Faith and Repentance Inseparable

Faith and Repentance Inseparable
A Sermon
(No. 460)
Delivered on Sunday Morning, July 13th, 1862, by
C. H. SPURGEON,
At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
"Repent ye, and believe the gospel."–Mark 1:15
Our Lord Jesus Christ commences his ministry by announcing its leading
commands. He cometh up from the wilderness newly anointed, like the
bridegroom from his chamber; his love notes are repentance and faith.
He cometh forth fully prepared for his office, having been in the
desert, "tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin"; his loins
are girded like a strong man to run a race. He preacheth with all the
earnestness of a new zeal, combined with all the wisdom of a long
preparation; in the beauty of holiness from the womb of morning he
glittereth with the dew of his youth. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O
earth, for Messias speaketh in the greatness of his strength. He crieth
unto the sons of men, "Repent ye, and believe the gospel." Let us give
our ears to these words which, like their author, are full of grace and
truth. Before us we have the sum and substance of Jesus Christ's whole
teaching–the Alpha and Omega of his entire ministry; and coming from
the lips of such an one, at such a time, with such peculiar power, let
us give the most earnest heed, and may God help us to obey them from
our inmost hearts.
I. I shall commence my remarking that the gospel which Christ preached
was, very plainly, a command. "Repent ye, and believe the gospel." Our
Lord does condescend to reason. Often his ministry graciously acted out
the old text, "Come, now, and let us reason together; though your sins
be as scarlet, they shall be as wool." He does persuade men by telling
and forcible arguments, which should lead them to seek the salvation of
their souls. He does invite men, and oh, how lovingly he woos them to
be wise. "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest." He does entreat men; he condescendeth to become,
as it were, a beggar to his own sinful creatures, beseeching them to
come to him. Indeed, he maketh this to be the duty of his ministers,
"As though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's stead,
be ye reconciled to God." Yet, remember, though he condescendeth to
reason, to persuade, to invite, and to beseech, still his gospel hath
in it all the dignity and force of a command; and if we would preach it
in these days as Christ did, we must proclaim it as a command from God,
attended with a divine sanction, and not to be neglected save at the
infinite peril of the soul. When the feast was spread upon the table
for the marriage-supper, there was an invitation, but it had all the
obligation of a command, since those who rejected it were utterly
destroyed as despisers of their king. When the builders reject Christ,
he becomes a stone of stumbling to "the disobedient"; but how could
they disobey if there were no command? The gospel contemplates, I say,
invitations, entreaties, and beseechings, but it also takes the higher
ground of authority. "Repent ye" is as much a command of God as "Thou
shalt not steal." "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ" has as fully a
divine authority as "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength." Think not, O men,
that the gospel is a thing left to your option to choose it or not!
Dream not, O sinners, that ye may despise the Word from heaven and
incur no guilt! Think not that ye may neglect it and no ill
consequences shall follow! It is just this neglect and despising of
yours which shall fill up the measure of your iniquity. It is this
concerning which we cry aloud, "How shall we escape if we neglect so
great a salvation!" God commands you to repent. The same God before
whom Sinai was moved and was altogether on a smoke–that same God who
proclaimed the law with sound of trumpet, with lightnings and with
thunders, speaketh to us more gently, but still as divinely, through
his only begotten Son, when he saith to us, "Repent ye, and believe the
gospel."
Why is this, dear friends; why has the Lord made it a command to us to
believe in Christ? There is a blessed reason. Many souls would never
venture to believe at all if it were not made penal to refuse to do so.
For this is the difficulty with many awakened sinners: may I believe?
Have I a right to believe? Am I permitted to trust Christ? Now this
question is put aside, once for all, and should never irritate a broken
heart again. You are commanded by God to do it, therefore you may do
it. Every creature under heaven is commanded to believe in the Lord
Jesus, and bow the knee at his name; every creature, wherever the
gospel comes, wherever the truth is preached, is commanded there and
then to believe the gospel; and it is put in that shape, I say, least
any conscience-stricken sinner should question whether he may do it.
