Monday, February 21, 2011

Repentance

I am not sure where I found this - its a little strong for my modern sensibilities, but that probably means there is some truth in it ;-).

For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation. 2 Cor. 7:10.

Conviction of sin is best portrayed in the words—

'My sins, my sins, my Saviour. How sad on Thee they fall.'


Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things that ever strikes a person. It is the threshold of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict of sin, and when the Holy Spirit rouses a person's conscience and brings her into the presence of God, it is not her relationship with others that bothers her, but her relationship with God—"against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight." Conviction of sin, the marvel of forgiveness, and holiness are so interwoven that it is only the forgiven man who is the holy man, he proves he is forgiven by being the opposite to what he was, by God's grace. Repentance always brings a man to this point: 'I have sinned.' The surest sign that God is at work is when a man says that and means it. Anything less than this is remorse for having made blunders, the reflex action of disgust at oneself.


The entrance into the Kingdom is through the pains of repentance crashing into a man's respectable goodness; then the Holy Ghost, which produces these agonies, begins the formation of the Son of God in the life. The new life will manifest itself in conscious repentance and unconscious holiness, never the other way about. The bedrock of Christianity is repentance. Strictly speaking, a man cannot repent when he chooses; repentance is a gift of God. The old Puritans used to pray for 'the gift of tears.' If ever you cease to know the virtue of repentance, you are in darkness. Examine yourself and see if you have forgotten how to be sorry.

1 comment:

Stephen Lewis said...

Thank you for this post. Repentance is truly where we meet on Saviour. At His bidding, not at our choosing. Oh how merciful God is to expose our error and give us a chance to turn from it.