Then shall ye remember your own evil ways . . . and shall loathe yourselves.
True conversion
Israel had fallen from God, had gone after idols, and had sunk into the grossest moral corruptions. Then came the Chaldeans and crushed the nation, and removed it into captivity. However, God promised restoration to His people.
I. What is the result, the very first result of restoration? What happens directly that Israel is cleansed from past defilements, saved from present misery, assured against future fall? There would be exultation, no doubt, triumphant shouting when restored to the promised land and full privileges of being God’s children; but this is observable, that the first and truest emotion called forth is remembrance of past transgression and therefore self-loathing. It is the sight of God’s mercy enduring forever, the sight of the overflowing of the cup of love from His hand that calls forth this intense sorrow, this bitter loathing. There is a German story of a man, who, for the love of gold, sold his heart to a wood demon, and obtained in its place a heart of stone, and a purse which was never empty. He was now rich, but cold-hearted. He ill-treated his wife and caused her death, he drove his old mother from his door, be oppressed the poor, neglected his children, and went over the world seeking selfish pleasure. After many years he returned discontented, but still rich. He could get no real pleasure anywhere. Then in a fit of spleen, he sought the demon of the forest, and by the aid of the Cross recovered his heart of flesh. And the moment it was again in his breast, all that he had done returned to him. He flung himself, in floods of tears, on the ground weeping for his wife, his mother, his children, his friends, for all the wrong he had done, and all the good he had left undone. So it was with Israel. The heart of stone was taken from them, a heart of flesh was given them back, and instantly they remember their evil ways, and loathe themselves in their own sight for their iniquities.
II. This is the picture of true conversion. (S. Baring Gould, M. A.)
The sense of sin
A true sense of sin implies the consciousness of the fact of our sinfulness. Intellectually speaking, at different periods we estimate ourselves very differently. Whilst still young, we were confident and self-sufficient. But years bring experience to all, and sense to some, and looking back on our earlier selves we are distressed: we see how egregiously vain, stupid, and intolerable we were. The older man knows that his younger self was a fool.
1. A true sense of sin implies the consciousness that our sinfulness is personal. “Your own evil ways.” Ezekiel is the prophet of individuality, and here he singles out the individual sinner, seeking to bring home to the consciousness of his personal fault.
(1) Before we become truly awake to sin we delude ourselves by identifying it with nature. Just as certain laws of nature work out eclipses, volcanoes, earthquakes, and blizzards, so we imagine that other laws of nature work out in murderous tempers, greedy appetites, wrathful and defiant lusts and disobediences. We are fond of boasting of our ability to control the laws and forces of nature--taming the lightning, harnessing Niagara, and coercing sun, storm, and stream into our service: intellectual pride gloats over these triumphs; but as soon as it becomes a question of responsibility for our moral faults, we are in haste to abase ourselves, and to plead that natural laws and forces ride rough shod over us.
(2) Again we delude ourselves by charging sin back upon our ancestry. Our failings are inherited, and are not therefore properly ours. Men and women never cordially give the credit of their strength and beauty, their wit and virtue to their ancestry, these they coolly and emphatically claim as distinctively their own; but their anger, pride, gluttony, and selfishness are unblushingly debited to their grandfather. It will not do. Much about us is inherited from man, but a little something about us is inherited from God.
(3) We blind ourselves by blaming society. All men are dominated by the spirit of the age, and the community is blamed for the lapses of the individual. Yet how often do men who argue like this in regard to their sordid and soiled character boast of their social independence and proceed proudly to set the community at defiance! If their commercial advantage or political ideals are at stake, they are good against the world; but when society constrains them to vanity and vice, no choice is left them but meekly to succumb! No, no; our sins are our own.
2. A true sense of sin implies the consciousness of its hatefulness. The text speaks of evil with the sense of horror and loathing--“detestable” things, “iniquities,” “abominations,” “filthiness,” “uncleanness.” How tenderly and apologetically certain writers speak of ghastly vices! The true thinker must know no anger or contempt in the presence of a crime; he must regard it with the indifference with which the chemist regards a poisonous drug, or the naturalist a poisonous flower. Again Bourget writes: “The artist admits that there are virtues which are not lovely, and corruptions which are splendid, or, rather, he cares nothing for virtue or for corruption. He knows that there are beautiful things and things that are ugly, and he knows nothing else.” It is altogether another thing when the soul is convinced of sin and judgment. “Ye shall loathe your own face,” declares the text. As a patient afflicted with a malignant disease shrinks with horror from the sight of his own face when for the first time he looks in the mirror, so does the convicted sinner shrink at the sight of his heart and life as revealed in the light of God’s holiness. “Ye that fear the Lord hate evil.” “I repent and abhor myself in sackcloth and ashes.”
