05. Chapter Five

Chapter Five 5. THE REASONS ENFORCING REPENTANCE WITH A WARNING TO THE IMPENITENT I proceed next to the reasons which enforce repentance.

1. God’s sovereign command

“He commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). Repentance is not arbitrary. It is not left to our choice whether or not to repent. It is an indispensable command. God has enacted a law in the High Court of heaven that no sinner will be saved except the repenting sinner, and God will not break his own law. Even if all the angels were to stand before God and beg for the life of an unrepenting person, God would not grant it “The Lord God, merciful and gracious, keeping mercy for thousands, will by no means clear the guilty” (Exo 34.67). Though God is more full of mercy than the sun is full of light, yet he will not forgive a sinner while he continues in his guilt: “He will by no means clear the guilty”!

2. The pure nature of God denies communion with an impenitent creature

Till the sinner repents, God and he cannot be friends: “Wash, make yourself clean” (Isaiah 1:16); go, steep yourselves in the brinish waters of repentance. Then, says God, I will parley with you: “Come now, and let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18); but otherwise, do not come near me: “What communion has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14). How can the righteous God indulge someone who still goes on in his trespasses? “I will not justify the wicked” (Exodus 23:7). If God were to be at peace with a sinner before he repents, God would seem to like and approve all that he has done. He would go against his own holiness. It is inconsistent with the sanctity of God’s nature to pardon a sinner while he is still in the act of rebellion.

3. Sinners continuing in impenitence are out of Christ’s commission

See his commission: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted” (Isaiah 61:1). Christ is a Prince and Savior, but not to save men in an absolute way, whether or not they repent. If ever Christ brings men to heaven, it will be through the gates of hell: “God has exalted him to be a Prince and a Savior to give repentance” (Acts 5:31). A king pardons rebels if they repent and yield themselves to the mercy of their prince; but not if they persist in open defiance.

4. We have wronged God by sin

There is a great deal of equity in requiring that we repent. By sin, we have wronged God. We have eclipsed his honor. We have infringed his law. And we should reasonably make reparation. By repentance we humble and judge ourselves for sin. We stamp our seal that God is righteous if he were to destroy us. Thus we give glory to God, and we do what lies in us to do in order to repair his honor.

5. If God saves men without repentance, without discriminating, then he must save all,

…not only men, but devils, as Origen once held; and so consequently the decrees of election and reprobation must fall to the ground. Let all judge how diametrically opposed this is to sacred writ.

There are two sorts of persons who will find it harder to repent than others:

(1) Those who have sat a great while under the ministry of God’s ordinances, but grow no better. The earth which drinks in the rain, and yet “bears thorns and briars, is near to being cursed” (Hebrews 6:8). There is little hope of the metal which has lain long in the fire but is not melted and refined. When God has sent his ministers one after another, exhorting and persuading men to leave their sins, but they settle upon the dregs of formality, and they can sit and sleep under a sermon, it will be hard for these to ever be brought to repentance. They may fear that Christ will say to them as he once said to the fig tree, “Let no fruit grow on you forevermore” (Matthew 21:19).

(2) Those who have sinned frequently against the convictions of the word, the checks of conscience, and the motions of the Spirit. Conscience has stood as the angel with a flaming sword in its hand. It has said, “Do not do this great evil;” but sinners do not regard the voice of conscience. They march on resolvedly under the devil’s colors. These will not find it easy to repent: “They are of those that rebel against the light” (Job 74.13). It is one thing to sin for lack of light, and another thing to sin against light. The unpardonable sin begins here. Men begin by sinning against the light of conscience, and then proceed gradually to spite the Spirit of grace. A Reprehension to the Impenitent

Firstly, it serves to sharply reprimand all unrepenting sinners whose hearts seem to be hewn out of rock, and are like the stony ground in the parable which lacked moisture. This disease, I fear, is epidemic: “No man repented of his wickedness” (Jeremiah 8:6). Men’s hearts are marbled into hardness: “they made their hearts like an adamant stone” (Zechariah 7:12). They are not at all dissolved into a penitent attitude. It is believed by some that witches never weep; I am sure that those who have no grief for sin are spiritually bewitched by Satan. We read that when Christ came to Jerusalem he “upbraided the cities because they did not repent” (Matthew 11:20). And may he not likewise upbraid many now for their impenitence? Though God’s heart is broken with their sins, yet their hearts are not broken. They say, as Israel did, “I have loved strangers, and I will go after them” (Jeremiah 2:25). The justice of God, like the angel, stands with a drawn sword in its hand, ready to strike, but sinners do not have eyes as good as those of Balaam’s ass to see the sword. God pounds on men’s backs, but they do not, as Ephraim did, pound on their thigh (Jeremiah 31:19).40 It was a sad complaint the prophet took up: “You have stricken them, but they have not grieved” (Jeremiah 5:3). That is surely reprobate silver which hardens in the furnace. “In the time of his distress he trespassed still more against the Lord: this is that king Ahaz” (2 Chronicles 28:22). A hard heart is a receptacle for Satan. Just as God has two places he dwells in, heaven and a humble heart, so the devil has two places he dwells in, hell and a hard heart. It is not falling into water that drowns, but lying in it. It is not falling into sin that damns, but lying in it without repentance: “having their conscience seared with a hot iron” (1 Timothy 4:2). Hardness of heart results at last in the conscience being seared. Men have silenced their consciences, and God has seared them. And now, as a father gives up correcting a child whom he intends to disinherit, God lets them sin and does not punish “Why should you be stricken anymore?” (Isaiah 1:5).