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Faith and Repentance InseparableA Sermon (No. 460) Delivered on Sunday Morning, July 13th, 1862, by C. H. SPURGEON, At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
"Repent ye, and believe the gospel."—Mark 1:15
The sins we loved before, And show that we in earnest grieve, By doing so no more." To repent does mean a change of mind; but then it is a thorough change of the understanding and all that is in the mind, so that it includes an illumination, an illumination of the Holy Spirit; and I think it includes a discovery of iniquity and a hatred of it, without which there can hardly be a genuine repentance. We must not, I think, undervalue repentance. It is a blessed grace of God the Holy Spirit, and it is absolutely necessary unto salvation. The command explains
itself. We will take, first of all, repentance. It is quite
certain that whatever the repentance here mentioned may be, it is a
repentance perfectly consistent with faith; and therefore we get the
explanation of what repentance must be, from its being connected with
the next command, "Believe the gospel." Then, dear friends, we may be
sure that that unbelief which leads a man to think that his sin is
too great for Christ to pardon it, is not the repentance meant
here. Many who truly repent are tempted to believe that they are too
great sinners for Christ to pardon. That, however, is not part of
their repentance; it is a sin, a very great and grievous sin, for it
is undervaluing the merit of Christ's blood; it is a denial of the
truthfulness of God's promise; it is a detracting from the grace and
favour of God who sent the gospel. Such a persuasion you must labour
to get rid of, for it came from Satan, and not from the Holy Spirit.
God the Holy Ghost never did teach a man that his sins were too great
to be forgiven, for that would be to make God the Holy Spirit to
teach a lie. If any of you have a thought of that kind this morning,
be rid of it; it cometh from the powers of darkness, and not from the
Holy Ghost; and if some of you are troubled because you never were
haunted by that fear, be glad instead of being troubled. He can save
you; be you as black as hell he can save you; and it is a wicked
falsehood, and a high insult against the high majesty of divine love
when you are tempted to believe that you are past the mercy of God.
That is not repentance, but a foul sin against the infinite mercy of
God.Then, there is another
spurious repentance which makes the sinner dwell upon the
consequences of his sin, rather than upon the sin itself, and so
keeps him from believing. I have known some sinners so distressed
with fears of hell, and thoughts of death and of eternal judgment,
that to use the words of one terrible preacher, "They have been
shaken over the mouth of hell by their collar," and have felt the
torments of the pit before they went thither. Dear friends, this is
not repentance. Many a man has felt all that and has yet been lost.
Look at many a dying man, tormented with remorse, who has had all its
pangs and convictions, and yet has gone down to the grave without
Christ and without hope. These things may come with repentance, but,
they are not an essential part of it. That which is called law-work,
in which the sinner is terrified with horrible thoughts that God's
mercy is gone for ever, may be permitted by God for some special
purpose, but it is not repentance; in fact, it may often be devilish
rather than heavenly, for, as John Bunyan tells us, Diabolus doth
often beat the great hell-drum in the ears of the men of Mansoul, to
prevent their hearing the sweet trumpet of the gospel which
proclaimeth pardon to them. I tell thee, sinner, any repentance that
keeps thee from believing in Christ is a repentance that needs to be
repented of; any repentance that makes thee think Christ will not
save thee, goes beyond the truth and against the truth, and the
sooner thou are rid of it the better. God deliver thee from it, for
the repentance that will save thee is quite consistent with faith in
Christ.There is, again, a false
repentance which leads men to hardness of heart and despair. We
have known some seared as with a hot iron by burning remorse. They
have said, "I have done much evil; there is no hope for me; I will
not hear the Word any more." If they hear it it is nothing to them,
their hearts are hard as adamant. If they could once get the thought
that God would forgive them, their hearts would flow in rivers of
repentance; but no; they feel a kind of regret that they did wrong,
but yet they go on in it all the same, feeling that there is no hope,
and that they may as well continue to live as they were wont to do,
and get the pleasures of sin since they cannot, as they think, have
the pleasures of grace. Now, that is no repentance. It is a fire
which hardens, and not the Lord's fire which melts; it may be a
hammer, but it is a hammer used to knit the particles of your soul
together, and not to break the heart. If, dear friends, you have
never been the subject of these terrors do not desire them. Thank God
if you have been brought to Jesus any how, but long not for needless
horrors. Jesus saves you, not by what you feel, but by that finished
work, that blood and righteousness which God accepted on your behalf.