3. A true sense of sin implies the consciousness of its guilt. “And shall judge yourselves unworthy to live.” We judge ourselves, condemn ourselves, pass the sentence of death upon ourselves. We instinctively feel that the difference is simply immeasurable between a mistake and a sin. A man may be liable to punishment for a mistake, as it involves culpable carelessness; but a simple error of judgment, a lapse of memory, an oversight, belongs to a mild category compared with the deliberate breach of the moral law. We feel that the difference is infinite between a misfortune and a sin. When one is overtaken by blindness, crippled by rheumatism, smitten by fever, or shattered by an accident, we do not blame and punish, we pity and help; but a transgression of God’s law awakens quite another order of ideas and sentiments. The penitent stands face to face with the righteous and loving God, and is filled with surprise, grief, and shame. He has done what deserves utterest reprobation, and is worthy of death. The sense of sin is first created by the Divine Spirit causing us to see and feel the purity and love of God, especially as these attributes are revealed in Jesus Christ. This is the golden ground against which sin stands out in terrible relief. And the sense of the folly, shame, and peril of sin becomes more acute all through the regenerate life. (W. L. Watkinson.)
Mistaken notions about repentance
The day of manifested mercy is to be the day of hearty repentance. “Then.” When God loads you with benefits you shall loathe yourselves. Repentance is wrought in the heart by a sense of love Divine. Many are kept from Christ and hope by misapprehensions of this matter. They have--
I. Mistaken ideas of what repentance is.
1. They confound it with--
(1) Morbid self-accusation, which is the fruit of dyspepsia, or melancholy, or insanity. This is an infirmity of mind, and not a grace of the Spirit. A physician may here do more than a divine.
(2) Unbelief, despondency, despair: which are not even a help to repentance, but tend rather to harden the heart.
(3) Dread of hell, and sense of wrath: which might occur even to devils, and yet would not cause them to repent. A measure of this may go with repentance, but it is no part of it.
(4) Satanic temptations. These are by no means like to repentance, which is the fruit of the Spirit.
(5) A complete knowledge of the guilt of sin; which even advanced saints have not yet obtained.
(6) Entire abstinence from all sin,--a consummation devoutly to be wished, but by no means included in repentance.
2. It is--
(1) A hatred of evil.
(2) A sense of shame.
(3) A longing to avoid sin.
3. It is all wrought by a sense of Divine love.
II. Mistaken ideas of the place which repentance occupies.
1. It is looked upon by some as a procuring cause of grace, as if repentance merited remission: a grave error.
2. It is wrongly viewed by others as a preparation for grace; a human goodness laying the foundation for mercy, a meeting of God half way; this is a deadly error.
3. It is treated as a sort of qualification for believing, and even as the ground for believing: all which is legality, and contrary to pure Gospel truth.
4. Others treat it as the argument for peace of mind. They have repented so much, and it must be all right. This is to build our confidence upon a false foundation.
III. Mistaken ideas of the way in which it is produced in the heart.
1. It is not produced by a distinct and immediate attempt to repent.
2. Nor by strong excitement at revival meetings.
3. Nor by meditating upon sin, and death, and hell, etc.
4. But the God of all grace produces it--
(1) By His free grace, which by its action renews the heart (verse 26).
(2) By bringing His great mercy to our mind.
(3) By making us receive new mercy (verses 28-30).
(4) By revealing Himself and His methods of grace (verse 32).
5. Every Gospel truth urges repentance upon the regenerate. Election, redemption, justification, adoption, eternal love, etc., are all arguments for loathing every evil way.
6. Every Gospel privilege makes us loathe sin: prayer, praise, the reading of Scripture, the fellowship of saints, the table of the Lord, etc.
7. Every Gospel hope purifies us from sin, whether it be a hope for more grace in this world, or for glory in the next. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
True repentance
I. The nature of true repentance.
1. True repentance is the gift of God, and the peculiar effect of His Holy Spirit.
2. The grief and self-loathing of true penitents do not flow so much from their feeling that sin is hurtful to themselves, as from the consideration of its own base nature; and especially of the ingratitude which it carries in it towards a kind and merciful God.
3. The soul’s conversion to God is the great introductory blessing which renders all other blessings valuable.
4. As this great and valuable blessing cometh down from the Father of lights, who is the Author of every good and perfect gift, it is therefore to be sought by our humble supplications and prayers (verse 37).
II. To recommend the example of these penitents described in the text to your imitation.
1. Let me call upon you to remember your ways. The neglect of serious consideration is the ruin of almost every soul that perisheth eternally. Consider the various relations in which you have been placed, the special duties which arose from those relations, and the manner in which you have performed them. When by such means you have discovered your own evil ways, then proceed to consider attentively the nature and degree of that evil which is in them. Let it not suffice to know that you have been sinners, without pondering the dreadful malignity and demerit of sin.
2. Loathe yourselves in your own sight, for your iniquities, and for your abominations. Thou art displeased with thine enemies who seek to injure thee; but where is there such an enemy as thou art to thyself? Thou abhorrest him who hath killed thy dearest friend; but where hadst thou ever such a friend as the Lord Jesus Christ, whom, by thy sins, thou hast crucified and slain?
3. Let me conclude with exhorting you to repair to that fountain which is opened for sin and for uncleanness, to that blood which can cleanse you from all sin. (H. Blair, D. D.)
Self-abasement, the sign of a Christian
Bradford, a martyr, yet subscribes himself “A sinner.” “If I be righteous, yet will I not lift up my head”; like the violet, a sweet flower, but hangs down the head. (Thomas Watson.)