Surely, you may do what God commands you to do. You may know this in
the devil's teeth–"I may do it; I am bidden to do it by him who hath
authority, and I am threatened if I do not with eternal damnation from
his presence, for 'he that believeth not shall be damned.'" This gives
the sinner such a blessed permit, that whatever he may be or may not
be, whatever he may have felt or may not have felt, he has a warrant
which he may use whenever he is led to approach the cross. However
benighted and darkened you may be, however hard-hearted and callous you
may be, you have still a warrant to look to Jesus in the words, "Look
unto me and be ye saved all ye ends of the earth." He that commanded
thee to believe will justify thee in believing; he cannot condemn thee
for that which he himself bids thee do. But while there is this blessed
reason for the gospel's being a command, there is yet another solemn
and an awful one. It is that men may be without excuse in the day of
judgment; that no man may say at the last, "Lord, I did not know that I
might believe in Christ; Lord, heaven's gate was shut in my face; I was
told that I might not come, that I was not the man." "Nay," saith the
Lord, with tones of thunder, "the times of man's ignorance I winked at,
but in the gospel I commanded all men everywhere to repent; I sent my
Son, and then I sent my apostles, and afterwards my ministers, and I
bade them all make this the burden of their cry, 'Repent and be
converted everyone of you'; and as Peter preached at Pentecost, so bade
I them preach to thee. I bade them warn, exhort, and invite with all
affection, but also to command with all authority, compelling you to
come in, and inasmuch as you did not come at my command, you have added
sin to sin; you have added the suicide of your own soul to all your
other iniquities; and now, inasmuch as you did reject my Son, you shall
have the portion of unbelievers, for 'he that believeth not shall be
damned.'" To all the nations of the earth, then, let us sound forth
this decree from God. O men, Jehovah that made you, he who gives you
the breath of your nostrils, he against whom you have offended,
commands you this day to repent and believe the gospel. He gives his
promise–"He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved"; and he
adds the solemn threatening–"He that believeth not shall be damned." I
know some brethren will not like this, but that I cannot help. The
slave of systems I will never be, for the Lord has loosed this iron
bondage from my neck, and now I am the joyful servant of the truth
which maketh free. Offend or please, as God shall help me, I will
preach every truth as I learn it from the Word; and I know if there be
anything written in the Bible at all it is written as with a sunbeam,
that God in Christ commandeth men to repent, and believe the gospel. It
is one of the saddest proofs of man's utter depravity that he will not
obey this command, but that he will despise Christ, and so make his
doom worse than the doom of Sodom and Gomorrah. Without the
regenerating work of God the Holy Ghost, no man ever will be obedient
to this command, but still it must be published for a witness against
them if they reject it; and while publishing God's command with all
simplicity, we may expect that he will divinely enforce it in the souls
of those whom he has ordained unto eternal life.
II. While the gospel is a command, it is a two-fold command explaining
itself. "Repent ye, and believe the gospel."
I know some very excellent brethren–would God there were more like
them in zeal and love–who, in their zeal to preach up simple faith in
Christ have felt a little difficulty about the matter of repentance;
and I have known some of them who have tried to get over the difficulty
by softening down the apparent hardness of the word repentance, by
expounding it according to its more usual Greek equivalent, a word
which occurs in the original of my text, and signifies "to change one's
mind." Apparently they interpret repentance to be a somewhat slighter
thing than we usually conceive it to be, a mere change of mind, in
fact. Now, allow me to suggest to those dear brethren, that the Holy
Ghost never preaches repentance as a trifle; and the change of mind or
understanding of which the gospel speaks is a very deep and solemn
work, and must not on any account be depreciated. Moreover, there is
another word which is also used in the original Greek for repentance,
not so often I admit, but still is used, which signifies "an
after-care," a word which has in it something more of sorrow and
anxiety, than that which signifies changing one's mind. There must be
sorrow for sin and hatred of it in true repentance, or else I have read
my Bible to little purpose. In very truth, I think there is no
necessity for any other definition than that of the children's hymn–
"Repentance is to leave
The sins we loved before,
And show that we in earnest grieve,
By doing so no more."
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–
"'I will to-morrow, that I will, I will be sure to do it';
To-morrow comes, to-morrow goes, And still thou art 'to do it';
Thus, then, repentance is deferred from one day to another,
Until the day of death is one, And judgment is the other."
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–
"Oh, who will give me tears?
Come, all ye springs,
Ye clouds and rain dwell in my eyes,
My grief hath need of all the wat'ry things
That nature hath produc'd. Let ev'ry vein
Suck up a river to supply mine eyes,
My weary weeping eyes; too dry for me,
Unless they set new conduits, new supplies
To bear them out, and with my state agree."
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!