11. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven 11. PRESCRIBING SOME MEANS FOR REPENTANCE:
(1) Serious Consideration In the last place I will prescribe some rules or means conducive to repentance. The first means conducive to repentance is serious consideration: “I thought on my ways, and turned my feet toward your testimonies” (Psalms 119:59). The prodigal, when he came to his senses, seriously considered his riotous luxuries; and then he repented. Peter wept when he thought of Christ’s words. There are certain things which, if they were well considered, would be a means to make us break off a course of sinning.
1. Firstly, consider seriously what sin is. Be assured, there is enough evil in sin to make us repent. There are these twenty evils in sin:
(1) Every sin is a recession from God (Jeremiah 2:5). God is the supreme good, and our blessedness lies in union with him. But sin, like a strong bias, draws the heart away from God. The sinner takes his leave of God. He bids farewell to Christ and mercy. Every step forward in sin is a step backward from God: “they have forsaken the Lord, they have gone backward” (Isaiah 1:4). The further one goes from the sun, the nearer he approaches darkness. The further the soul goes from God, the nearer it approaches misery.
(2) Sin is walking contrary to God (Leviticus 26:27). The same word in Hebrew signifies both to sin and to rebel. Sin is opposite to God. If God is of one mind, then sin will be of another. If God says to sanctify the Sabbath, then sin says to profane it. Sin strikes at God’s very being. If sin could help it, God would no longer be God: “Make the Holy One of Israel cease to confront us” (Isaiah 30:11). What a horrible thing this is, for a piece of proud dust to rise up in defiance against its Maker!
(3) Sin is an offense to God. It violates his laws. Here is crimen laesue majestatis (grievous high treason). What greater injury can be given a prince than to trample on his royal edicts? A sinner holds the statutes of heaven in contempt: “they toss your law behind their backs” (Nehemiah 9:26), as if they scorned to look at it. Sin robs God of his due. You injure a man when you do not give him his due. The soul belongs to God. He has a double claim to it: it is his by creation and by purchase. Thus sin steals the soul from God, and gives to the devil what rightly belongs to God.
(4) Sin is profound ignorance. The Schoolmen say that all sin is founded in ignorance. If men knew God in his purity and justice they would not dare go on in a course of sinning: “they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know me, says the Lord” (Jeremiah 9:3). Therefore ignorance and lust are joined together (1 Peter 1:14). Ignorance is the womb of lust. Vapors arise mostly in the night. The black vapors of sin arise mostly in a dark ignorant soul. Satan throws a mist before a sinner so that he does not see the flaming sword of God’s wrath. The eagle first rolls himself in the sand and then it flies at the stag; by fluttering its wings, it dusts the stag’s eyes so that it cannot see, and then it strikes it with its talons. In the same way, Satan, that eagle or prince of the air, first blinds men with ignorance, and then he wounds them with his arrows of temptation. Is sin ignorance? If so, there is great cause to repent of ignorance.
(5) Sin is a piece of desperateness. In every transgression. a man runs an obvious risk of his soul. He treads on the brink of the bottomless pit. Foolish sinner! You never commit a sin, but you do what may undo your soul forever. If someone drinks poison, it is a wonder if it does not cost him his life. One taste of the forbidden tree lost Adam paradise. One sin of the angels lost them heaven. One sin of Saul lost him his kingdom. The next sin you commit, God may clap you up as a prisoner among the damned. You who gallop on in sin, it is a question whether God will spare your life a day longer or give you a heart to repent, so that you are desperate even to a frenzy.
(6) Sin smears with filth. In James 1:21 sin is called “filthiness.” The Greek word signifies the pus of ulcers. Sin is called an abomination (Deuteronomy 7:25); indeed it is plural, abominations (Deuteronomy 20:18). This filthiness in sin is inward. A spot on the face may easily be wiped off; but to have the liver and lungs tainted is far worse. Sin is a pollution that has gotten into the mind and the conscience (Titus 1:15). It is compared to a menstruous cloth (Isaiah 30:22), the most unclean thing under the law. A sinner’s heart is like a field that is spread with dung. Some think that sin is an ornament; but it is rather an excrement. Sin so smears a person with filth that God cannot abide the sight of him: “my soul loathed them” (Zechariah 11:8).
(7) In sin there is odious ingratitude. God has fed you, O sinner, with angels’ food. He has crowned you with a variety of mercies, yet you continue in sin? As David said of Nabal: “in vain I have protected this man’s sheep” (1 Samuel 25:21). Likewise in vain has God done so much for the sinner. All God’s mercies may upbraid, even accuse the ungrateful person. God may say he gave you wit, health, riches, and you employed all these against him: “I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal” (Hosea 2:8); I sent provisions and they served their idols with them. The frozen snake in the fable stung the one who brought it to the fire and gave it warmth.75 So a sinner tries to sting God with his own mercies. “Is this your kindness to your friend?” (2 Samuel 16:17). Did God give you life in order to sin? Did he give you wages in order to serve the devil?
