Question 87

Repentance—This word originally meant merely an afterthought, a second thought. Before it had any moral or religious sense attached to it, the word signified the sight we get of an action when we look at it after it is past. But words grow, and they grow with the growth of the mind that uses them; sometimes they grow better, and sometimes they grow worse: they are like the dyer’s hand, their nature is subdued to what they work in. And thus it is that with us the pure intellectual act of memory becomes entangled, embarrassed, and burdened with the past it is continually revisiting. So full is our past of matter that causes regret and remorse, shame and sorrow, that memory in us has almost lost its pure and natural operation, and become transformed into an evil conscience. The return of a man’s mind upon his past is almost equivalent to a condemnation of his past. And thus here, as so often elsewhere, the grammarian, before he is aware, is already within the sphere of the moralist, and etymology has, all unwittingly to itself, become the forerunner of experimental religion. The study of words is often saddening, and this is an example of it.

unto life—To distinguish repentance from remorse and despair see 2 Cor. vii. 9–11. For repentance unto life is not to be confounded with the sorrow that worketh death. The name of remorse is given to that relentless gnawing pain which is sometimes awakened in a wrong-doer’s mind. Remorse is the piercing recollection of having done evil when there is no tenderness or contrition mingled with the inward pain. Remorse crushes rather than breaks the miserable heart. The pains of hell take hold of the remorseful man. He is filled full with self-contempt, “bitterer to drink than blood.” Saul and Judas are notorious examples of remorse, of sorrow that worketh death. But repentance unto life, on the other hand, is full of a melting, humble, pliable, patient, and affectionate spirit. The tears of repentance are not bitter; they do not burn where they fall; they are sweetened by meekness, and humility, and love. Repentance has sometimes sorrow even to anguish, but it has no bitterness, or cruelty, or impatience mingled with its anguish. Remorse rushes on death, but true repentance has no desire to die, unless indeed it be to die for others. Repentance is unto life.

a saving grace—See under Question 86. Calvin, remarking on John’s preaching, says that repentance is not placed first, as some ignorantly suppose, as if it were the ground of the forgiveness of sins, or as if it induced God to begin to be gracious to us; but men are commanded to repent that they may receive the reconciliation that is offered to them. . . . Though John, when he introduces the mention of the grace of God, exhorts men to repentance, yet it must not be forgotten that repentance, not less than the inheritance of the heavenly kingdom, is the gift of God. It is a remark of Bengel’s that repentance is a joyful gift, and not a matter of sorrow. And he refers to Acts v. 31, xi. 18; 2 Tim. ii. 25.

a true sense of sin—See Answers 14, 31, 84. A true sense of sin is to see it and feel it as committed against God, and against God as He is revealed in the Scriptures and in Jesus Christ. A true sense of sin is felt when a penitent, keeping ever before him the injuries he has done to himself and to his neighbour, and doing all that in him lies to make reparation for these, yet cries continually, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned.” A true sense of sin is to see its sinfulness, and its aggravations. All the experimental scriptures are full of a true sense of sin, and no other writing in the world is, unless such writings as draw their spiritual insight and sensitiveness from Scripture. And of all the Scriptures the fifty-first Psalm is perhaps the best, as it is the fullest, expression of a true repentance under a true sense of sin. For another example see Bunyan’s Grace Abounding.

apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ—To apprehend means originally to lay hold of by the hand. In the text the word takes the secondary sense of taking hold of with the understanding. To apprehend the mercy of God is to receive the assurance of it into the mind, and to hold by it (Phil. iii. 12).

“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?”—Browning.

The mercy of God is His feeling of pity toward our misery. “Mercy (misericordia) hath but its name from misery, and is no other thing than laying another’s misery to heart.” In Christ, because He was the Person, and His was the work in which God’s mercy to sinners was and is revealed and offered. God was in Christ reconciling sinners to Himself.

grief and hatred of his sin—Grief, gravis, heavy. “He began to be sorrowful and very heavy.” Hatred, extreme dislike, detestation. Wedgwood derives this word from an old root, has or hat, used in setting on a dog to attack a person, an act of hostility, contest, hate. And he points out that the connection between the idea of setting on animals to fight and the angry passions is also seen in Gael. stuig, to incite, spur on, set dogs to fight (Lat. instigare), and Greek stugos, hatred. “Without hatred of sin, and remorse for transgressions, no man will taste the grace of God” (Calvin). “Penitents have felt that they deserve no more that the sun should shine upon them, or the earth sustain them, or the air support them, or wine refresh them, or food nourish them, since all these are the creatures and the servants of the God whom themselves have offended” (Pusey).

