The Necessity Of Repentance

J.C. Ryle (1816-1900)
Luke 13:3
Except you repent, you shall all likewise perish"

The text that heads this page, at first sight, looks stern and severe: "except ye repent, ye shall all perish". "Are these glad tidings?Are these the good news of which ministers speak?" "This is a hard saying, who can hear it?" (John 6:60).
But from whose lips did these words come? They came from the lips of One Who Loves us with a love that passeth knowledge, even Jesus Christ, the Son of God. They were spoken by One Who so loved us that He left heaven for our sakes-came down to earth for our sakes-lived a poor, humble life for three and thirty years on earth for our sakes-went to the cross for us, went to the grave for us, and died for our sins. The words that come from lips like these must surely be words of love.
After all, what greater proof of love can be given then to warn a friend of coming danger? The father who sees his son tottering toward the brink of a precipice, and as he sees him cries out sharply, "stop,stop!"-does not that father love his son? The tender mother who sees her infant on the point of eating some poisonous berry and cries out sharply, "stop, stop! put it down!-does not that mother love that child? It is indifference that lets people alone and allows them to go on everyone in his own way. It is love, tender love, which warns and raises the cry of alarm. The cry of "Fire!Fire! at midnight may sometimes startle a man out of his sleep-rudely, harshly,unpleasantly. But who would complain, if that cry was the means of saving his life? The words, "Except you repent, ye shall all perish," may seem at first sight stern and severe. But they are words of love, and may be the means of delivering precious souls from hell.
I pass on now to...consider the necessity of repentance. Why is repentance needful? The text that stands at the head of this paper shows clearly the necessity of repentance. The words of our Lord Jesus Christ are distinct, express, and emphatic: "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." All, all without exception need repentance toward God. It is not only necessary for thieves, murderers,drunkards,adulterers, fornicators,and the inmates of prisons and of jails. No. All born of the seed of Adam-all without exception need repentance toward God. The queen upon her throne and the pauper in the workhouse; the rich man in his drawing room, the servant maid in the kitchen; the professor of sciences at the university, the poor ignorant boy who follows the plough-all by nature need repentance. All are born in sin; and all must repent and be converted if they would be saved. All must have their hearts changed about sin. All must repent, as well as believe the Gospel. "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven"(Mat 18:3) "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."
But whence comes the necessity of repentance? Why is such tremendously strong language used about this necessity? What are the reasons...repentance is so needful?
(a) For one thing, without repentance there is no forgiveness of sins. In saying this, I must guard myself against misconstruction. I ask you emphatically not to misunderstand me: the tears of repentance wash away no sins. It is bad divinity to say that they do. That is the office, that the work of the blood of Christ alone. Contrition makes no atonement for transgression. It is wretched theology to say that it does. It can do nothing of the kind. Our best repentance is a poor, imperfect thing and needs repenting over again. Our best contrition has defects enough about it to sink us into hell. "We are counted righteous before God only for the sake of our lord Jesus Christ, by faith and not of our own works of deservings not for our repentance , holiness, alms giving, sacrament receiving,or anything of the kind. All this is perfectly true. Still it is no less true that justified people are always penitent people and that a forgiven sinner will always be a man who mourns over and loathes his sins. God in Christ is willing to receive rebellious man and grant him peace if he only comes to him in Christ's name, however wicked he may have been.
But God requires, and requires justly, that the rebel shall throw down his arms. The Lord Jesus Christ desires to see a man hate the sins that he wishes to be forgiven. Let some men call this "legality," if they will. Let some call it "bondage," if they please. I take my stand on Scripture. The testimony of God's Word is plain and unmistakable. Justified people are always penitent people. Without repentance, there is no forgiveness of sins.