(8) Sin is a debasing thing. It degrades a person of his honor: “I will make your grave; for you are vile” (Nahum 1:14). This was spoken of a king. He was not vile by birth but by sin. Sin blots our name, and taints our blood. Nothing so changes a man’s glory into shame as sin. It is said of Naaman, “He was a great man and honorable, but he was a leper” (2 Kng 5.1). However great a man may be with worldly pomp, if he is wicked, then he is a leper in God’s eye. To boast of sin is to boast of our infamy, as if a prisoner should boast of his fetters or be proud of his halter.
(9) Sin is a damage. In every sin there is infinite loss. No one ever thrived by grazing on this pasture. What does one lose? He loses God; he loses his peace; he loses his soul. The soul is a divine spark lighted from heaven; it is the glory of creation. What can compensate for this loss? (Matthew 16:26) If the soul is gone, then the treasure is gone; therefore there is infinite loss in sin. Sin is such a trade that whoever pursues it is sure to be ruined.
(10) Sin is a burden: “My iniquities have gone over my head: like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me” (Psalms 38:4). The sinner goes around with weights and fetters on him. The burden of sin is always worst when it is felt least. Sin is a burden wherever it goes. Sin burdens God: “I am pressed under you, as a cart full of sheaves is pressed down” (Amos 2:13). Sin burdens the soul. What a weight did Spira feel?76 The conscience of Judas was so burdened, that he hanged himself to quiet his conscience! Those who carry such a burden know what sin is, and will repent.
(11) Sin is a debt. It is compared to a debt of ten thousand talents (Matthew 18:24). Of all the debts we owe, our sins are the worst. With other debts, a sinner may flee to foreign lands, but with sin he cannot. “Where shall I flee from your presence?” (Psalms 139:7). God knows where to find all his debtors. Death frees a man from other debts, but it will not free him from this. It is not the death of the debtor, but of the creditor, that discharges this debt.
(12) There is deceitfulness in sin (Hebrews 3:13). “The wicked man does deceptive work” (Proverbs 11:18). Sin is a mere cheat. While it pretends to please us, it actually beguiles us! Sin does as Jael did. First she brought the milk and butter to Sisera, and then she struck the nail through his temples so that he died (Judges 5:26). Sin first courts, and then it kills. It is first a fox, and then a lion. Whoever sin kills, it betrays. Those locusts in Revelation are the perfect symbols and emblems of sin: “on their heads were crowns like gold, and they had hair like women, and their teeth were like the teeth of lions, and there were stingers in their tails” (Rev 9.710). Sin is like the usurer who feeds a man with money and then makes him mortgage his land. Sin feeds the sinner with delightful objects, and then he makes him mortgage his soul. Judas pleased himself with the thirty pieces of silver, but they proved deceitful riches. Ask him now how he likes his bargain.
(13) Sin is a spiritual sickness. One man is sick of pride, another of lust, another of malice. It is with a sinner as it is with a sick patient: his palate is corrupted, and the sweetest things taste bitter to him. So the word of God, which is sweeter than the honeycomb, tastes bitter to a sinner: “They put sweet for bitter” (Isaiah 5:20). And if sin is a disease, then it is not to be cherished, but rather cured by repentance.
(14) Sin is a bondage. It binds a man as an apprentice to the devil. Of all conditions, servitude is the worst. Every man is bound with the cords of his own sin. “I was held before conversion,” said Augustine, “not with an iron chain, but with the obstinacy of my will.”77 Sin is imperious and tyrannical. It is called a law (Romans 8:2) because it has such a binding power over a man. The sinner must do as sin will have him do. He does not so much enjoy his lusts as serve them, and he will have work enough to do to gratify them all. “I have seen princes going on foot” (Ecclesiastes 10:7); the soul, that princely thing which once sat in a chair of state and was crowned with knowledge and holiness, is now made a lackey to sin and it runs the devil’s errands.
(15) Sin has a spreading malignity in it. It hurts not only a man’s self, but others. One man’s sin may cause many to sin, just as one beacon being lit may cause all the beacons in the country to be lit. One man may help to defile many. A person who has the plague, going into company, does not know how many will be infected by him with the plague. You who are guilty of open sins do not know how many have been infected by you. For all you know, there may be many in hell crying out that they would never have come there if it had not been for your bad example.
(16) Sin is a troublesome thing. It brings trouble with it. The curse which God laid upon the woman is most truly laid upon every sinner: “in sorrow you will bear it” (Genesis 3:16). A man troubles his thoughts with plotting sin; and when sin is conceived, it is born in sorrow.78 Like one who takes a great deal of pain to open a floodgate, when he has opened it, the flood drowns him. So a man beats his brains to contrive sin, and then it troubles his conscience, brings crosses to his estate, and rots the walls and timbers of his house (Zechariah 5:4).