Do remember that no repentance is worth having which is not perfectly
consistent with faith in Christ. An old saint, on his sick-bed, once
used this remarkable expression; "Lord, sink me low as hell in
repentance; but"—and here is the beauty of it—"lift me high as
heaven in faith." Now, the repentance that sinks a man low as hell is
of no use except there is faith also that lifts him as high as
heaven, and the two are perfectly consistent one with the other. A
man may loathe and detest himself, and all the while he may know that
Christ is able to save, and has saved him. In fact, this is how true
Christians live; they repent as bitterly as for sin as if they knew
they should be damned for it; but they rejoice as much in Christ as
if sin were nothing at all. Oh, how blessed it is to know where these
two lines meet, the stripping of repentance, and the clothing of
faith! The repentance that ejects sin as an evil tenant, and the
faith which admits Christ to be the sole master of the heart; the
repentance which purges the soul from dead works, and the faith that
fills the soul with living works; the repentance which pulls down,
and the faith which builds up; the repentance that scatters stones,
and the faith which puts stones together; the repentance which
ordains a time to weep, and the faith that gives a time to dance—
these two things together make up the work of grace within, whereby
men's souls are saved. Be it, then laid down as a great truth, most
plainly written in our text, that the repentance we ought to preach
is one connected with faith, and thus we may preach repentance and
faith together without any difficulty whatever.Having shown you what this
repentance is not, let us dwell for a moment on what it is.
The repentance which is here commanded is the result of faith; it is
born at the same time with faith—they are twins, and to say which is
the elder-born passes my knowledge. It is a great mystery; faith is
before repentance in some of its acts, and repentance before faith in
another view of it; the fact being that they come into the soul
together. Now, a repentance which makes me weep and abhor my past
life because of the love of Christ which has pardoned it, is the
right repentance. When I can say, "My sin is washed away by Jesu's
blood," and then repent because I so sinned as to make it necessary
that Christ should die—that dove-eyed repentance which looks at his
bleeding wounds, and feels that her heart must bleed because she
wounded Christ—that broken heart that breaks because Christ was
nailed to the cross for it—that is the repentance which bringeth us
salvation.Again, the repentance which
makes us avoid present sin because of the love of God who died for
us, this also is saving repentance. If I avoid sin to-day because I
am afraid of being lost if I commit it, I have not the repentance of
a child of God; but when I avoid it and seek to lead a holy life
because Christ loved me and gave himself up for me, and because I am
not my own, but am bought with a price, this is the work of the
Spirit of God.And again, that change of
mind, that after-carefulness which leads me to resolve that in future
I will live like Jesus, and will not live unto the lusts of the
flesh, because he hath redeemed me, not with corruptible things as
silver and gold, but with his own precious blood—that is the
repentance which will save me, and the repentance he asks of me. O ye
nations of the earth, he asks not the repentance of Mount Sinai,
while ye do fear and shake because his lightnings are abroad; but he
asks you to weep and wail because of him; to look on
him whom you have pierced, and to mourn for him as a man
mourneth for his only son; he bids you remember that you nailed the
Saviour to the tree, and asks that this argument may make you hate
the murderous sins which fastened the Saviour there, and put the Lord
of glory to an ignominious and an accursed death. This is the only
repentance we have to preach; not law and terrors; not despair; not
driving men to self-murder—this is the terror of the world which
worketh death; but godly sorrow is a sorrow unto salvation though
Jesus Christ our Lord.This brings me to the
second half of the command, which is, "Believe the gospel."
