Hill, whom I think I might call St. Rowland,
when he was near death, said he had one regret, and that was that a dear friend who had
lived with him for sixty years would have to leave him at the gate of heaven. "That
dear friend," said he, "is repentance; repentance has been with me all my life,
and I think I shall drop a tear," said the good man, "as I go through the gates,
to think that I can repent no more." Repentance is the daily and hourly duty of a man
who believes in Christ; and as we walk by faith from the wicket gate to the celestial
city, so our right-hand companion all the journey through must be repentance. Why, dear
friend, the Christian man, after he is saved, repents more than he ever did before, for
now he repents not merely of overt deeds, but even of imaginations. He will take himself
to task at night, and chide himself because he had tolerated one foul thought; because he
has looked on vanity, though perhaps the heart had gone no further than the look of lust;
because the thought of evil has flitted through the mind—for all this he will vex
himself before God; and were it not that he still continues to believe the gospel, one
foul imagination would be such a plague and sting to him, that he would have no peace and
rest. When temptation comes to him the good man finds the use of repentance, for having
hated sin and fled from it of old, he has ceased to be what he once was. One of the
ancient fathers, we are told, had, before his conversion, lived with an ill woman, and
some little time after, she accosted him as usual. Knowing how likely he was to fall into
sin he ran away with all his might, and she ran after him, crying, "Wherefore runnest
thou away? It is I." He answered, "I run away because I am not I; I am a new
man." Now, it is just that, "I am not I," which keeps the Christian out of
sin; that hating of the former "I," that repenting of the old sin that maketh
him run from evil, abhor it, and look not upon it, lest by his eyes he should be led into
sin. Dear friend, the more the Christian man knows of Christ's love, the more will he hate
himself to think that he has sinned against such love. Every doctrine of the gospel will
make a Christian man repent. Election, for instance. "How could I sin," saith
he. "I that was God's favourite, chosen of him from before the foundation of the
world?" Final perseverance will make him repent. "How can I sin," says he,
"that am loved so much and kept so surely? How can I be so villainous as to sin
against everlasting mercy?" Take any doctrine you please, the Christian will make it
a fount for sacred woe; and there are times when his faith in Christ will be so strong
that his repentance will burst its bonds, and will cry with George Herbert—
And all this is because he murdered Christ;
because his sin nailed the Saviour to the tree; and therefore he weepeth and mourneth even
to his life's end. Sinning, repenting, and believing—these are three things that will
keep with us till we die. Sinning will stop at the river Jordan; repentance will die
triumphing over the dead body of sin; and faith itself, though perhaps it may cross the
stream, will cease to be so needful as it has been here, for there we shall see even as we
are seen, and shall know even as we are known.
I send you away when I have once again solemnly declared my Master's will to you this
morning, "Repent ye, and believe the gospel." Here are some of you come from
foreign countries, and many of you are from our provincial towns in England; you came
here, perhaps, to hear the preacher of whom many a strange thing has been said. Well and
good, and may stranger things still be said if they will but bring men under the sound of
the Word that they may be blessed. Now, this I have to say to you this morning: In that
great day when a congregation ten thousand times larger than this shall be assembled, and
on the great white throne the Judge shall sit, there will be not a man, or woman, or
child, who is here this morning, able to make excuse and say, "I did not hear the
gospel; I did not know what I must do to be saved!" You have heard it: "Repent
ye, and believe the gospel." That is, trust Christ; believe that he is able and
willing to save you. But there is something better. In that great day, I say, there will
be some of you present—oh! let us hope all of us—who will be able to say,
"Thank God that ever I yielded up the weapons of my proud rebellion by repentance;
thank God that I looked to Christ, and took him to be my Saviour from first to last; for
here am I, a monument of grace, a sinner saved by blood, to praise him while time and
eternity shall last!" God grant that we may meet each other at the last with joy and
not with grief! I will be a swift witness against you to condemn you if you believe not
this gospel; but if you repent and believe, then we shall praise that grace which turned
our hearts, and so gave us the repentance which led us to trust Christ, and the faith
which is the effectual gift of the Holy Spirit. What shall I say more unto you? Wherefore,
wherefore will you reject this? If I have spoken to you of fables, of fictions, of dreams,
then turn on your heel and reject my discourse. If I have spoken in my own name, who am I
that you should care one whit for me? But if I have preached that which Christ preached,
"Repent ye, and believe the gospel," I charge you by the living God, I charge
you by the world's Redeemer, I charge you by cross of Calvary, and by the blood which
stained the dust at Golgotha, obey this divine message and you shall have eternal life;
but refuse it, and on your heads be your blood for ever and ever!
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