(b) For another thing, without repentance there is no happiness in the life that now is. There may be high spirits, excitement, laughter, and merriment, so long as health is good and money is in the pocket. But these things are not solid happiness. There is a conscience in all men, ant that conscience must be satisfied. So long as conscience feels that sin has not been repented of and forsaken, so long it will not be quiet and will not let a man feel comfortable within...
(c) For another thing, without repentance there can be no meetness for heaven in the world that is yet to come. Heaven is a prepared place, and they that go to heaven must be a prepared people. Our hearts must be in tune for the employments of Heaven, or else Heaven itself would be a miserable abode. Our minds must be in harmony with those of the inhabitants of Heaven, or else the society of Heaven would soon be intolerable to us...What could you possibly do in Heaven if you got there with a heart loving sin? To which of all the saints would you speak? By who's side would you sit down? Surely, the angels of God would make no sweet music to the heart of him who can bear saints upon the earth and never praise the Lamb for redeeming love! Surely, the company of patriarchs, and apostles, and prophets would be no joy to that man who will not read his bible now and does not care to know what apostles and prophets wrote. Oh, no! No!! There can be no happiness in heaven, if we get there with an impenitent heart...
I beseech you by the mercies of God to lay to heart the things that I have just been saying and to ponder them well. You live in a world of cheating, imposition, and deception. Let no man deceive you about the necessity of repentance. Oh, that professing Christians would see, and know, and feel more than they do, the necessity, the absolute necessity of true repentance before God! There are many things that are not needful. Riches are not needful. Health is not needful. Fine clothes are not needful. Noble friends are not needful. The favor of the world is not needful. Gifts and learning are not needful. Millions have reached heaven without these things. Thousands are reaching heaven every year without them. But no one ever reached heaven without "repentance towards God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ" ( Acts 20:21)
Let no man ever persuade you that any religion deserves to be called the gospel, in which repentance towards God has not a most prominent place. A gospel, indeed ! That is no gospel in which repentance is not a principal thing. A gospel! It is the Gospel of man, but not of God. A gospel! It comes from earth, but not from heaven. A gospel! It is not the gospel at all. It is rank antinomianism and nothing else. So long as you hug your sins, and cleave to your sins, and will have your sins, so long as you may talk as you please about the gospel, but your sins are not forgiven. You may call that legal, if you like. You may say, if you please, you hope it will be alright at the last, God is merciful, God is love, Christ has died, I hope I shall go to heaven after all. No! I tell you, it is not alright. It will never be alright...you are trampling under foot the blood of the atonement. You have as yet no part or lot in Christ. So long as you do not repent of sin, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is no gospel to your soul. Christ is a Savior from sin, not a Savior for man in sin. If a man will have his sins, the day will come when the merciful Savior will say to him, "depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt 25:41).
Let no man ever delude you into supposing that you can be happy in this world without repentance. Oh, no!...The longer you go on without repentance, the more unhappy will the heart of your be. When old age creeps over you and grey hairs appear upon your head, when you are unable to go where you once went, and take pleasure where you once took pleasure, your wretchedness and misery will break in upon you like an armed man...write it down in the tablets of your heart, without repentance, no peace!
I expect to see many wonders at the last day. I expect to see some at the right hand of the Lord Jesus Christ whom I once feared I should see upon the left. I expect to see some at the left hand whom I supposed to be good Christians and expected to see at the right. But there is one thing I am sure I shall not see. I shall not see at the right hand of Jesus Christ one single impenitent man.