Faith means trust in Christ. Now, I must again remark that some have
preached this trust in Christ so well and so fully, that I can admire
their faithfulness and bless God for them; yet there is a difficulty
and a danger; it may be that in preaching simple trust in Christ as
being the way of salvation, that they omit to remind the sinner that
no faith can be genuine but such as is perfectly consistent with
repentance for past sin; for my text seems to me to put it thus: no
repentance is true but that which consorts with faith; no faith is
true but that which is linked with a hearty and sincere repentance on
account of past sin. So then, dear friends, those people who have a
faith which allows them to think lightly of past sin, have the faith
of devils, and not the faith of God's elect. Those who say, "Oh, as
for the past, that is nothing; Jesus Christ has washed all that
away"; and can talk about all the crimes of their youth, and the
iniquitous of their riper years, as if they were mere trifles, and
never think of shedding a tear; never feel their souls ready to burst
because they should have been such great offenders—such men who can
trifle with the past, and even fight their battles o'er again when
their passions are too cold for new rebellions—I say that such who
think sin a trifle and have never sorrowed on account of it, may know
that their faith is not genuine. Such men as have a faith which
allows them to live carelessly in the present who say, "Well, I am
saved by a simple faith"; and then sit on the ale-bench with the
drunkard, or stand at the bar with the spirit-drinker, or go into
worldly company and enjoy the carnal pleasures and the lusts of the
flesh, such men are liars; they have not the faith which will save
the soul. They have a deceitful hypocrisy; they have not the faith
which will bring them to heaven.And then, there be some
other people who have a faith which leads them to no hatred of sin.
They do not look upon sin in others with any kind of shame. It is
true they would not do as others do, but then they can laugh at what
others commit. They take pleasure in the vices of others; laugh at
their profane jests, and smile at their loose speeches. They do not
flee from sin as from a serpent, nor detest it as the murderer of
their best friend. No, they dally with it; they make excuses for it;
they commit in private what in public they condemn. They call grave
offences slight faults and little defalcations; and in business they
wink at departures from uprightness, and consider them to be mere
matters of trade; the fact being that they have a faith which will
sit down arm-in-arm with sin, and eat and drink at the same table
with unrighteousness. Oh! if any of you have such a faith as this, I
pray God to turn it out bag and baggage. It is of no good to you; the
sooner you are cleaned out of it the better for you, for when this
sandy foundation shall all be washed away, perhaps you may then begin
to build upon the rock. My dear friends, I would be very faithful
with your souls, and would lay the lancet at each man's heart. What
is your repentance? Have you a repentance that leads you to look out
of self to Christ, and to Christ only? On the other hand, have you
that faith which leads you to true repentance; to hate the very
thought of sin; so that the dearest idol you have known, whatever it
may be, you desire to tear from its throne that you may worship
Christ, and Christ only? Be assured of this, that nothing short of
this will be of any use to you at the last. A repentance and a faith
of any other sort may do to please you now, as children are pleased
with fancies; but when you get on a death-bed, and see the reality of
things, you will be compelled to say that they are a falsehood and a
refuge of lies. You will find that you have been daubed with
untempered mortar; that you have said, "Peace, peace," to yourselves,
when there was no peace. Again, I say, in the words of Christ,
"Repent and believe the gospel." Trust Christ to save you, and lament
that you need to be saved, and mourn because this need of yours has
put the Saviour to open shame, to frightful sufferings, and to a
terrible death.III. But we must pass on to
a third remark. These commands of Christ are of the most
reasonable character.Is it an unreasonable thing
to demand of a man that he should repent? You have a person
who has offended you; you are ready to forgive him; do you think it
is at all exacting or overbearing if you ask of him an apology; if
you merely ask him, as the very least thing he can do, to acknowledge
that he has done wrong? "No," say you, "I should think I showed my
kindness in accepting rather than any harshness in demanding an
apology from him." So God, against whom we have rebelled, who is our
liege sovereign and monarch, seeth it to be inconsistent with the
dignity of his kingship to absolve an offender who expresseth no
contrition; and I say again, is this a harsh, exacting, unreasonable
command? Doth God in this mode act like Solomon, who made the taxes
of his people heavy? Rather doth he not ask of you that which your
heart, if it were in a right state, would be but too willing to give,
only too thankful that the Lord in his grace has said, "He that
confesseth his sin shall find mercy"? Why, dear friends, do you
expect to be saved while you are in your sins? Are you to be allowed
to love your iniquities, and yet go to heaven? What, you think to
have poison in your veins, and yet be healthy? What, man, keep the
thief in doors, and yet be acquitted of dishonesty? Be stained, and
yet be thought spotless? Harbour the disease and yet be in health?