(17) Sin is an absurd thing. What greater indiscretion is there than to gratify an enemy? Sin gratifies Satan. When lust or anger burn in the soul, Satan warms himself at the fire. Men’s sins feed the devil. Samson was called out to be made sport of by the lords of the Philistines (Judges 16:25). Likewise the sinner is the devil’s entertainment. It is meat and drink for him to see men sin. How he laughs to see them risking their souls for the world, as if one should risk diamonds for straws, or should fish for bait with golden hooks. Every wicked man will be indicted as a fool at the Day of Judgment.
(18) There is cruelty in every sin. With every sin you commit, you stab your soul. While you are kind to sin, you are cruel to yourself, like the man in the Gospel who cut himself with stones till he bled (Mark 5:5). The sinner is like the jailer who drew a sword to kill himself (Acts 16:27). The soul may rightly cry out, “I am murdering.” Naturalists say the hawk chooses to drink blood rather than water. So sin drinks the blood of souls.
(19) Sin is a spiritual death: “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Augustine said that before his conversion, reading of the death of Dido, he could not refrain from weeping. “But wretch that I was,” he said, “I bewailed the death of Dido who was forsaken by Aeneas, and I did not bewail the death of my soul that was forsaken by God.” The life of sin is the death of the soul. A dead man has no sense. So an unregenerate person has no sense of God in him (Ephesians 4:19). Persuade him to mind his salvation? To what purpose would you make orations to a dead man? Reprove him for his vice? To what purpose would you strike a dead man? The one who is dead has no taste. Set a banquet before him, and he does not relish it. Likewise, a sinner tastes no sweetness in Christ or in a promise. They are cordials in a dead man’s mouth. The dead putrefy. Martha said of Lazarus, “Lord, by this time he stinks: for he has been dead four days” (John 11:39). How much more may we say of a wicked man who has been dead in sin for thirty or forty years, “by this time he stinks”!
(20) Sin without repentance tends toward final damnation. As the rose perishes by the canker bred in itself, so men perish by the corruptions which breed in their souls. What was once said to the Grecians of the Trojan horse, “This engine is made to be the destruction of your city,” the same may be said to every impenitent person, “This engine of sin will be the destruction of your soul.” Sin’s last scene is always tragic. Diagoras Florentinus would drink poison in jest, but it cost him his life.79 Men drink the poison of sin in merriment, but it costs them their souls: “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). What Solomon said of wine may also be said of sin: at first “it gives his color in the cup. At the last it bites like a serpent, and stings like an adder” (Proverbs 23:31-32). Christ tells us of the worm and the fire (Mark 9:48). Sin is like oil, and God’s wrath is like fire. As long as the damned continue sinning, so the fire will continue scorching, and “who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?” (Isaiah 33:14). But men question the truth of this, and are like impious Devonax who, being threatened with hell for his villainies, mocked it and said, “I will believe there is a hell when I come there, and not before.” We cannot make hell enter into men until they enter into hell.
Thus we have seen the deadly evil in sin which, seriously considered, may make us repent and turn to God. If, for all this, men persist in sin and are resolved to take a voyage to hell, who can help it? They have been told what a soul-damning rock sin is; but if they voluntarily run into it and split themselves, then their blood is on their own head.
2. The second serious consideration is the mercies of God. A stone is soonest broken upon a soft pillow, and a heart of stone is soonest broken upon the soft pillow of God’s mercies: “the goodness of God leads you to repentance” (Romans 2:4). The clemency of a prince sooner causes relenting in a malefactor. While God has been storming others by his judgments, he has been wooing you by his mercies.
(1) What private mercies have we had? What mischiefs have been prevented, what fears have blown over? When our foot has been slipping, God’s mercy has held us up (Psalms 94:18). Mercy has always been a screen between us and danger. When enemies like lions have risen up against us to devour us, free grace has snatched us out of the mouth of these lions. In the deepest waves, the arm of mercy has been under and has kept our head above water. And will not this privative mercy lead us to repentance?
(2) What positive mercies we have had! Firstly, in supplying mercy. God has been a bountiful benefactor: “the God which fed me all my life to this day” (Genesis 48:15). What man would spread a table for his enemy? Yet we have been enemies of God, and he has fed us. He has given us the horn of oil. He has made the honeycomb of mercy drop on us. God has been as kind to us as if we had been his best servants. And will this supplied mercy not lead us to repentance? Secondly, in delivering mercy. When we have been at the gates of the grave, God has miraculously spun out our lives. He has turned the shadow of death into morning, and has put a song of deliverance into our mouth. And will not delivering mercy lead us to repentance? The Lord has labored to break our hearts with his mercies. In Judges, chapter 2, we read that when the angel (which was a prophet) had preached a sermon of mercy, “the people lifted up their voice and wept” (v. 4). If anything moves us to tears, it should be the mercy of God. If these great cable-ropes of God’s mercy will not draw someone to repentance, he is an obstinate sinner indeed.