J.C.Ryle

"Living life with the light turned on"

Our associate pastor made a statement this morning in the sermon he gave . "God has brought Christians out of the domain of darkness into his marvelous light, so we as Christians are people who are living with the light on."
Kinda fits well with this blog name. So, I think I will use his statement somewhere on this blog.
I have been reading and studying what biblical repentance is and what it looks like. In the aspect of someone experiencing the new birth and also repentance in the life of the believer.
Repentance in a lost man is achieved by the power of the Holy Spirit awakening that individual to his sinful condition and his need for a saviour.Lost man is dead Ephesians 2:1.
What he needs, in essence ,is for God to turn on the Light switch for him. As we emerge from darkness into Christ's marvelous light we still stumble but yet we are still in His Light.
The light of Gods word ever present, like a light house beacon shining in the distance to beckon us back to safe harbor. If we drift , which we no doubt at times will, because sin is ever present in us still. We are to live a life of repentance. There is the repentance that leads one into the kingdom, then once into the kingdom we still live a life of repentance. What does this biblical repentance look like on both sides of the kingdom?
I will start a series of posts quoting some of the great puritan writers on their views of biblical repentance . I want to start these posts off with this particular verse as a diving board if you will.
John 3:20-21
For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.

EXAMINING OUR REPENTANCE

Thomas Watson(1620-1686)

If any shall say they have repented, let me desire them to try themselves seriously by those seven effects of repentance which the Apostle lays down in 2 Corinthians 7:11

1. Carefulness: The Greek word signifies a solicitous diligence or careful shunning of all temptations to sin. The true penitent flies from sin as Moses did from the serpent.

2. Clearing of ourselves: The Greek word is apology. The sense is this: though we have much care, yet through strength of temptation we may slip into sin. Now in this case, the repenting soul will not let sin lie festering in his conscience, but judges himself for sin. He pours out tears before the Lord. He begs mercy in the name of Christ and never leaves until he has gotten his pardon. Here he is cleared of guilt in his conscience and is able to make apology for himself against Satan.

3. Indignation: He that repents of sin, his spirit rises against it, as one's blood rises at the sight of him who he mortally hates. Indignation is a being fretted ,(distressed) at the heart with sin. The penitent is vexed with himself. David calls himself a fool and a beast (Psa 73:22). God is never better pleased with us than when we fall out with ourselves for sin.

4. Fear: A tender is ever a trembling heart. This hornet has stung him and now, having hopes that God is reconciled, he is afraid to come near sin anymore. The repenting soul is full of fear. He is afraid he should, for want of diligence, come short of salvation. He is afraid lest, after his heart has been soft, the waters of repentance should freeze and he should harden in sin again.

"Happy is the man that feareth alway" (Proverbs 28:14) ....A repenting person fears and sins not; a graceless person sins and fears not.

5. Vehement desire: As sour sauce sharpens the appetite, so the bitter herbs of repentance sharpen desire. But what does the penitent desire? He desires more power against sin and to be released from it. It is true, he has got loose from Satan; but he goes as a prisoner that has broken out of prison with a fetter on his leg. He cannot walk with that freedom and swiftness in the ways of God. He desires therefore to have fetters of sin taken off. He would be freed from corruption. He cries out with Paul, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom 7:24). In Short, he desires to be with Christ, as everything desires to be in it's center.

6. Zeal: Desire and zeal are fitly put together to show that true desire puts forth itself in zealous endeavor. How the penitent does bestir(busy, or rouse) in the business of salvation!

How he does take the kingdom of heaven by force (Mat 11:12)! Zeal quickens the pursuit after glory. Zeal, encountering difficulty, is emboldened by opposition and tramples upon danger. Zeal makes a repenting soul persist in Godly sorrow against all discouragements and opposition whatsoever. Zeal carries a man above himself for God's glory. Paul, before conversion, was made against the saints (Acts 26:11). After conversion, was made for Christ's sake: "Paul, thou art beside thyself"(Acts 26:24). But it was zeal, not frenzy. Zeal animates spirit and duty. It causes fervency in religion, which is a fire to the sacrifice (Rom12:11). As fear is a bridle to sin, so zeal is a spur to duty.

7.Revenge: A true penitent pursues his sins with a holy malice. He seeks the death of them as Samson was avenged on the Philistines for his two eyes. He uses his sins as the Jews used Christ. He gives them gall and vinegar to drink. He crucifies his lusts (Gal 5:24). A true child of God seeks to be revenged most of those sins that have dishonored God most...David did by sin defile his bed; afterwards by repentance he watered his bed with tears. Israel had sinned by Idolatry, and afterwards they did offer disgrace to their idols: Ye shall defile also the covering of thy graven images of silver" (Isa 30:22)...... The Israelite women who had been dressing themselves by the hour and had abused their looking glasses to pride, afterwards by way of revenge as well as zeal, offered their looking glasses to the use and service of Gods tabernacle (Exodus 38:8)....So those conjurers who used curious arts of magic...when once they repented, brought their books and, by way of revenge, burned them (Acts 19:19).

These are the blessed fruits and products of repentance. If we can find these in our souls, we have arrived at that repentance which is never to be repented of (2 Co 7:10).

From: The Doctrine of Repentance, Thomas Watson

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