Ridiculous! Absurd! Repentance is founded on the necessity of things.
The demand for a change of heart is absolutely necessary; it is but a
reasonable service. O that men were reasonable, and they would
repent; it is because they are not reasonable that it needs the Holy
Spirit to teach their reason right reason before they will repent and
believe the gospel.And then, again,
believing; is that an unreasonable thing to ask of you? For a
creature to believe its Creator is but a duty; altogether apart from
the promise of salvation, I say, God has a right to demand of the
creature that he has made, that he should believe what he tells him.
And what is it he asks you to believe? Anything hideous,
contradictory, irrational? It may be above reason, but it is not
contrary to reason. He asks you to believe that through the blood of
Jesus Christ, he can still be just, and yet the justifier of the
ungodly. He asks you to trust in Christ to save you. Can you expect
that he will save you if you will not trust him? Have you really the
hardihood to think that he will carry you to heaven while all the
while you declare he cannot do it? Do you think it consistent with
the dignity of a Saviour to save you while you say, "I do not believe
thou art a Saviour, and I will not trust thee"? Is it consistent with
his dignity for him to save you, and suffer you to remain an
unbelieving sinner, doubting his grace, mistrusting his love,
slandering his character, doubting the efficacy of his blood, and of
his plea? Why, man, it is the most reasonable thing in the world that
he should demand of thee that thou shouldst believe in Christ. And
this he doth demand of thee this morning. "Repent and believe the
gospel." O friends, O friends, how sad, how sad is the state of man's
soul when he will not do this! We may preach to you, but you never
will repent and believe the gospel. We may lay God's command, like an
axe, to the root of the tree, but, reasonable as these commands are,
you will still refuse to give God his due; you will go on in your
sins; you will not come unto him that you may have life; and it is
here the Spirit of God must come in to work in the souls of the elect
to make them willing in the day of his power. But oh! in God's name I
warn you that, if, after hearing this command, you do, as I know you
will do, without his Spirit, continue to refuse obedience to so
reasonable a gospel, you shall find at the last it shall be more
tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah, than for you; for had the things
which are preached in London been proclaimed in Sodom and Gomorrah,
they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and in ashes. Woe unto
you, inhabitants of London! Woe unto you, subjects of the British
Empire! for if the truths which have been declared in your streets
had been preached to Tyre and Sidon, they would have continued even
unto this day.IV. But still, to pass on,
I have yet a fourth remark to make, and that is, this is a command
which demands immediate obedience. I do not know how it is, let
us preach as we may, we cannot lead others to think that there is any
great alarm, that there is any reason why they should think about
their souls now. Last night there was a review on Wimbledon
Common, and living not very far away from it, I could hear in one
perpetual roll the cracks of the rifles and the thunder of cannon.
One remarked to me, "Supposing there really were war there, we should
not sit quite so comfortably in our room with our window open,
listening to all this noise." No; and so when people come to chapel,
they hear a sermon about repentance and faith; they listen to it.
"What do you think of it?" "Oh—very well." But suppose it were real;
suppose they believed it to be real, would they sit quite so
comfortably? Would they be quite so easy? Ah, no! But you do not
think it is real. You do not think that the God who made you actually
asks of you this day that you should repent and believe. Yes, sirs,
but it is real, and it is your procrastination, it is your
self-confidence that is the sham, the bubble that is soon to burst.
God's demand is the solemn reality, and if you could but hear it as
it should be heard you would escape from your lives and flee for
refuge to the hope that is set before you in the gospel, and you
would do this to-day. This is the command of Christ, I say,
to-day. To-day is God's time. "To-day if ye will hear his
voice, harden not your heart, as in the provocation." "To-day," the
gospel always cries, for if it tolerated sin a single day, it were an
unholy gospel. If the gospel told men to repent of sin to-morrow, it
would give them an allowance to continue in it to-day, and that would
indeed be to pander to men's lusts. But the gospel maketh a clean
sweep of sin, and demandeth of man that he should throw down the
weapons of his rebellion now. Down with them, man!
every one of them. Down, sir, down with them, and down with them
now! You must not keep one of them; throw them down at once!
