February 9

Repentance

Repent ye. — Mark 3:2

This was John’s gospel. At first it seems very unlike the story of love which Jesus preached, and yet it is part of the same story. Repentance must always come before forgiveness and peace. Perhaps we need to be re minded of this in these days. We are in danger of making salvation too easy a matter and of being altogether too tolerant with ourselves. We forget, some of us, that sin is such a terrible thing, and we are too careless about getting rid of our sins. We misunderstand God’s forgiveness if we think of it merely as an easy forgetting that we have done the wrong thing. Jesus did not come to save us merely front sin’s penalties; he came to save us from the sins themselves, by leading us to forsake them for ever. Unless we repent of our sins we never can have forgiveness.

We must make sure, too, that we do thorough work in our repenting. Repentance is not merely a little twinge of remorse over some wrong thing. It is not simply a gush of tears at the recollection of some wickedness. It is not mere shame at being found out in some meanness or uncleanness or dishonesty. It is the revolution of the whole life. Sins wept over must be forsaken for ever. Repentance is a change of heart, a turning of the face just the other way. It is well for us to make diligent quest to be sure that we always abandon the wrong doing which we deplore, that we quit the evil course which we regret, that we turn away from the sin which we confess.

A good many people get only half the gospel. They talk a great deal about believing, but very little about repenting. It needs to be remembered that a faith which does not lead to genuine repentance is not a faith that saves. He who bewails a sin and confesses it, secretly in tending to return to it again, has no good ground to hope that he is forgiven.