Charles Spurgeon Collection: Spurgeon - C.H. - Sermons from Mark: 01 MAR 1:15 Faith and Repentance Inseparable
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Charles Spurgeon Collection: Spurgeon - C.H. - Sermons from Mark: 01 MAR 1:15 Faith and Repentance Inseparable
TOPIC: Spurgeon - C.H. - Sermons from Mark (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 01 MAR 1:15 Faith and Repentance Inseparable
Other Subjects in this Topic:
Faith and Repentance
Inseparable
July 13th, 1862
by
C. H. SPURGEON
1834-1892
"Repent ye, and believe the gospel."--Mar_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!
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