The gospel challengeth him that he believe in Jesus now. So long as
thou continuest in unbelief thou continuest in sin, and art
increasing thy sin; and to give thee leave to be an unbeliever for an
hour, were to pander to thy lusts; therefore it demandeth of thee
faith, and faith now, for this is God's time, and the time
which holiness must demand of a sinner. Besides, sinner, it is thy
time. This is the only time thou canst call thine own. To-morrow!
Is there such a thing? In what calendar is it written save in the
almanack of the fool? To-morrow! Oh, how hast thou ruined multitudes!
"To-morrow," say men; but like the hind-wheel of a chariot, they are
always near to the front-wheel, always near to their duty; they still
go on, and on, but never get one whit the nearer, for, travel as they
may, to-morrow is still a little beyond them—but a little, and so
they never come to Christ at all. This is how they speak, as an
ancient poet said—
To-morrow comes, to-morrow goes, And still thou art 'to do it'; Thus, then, repentance is deferred from one day to another, Until the day of death is one, And judgment is the other." O sons of men, always to be blessed, to be obedient, but never obedient, when will ye learn to be wise? This is your only time; it is God's time, and this is the best time. You will never find it easier to repent than now; you will never find it easier to believe than now. It is impossible now except the Spirit of God be with you; it will be as impossible to-morrow; but if now you would believe and repent, the Spirit of God is in the gospel which I preach; and while I cry out to thee in God's name, "Repent and believe," he that bade me command you thus to do gives power with the command, that even as Christ spake to the waves and said, "Be still," and they were still, and to the winds, "Be calm,", and they were quiet, so when we speak to your proud heart it yields because of the grace that accompanies the word, and you repent and believe the gospel. So may it be, and may the message of this morning gather out the elect, and make them willing in the day of God's power. But now, lastly, this
command, while it has an immediate power, has also a continual
force. "Repent ye, and believe the gospel," is advice to the
young beginner, and it is advice to the old grey-headed Christian,
for this is our life all the way through—"Repent ye, and believe the
gospel." St. Anselm, who was a saint—and that is more than
many of them were who were called so—St. Anselm once cried out "Oh!
sinner that I have been, I will spend all the rest of my life in
repenting of my whole life!" And Rowland Hill, whom I think I might
call St. Rowland, when he was near death, said he had one regret, and
that was that a dear friend who had lived with him for sixty years
would have to leave him at the gate of heaven. "That dear friend,"
said he, "is repentance; repentance has been with me all my life, and
I think I shall drop a tear," said the good man, "as I go through the
gates, to think that I can repent no more." Repentance is the daily
and hourly duty of a man who believes in Christ; and as we walk by
faith from the wicket gate to the celestial city, so our right-hand
companion all the journey through must be repentance. Why, dear
friend, the Christian man, after he is saved, repents more than he
ever did before, for now he repents not merely of overt deeds, but
even of imaginations. He will take himself to task at night, and
chide himself because he had tolerated one foul thought; because he
has looked on vanity, though perhaps the heart had gone no further
than the look of lust; because the thought of evil has flitted
through the mind—for all this he will vex himself before God; and
were it not that he still continues to believe the gospel, one foul
imagination would be such a plague and sting to him, that he would
have no peace and rest. When temptation comes to him the good man
finds the use of repentance, for having hated sin and fled from it of
old, he has ceased to be what he once was. One of the ancient
fathers, we are told, had, before his conversion, lived with an ill
woman, and some little time after, she accosted him as usual. Knowing
how likely he was to fall into sin he ran away with all his might,
and she ran after him, crying, "Wherefore runnest thou away? It is
I." He answered, "I run away because I am not I; I am a new man."