3. In the third place, consider God’s afflictive providences.
See if our distillery will not drip when a fire is put under it. God has sent us in recent years to the school of the cross. He has twisted his judgments together. He has made good upon us those two threats, “I will be to Ephraim as a moth” (Hosea 5:12). Has not God been so to England in the decay of trading? And “I will be to Ephraim as a lion” (Hosea 5:14). Has he not been so to England in the devouring plague?80 All this while God waited for our repentance. But we went on in sin: “I paid attention and heard, but no man repented of his wickedness, saying, ‘What have I done?’” (Jeremiah 8:6). And lately God has been whipping us with a fiery rod in those tremendous flames in this city,81 which were emblematic of the great conflagration at the last day when “the elements will melt with fervent heat” (2 Peter 3:10). When Joab’s corn was set on fire, he went running to Absalom (2 Samuel 14:31). God has set our houses on fire that we may run to him in repentance. “The Lord’s voice cries to the city: hear the rod and who appointed it” (Micah 6:9). This is the language of the rod, so that we would humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand and “break off our sins by righteousness” (Daniel 4:27). Manasseh’s affliction ushered in repentance (2 Chronicles 33:12). God uses this as the proper medicine for security. “Their mother has played the harlot” by idolatry (Hosea 2:5). What course will God now take with her? “Therefore I will hedge your way with thorns” (Hosea 2:6). This is God’s method, to set a thorn-hedge of affliction in the way. Thus to a proud man, contempt is a thorn. To a lustful man, sickness is a thorn, both to stop him in his sin, and to goad him forward in repentance. The Lord teaches his people as Gideon taught the men of Succoth: “He took the elders of the city, and thorns of the wilderness and briers, and with them he taught the men of Succoth” (Judges 8:16). Here was tearing rhetoric. Likewise God has lately been teaching us humiliation by thorny providences. He has torn our golden fleece from us; he has brought our houses low so that he might bring our hearts low. When will we dissolve into tears if not now? God’s judgments are such a proper a means to work repentance that the Lord wonders at it, and he makes it his complaint that his severity did not break men off from their sins: “I have withheld the rain from you” (Amos 4:7); “I have struck you with blasting and mildew” (Amos 4:9); “I have sent the pestilence among you” (Amos 4:10). But still this is the burden of the complaint, “Yet you have not returned to me.” The Lord proceeds gradually in his judgments. Firstly, he sends a lesser cross to bear; and if that will not do, then a greater cross. He sends one a gentle fit of fever to begin with, and afterwards a burning fever. He sends another a loss at sea, then the loss of a child, and then of a husband. Thus by degrees he tries to bring men to repentance.
Sometimes God makes his judgments go in a circuit, from family to family. The cup of affliction has gone round the nation; all have tasted it. If we do not repent now, then we stand in contempt of God, and by implication we ask God to do his worst. Such a climax of wickedness will hardly be pardoned. “In that day did the Lord God of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning ... And behold joy and gladness ... And it was revealed in my ears by the Lord of hosts, ‘Surely this iniquity will not be purged from you till you die’” (Isa 22.1214). That is, this sin will not be satisfied by sacrifice.
If the Romans severely punished a young man who in a time of public calamity was seen sporting in a window with a crown of roses on his head, then how much sorer will the punishment be for those who strengthen themselves in wickedness and laugh in the face of God’s judgments? The heathen mariners in a storm repented (Jonah 1:14). Not to repent now, and not to throw our sins overboard, is to be worse than the heathens.
4. Fourthly, let us consider how much we will have to answer for at last if we do not repent.
How many prayers, counsels, and admonitions will be added to the score? Every sermon will come as an indictment. As for those who have truly repented, Christ will answer for them. His blood will wash away their sins. The mantle of free grace will cover them. “In those days, says the Lord, the iniquity of Israel will be sought for, and there will be none; and also the sins of Judah, and they will not be found” (Jeremiah 50:20). Those who have judged themselves in the lower court of conscience will be acquitted in the High Court of heaven. But if we do not repent, then our sins must be all accounted for at the last day, and we must answer for them ourselves, with no counsel allowed to plead for us.
O impenitent sinner, think how you will be able to look your judge in the face. The cause you have to plead is damned, and you must surely consider: “What then will I do when God rises up? And when he visits, what will I answer him?” (Job 31:14). Therefore, repent now, or else provide your answers, and see what defense you can make for yourself when you come before God’s tribunal. But when God rises up, how will you answer him?
Chapter Twelve