Morning, October 13
Go To Evening Reading
“Godly sorrow worketh repentance.”
2 Corinthians 7:10
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.