Now, it is just that, "I am not I," which keeps the Christian out of
sin; that hating of the former "I," that repenting of the old sin
that maketh him run from evil, abhor it, and look not upon it, lest
by his eyes he should be led into sin. Dear friend, the more the
Christian man knows of Christ's love, the more will he hate himself
to think that he has sinned against such love. Every doctrine of the
gospel will make a Christian man repent. Election, for instance. "How
could I sin," saith he. "I that was God's favourite, chosen of him
from before the foundation of the world?" Final perseverance will
make him repent. "How can I sin," says he, "that am loved so much and
kept so surely? How can I be so villainous as to sin against
everlasting mercy?" Take any doctrine you please, the Christian will
make it a fount for sacred woe; and there are times when his faith in
Christ will be so strong that his repentance will burst its bonds,
and will cry with George Herbert—
Come, all ye springs, Ye clouds and rain dwell in my eyes, My grief hath need of all the wat'ry things That nature hath produc'd. Let ev'ry vein Suck up a river to supply mine eyes, My weary weeping eyes; too dry for me, Unless they set new conduits, new supplies To bear them out, and with my state agree." And all this is because he murdered Christ; because his sin nailed the Saviour to the tree; and therefore he weepeth and mourneth even to his life's end. Sinning, repenting, and believing—these are three things that will keep with us till we die. Sinning will stop at the river Jordan; repentance will die triumphing over the dead body of sin; and faith itself, though perhaps it may cross the stream, will cease to be so needful as it has been here, for there we shall see even as we are seen, and shall know even as we are known. I send you away when I have
once again solemnly declared my Master's will to you this morning,
"Repent ye, and believe the gospel." Here are some of you come from
foreign countries, and many of you are from our provincial towns in
England; you came here, perhaps, to hear the preacher of whom many a
strange thing has been said. Well and good, and may stranger things
still be said if they will but bring men under the sound of the Word
that they may be blessed. Now, this I have to say to you this
morning: In that great day when a congregation ten thousand times
larger than this shall be assembled, and on the great white throne
the Judge shall sit, there will be not a man, or woman, or child, who
is here this morning, able to make excuse and say, "I did not hear
the gospel; I did not know what I must do to be saved!" You have
heard it: "Repent ye, and believe the gospel." That is, trust Christ;
believe that he is able and willing to save you. But there is
something better. In that great day, I say, there will be some of you
present—oh! let us hope all of us—who will be able to say, "Thank
God that ever I yielded up the weapons of my proud rebellion by
repentance; thank God that I looked to Christ, and took him to be my
Saviour from first to last; for here am I, a monument of grace, a
sinner saved by blood, to praise him while time and eternity shall
last!" God grant that we may meet each other at the last with joy and
not with grief! I will be a swift witness against you to condemn you
if you believe not this gospel; but if you repent and believe, then
we shall praise that grace which turned our hearts, and so gave us
the repentance which led us to trust Christ, and the faith which is
the effectual gift of the Holy Spirit. What shall I say more unto
you? Wherefore, wherefore will you reject this? If I have spoken to
you of fables, of fictions, of dreams, then turn on your heel and
reject my discourse. If I have spoken in my own name, who am I that
you should care one whit for me? But if I have preached that which
Christ preached, "Repent ye, and believe the gospel," I charge you by
the living God, I charge you by the world's Redeemer, I charge you by
cross of Calvary, and by the blood which stained the dust at
Golgotha, obey this divine message and you shall have eternal life;
but refuse it, and on your heads be your blood for ever and ever!
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ur Lord Jesus Christ
commences his ministry by announcing its leading commands. He cometh
up from the wilderness newly anointed, like the bridegroom from his
chamber; his love notes are repentance and faith. He cometh forth
fully prepared for his office, having been in the desert, "tempted in
all points as we are, yet without sin"; his loins are girded like a
strong man to run a race. He preacheth with all the earnestness of a
new zeal, combined with all the wisdom of a long preparation; in the
beauty of holiness from the womb of morning he glittereth with the
dew of his youth. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for Messias
speaketh in the greatness of his strength. He crieth unto the sons of
men, "Repent ye, and believe the gospel." Let us give our ears to
these words which, like their author, are full of grace and truth.
Before us we have the sum and substance of Jesus Christ's whole
teaching—the Alpha and Omega of his entire ministry; and coming from
the lips of such an one, at such a time, with such peculiar power,
let us give the most earnest heed, and may God help us to obey them
from our inmost hearts.
