Repentance

This is the great chapter of gospel invitation. How free! How full! How plain and pressing are the calls to receive grace!

Yet the necessity of repentance, in its most practical form, is not cast into the background. Turning, or conversion, is insisted on.

Gospel provisions are presented freely (verses 1 and 2).

A Savior is provided and proclaimed (verses 3 and 4).

Saved nations are absolutely promised to him (verse 5).

Men are encouraged to seek and find the Lord (verse 6).

But the call to conversion follows close after, and is intended to be the necessary inference from all that preceded it. Men must return to God: his very mercy makes it imperative.

Very earnestly, therefore, let us turn our thoughts to,—

I. THE NECESSITY OF CONVERSION.

The text makes this clear, but it may also be inferred from—

1. The nature of God. How can a holy God wink at sin, and pardon sinners who continue in their wickedness?

2. The nature of the gospel. It is not a proclamation of tolerance for sin, but of deliverance from it. It contains no single promise of forgiveness to the man who goes on in his iniquity.

3. The facts of the past. No instance has occurred of pardon given to a man while obstinately persisting in his evil way. Conversion always goes with salvation.

4. The needs of society. It would be unsafe to the common-weal of the universe to show mercy to the incorrigible offender. Sin must be punished, or else virtue will perish.

5. The well-being of the sinner himself requires that he should quit his sin, or feel its penalty. To be favored with a sense of divine pardon, while obstinately abiding in sin, would confirm the man in sin; and sin itself is a worse evil than its penalty.

6. The work of the Holy Spirit would be set aside, for he is the Sanctifier.

7. The design of our Lord Jesus would be overborne, for he comes to save from sin.

8. The character of Heaven requires that a sinner’s nature be renewed, and his life purged, before he can enter the holy place where God, and holy angels, and perfect saints abide.

   • “Except you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven”: Matthew 18:3.

II. THE NATURE OF CONVERSION.

1. It deals with the life and conduct. The man’s “way.”

   • His natural way; that into which he runs when left to himself.
   • His habitual way; to which he is accustomed.
   • His beloved way; wherein his pleasures lie.
   • The general way; the broad road in which the many run.
   • This, our text says, he must “forsake.” He must have done with sin, or he will be undone. It will not suffice for him to—
   • Own that it is wrong;
   • Profess to be sorry for following it;
   • Resolve to leave it, and end in resolve; or,
   • Move more cautiously in it.
   • No, he must forsake it, altogether, at once, and forever.

2. It deals with the “thoughts.” A man must forsake—

   • His unscriptural opinions, and self-formed notions—
   • About God, his law, his gospel, his people.
   • About sin, punishment, Christ, self, etc.
   • His contemplations, so far as they lead him—
   • To find pleasure in evil;
   • To indulge in conceit and self-sufficiency; or,
   • To harbor wrong thoughts of God.
   • His evil resolves:—
   • To continue in sin, to delay repentance, to be a free-thinker, to be his own master, to defy God, etc.
   • Such thoughts are to be forsaken; he must flee from them.

3. It deals with the man in reference to God. “Let him return unto the Lord.”

   • It bids him cease from pride, neglect, opposition, distrust, disobedience, and all other forms of alienation from the Lord. He must turn and return: wandering no further, but coming home.

III. THE GOSPEL OF CONVERSION.

1. A sure promise is made to it. “He will have mercy upon him.”

2. Divine power is exercised to effect it. “Turn you us unto you, O Lord, and we shall be turned”: Lamentations 5:21. A man converts when grace converts him.

3. It is itself promised to faith in Jesus. Acts 5:31; 13:38, 39.

4. The pardon which comes with it is the result of a full atonement, which renders the pardon abundant, just, safe, and easy of belief to the awakened conscience.

   • Oh, that the sinner would consider the need of a total change of thought within, and way without! It must be thorough and radical or it will be useless.
   • Total and terrible ruin must ensue if you continue in evil.
   • May this hour see the turning-point in your life’s course! God says, “Let him return.” What does hinder you?

A Story

William Burns was preaching one evening, in the open-air, to a vast multitude. He had just finished, when a man came timidly up to him, and said, “O Sir! will you come and see my dying wife?” Burns consented; but the man immediately said, “Oh! I am afraid when you know where she is you won’t come.” “I will go wherever she is,” he replied. The man then tremblingly told him that he was the keeper of the lowest public-house in one of the most wretched districts of the town. “It does not matter,” said the missionary, “come away.” As they went, the man, looking up in the face of God’s servant, said earnestly, “O Sir! I am going to give it up at the term.” Burns replied, “There are no terms with God.” However much the poor trembling publican tried to get Burns to converse with him about the state of his soul, and the way of salvation, he was unable to draw another word from him than these—“There are no terms with God.” The shop was at last reached. They passed through it in order to reach the chamber of death. After a little conversation with the dying woman, the servant of the Lord engaged in prayer, and while he was praying the publican left the room, and soon a loud noise was heard, something like a rapid succession of determined knocks with a great hammer. Was this not a most unseemly noise to make on such a solemn occasion as this? Is the man mad? No. When Burns reached the street, he beheld the wreck of the publican’s sign-board strewn in splinters upon the pavement. The business was given up for good and all. The man had in earnest turned his back on his low public-house, and returned to the Lord, who had mercy upon him, and unto our God, who abundantly pardoned all his sins. Nothing transpired in his after-life to discredit the reality of his conversion.—William Brown, in “The Joyful Sounds.”