Subject: Are these essentials for Salvation? |
Bible Note: "True repentance is always accompanied by sorrow. "Repentance is a deep, radical, fundamental, lasting change; and you will find that, whenever you meet with it in Scripture, it is always accompanied with sorrow for past sin. "And rest assured of this fact -- that the repentance which has no tear in its eye, and no mourning for sin in its heart, is a repentance which needs to be repented of. "In such false repentance, there is no evidence of conversion, and no sign of the existence of the grace of God. "The man who knows that his sin is forgiven, does not cease to mourn for it. No, brethren, his mourning becomes deeper as his knowledge of his guilt becomes greater. His hatred of sin grows in proportion as he understands that love of Christ by which his sin is put away. "In true believers, mourning for sin is chastened and sweetened, and, in one sense, the fang of bitterness is taken out. "But, in another sense, the more we realize our indebtedness to God's grace, and the more we see of the sufferings of Christ in order to effect our redemption, the more do we hate sin, and the more do we lament that we ever fell into it. "The man who has led the purest life, when he is brought before God by the humbling influence of the Holy Spirit, is the man who almost invariably considers himself to have been viler than anybody else. "'Repentance is to leave The sin we loved before, And show that we in earnest grieve By doing so no more.'" --Charles Hadon Spurgeon "Behold, I am vile!" Job 40:4 "I abhor myself!" Job 42:6 "Woe is me! For I am undone!" Isaiah 6:5 "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" Luke 5:8 "A certain immoral woman heard Jesus was there and brought a beautiful jar filled with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind Him at His feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing His feet and putting perfume on them." Luke 7:37-38 "What a wretched man I am!" Romans 7:24 "Does the recollection of past transgression make you sorry? Does the memory of the sins of your youth, the transgressions of riper years, the sinful infirmities of old age, humble you in the dust? "Holier and more precious tears were never shed than those wept for having sinned against God, at Christ's feet." --Octavius Winslow |