“But we have known that there is often found
In mournful thoughts, and always might be found,
A power to virtue friendly.”—Wordsworth’s Margaret.

turn from it unto God—Conversion, in the scriptural and religious sense of that word, is just turning from sin unto God. Matthew Henry says it is not sinning that ruins men, but sinning and not repenting.

“Heed this, O man, ere grace be spent;
To fall from God and scorn to rise,
To sink in woes and ne’er repent,
This makes the death that never dies.”—Bright.

full purpose of, and endeavour after, new obedience. “Pharnaces sent a crown to Cæsar at the same time that he rebelled against him; but Cæsar returned the crown, and sent this message back, Let him return to his obedience first” (Plutarch). “Chr. And did you endeavour to mend? Hope. Yes; and fled not only from my sins, but sinful company too; and betook me to religious duties, as prayer, reading, weeping for sin, speaking truth to my neighbours, etc. These things did I, with many others, too much here to relate.” All obedience is not “new obedience.” For there may be reformation when there is not repentance unto life and its new fruits. Outward reformation is not evangelical repentance. Reformation of life and habits need not extend to, and as a matter of fact and experience it often does not extend to, true repentance. Before the reformed man can take rank with the penitent, he must first feel both grief and hatred of his sin; the more other men forgive him, and forget his past, the more keenly and bitterly must he remember it. Instead of excusing and condoning and forgetting his sin, he must take up the language of the Psalmist continually, “He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquity.” Ezra is the scriptural type of a true penitent. “After all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, and for our great trespass, Thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve.” It is the reformation and amendment that spring from a soil and a root like this that is denominated new obedience in the text. “A really obedient mind is necessarily dissatisfied with itself, and looks out of itself for help, from understanding the greatness of its task; in other words, in proportion as a man obeys is he driven to faith, in order to learn the remedy of the imperfections of his obedience” (Newman).

Uses

In the fifteenth chapter of the Confession of Faith, which treats of Repentance unto Life, we read: “Men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance; but it is every man’s duty to endeavour to repent of his particular sins particularly.” And Hooker and Taylor, standard divines in a somewhat different ecclesiastical school, agree with the Confession in this. For Hooker says: “A general persuasion that thou art a sinner will neither so humble and bridle thy soul as if the catalogue of thy sins examined severally be kept continually in mind.” And Jeremy Taylor, in his Unum Necessarium, says: “Every single act of vice may and must be repented of particularly, if it be a wilful, deliberate, and observed action. A general repentance will not serve thy turn in those cases.” “I was a blasphemer,” particularizes the apostle, “and a persecutor, and injurious.” Let no man, then, who would truly repent of his sins content and deceive himself with the easy and unprofitable impeachment, I am a sinner. Let no man suppose that he has perfected his repentance before God by uttering the penitential words, “Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great.” But let him with a noble self-accusation take hold of his sins, and lead them out of the darkness, and tell out before God and his own conscience their particulars and their aggravations. Let him be beforehand with the great day. Let him relieve the Judge of His strange work.
It is only an extension of the same great principle of true repentance to apply it to particular persons with whom we have had to do, and against whom we have sinned. On this point the Confession takes up this position: “As every man is bound to make private confession of his sins to God, . . . so he that scandalizeth his brother, or the Church of Christ, ought to be willing, by a private or public confession of his sin, to declare his repentance to those that are offended; who are thereupon to be reconciled to him, and in love to receive him.”
But we must not only repent continually of what we have done, we must still more repent of what we are. The most perfect penitents aim at this, and in measure attain to it. It is not so much for the sins that have come out of their hearts that they are humbled, as for the bottomless sinfulness out of which the sins sprang.
“No true penitent forgets or forgives himself; an unforgiving spirit toward himself is the very price of God’s forgiving him. Still let this comfort and encourage all penitents; they may be high, they may be highest, in the kingdom of heaven; they may be, like St. Paul, not a whit behind the chiefest” (Newman).
“But we profess that as ravishing joy is not necessary and essential to faith, so nor deep vexing gashes and impressions of wrath are necessary to humiliation, though they often accompany it; as the one is the overflow of faith, and the other of humiliation” (Goodwin).

Questions

Can you explain why the Westminster Divines have placed repentance after faith, justification, adoption, and sanctification in the order of the evangelical graces? See the Confession and the Larger Catechism. Reconcile their method with Mark i. 15 and Acts xx. 21. Explain their meaning when they call repentance unto life a seed (Larger Catechism, Answer 75).
Connect Question 87 with Questions 14, 31, 84; and explain and illustrate the Augustinian, Calvinistic, and Puritan thesis: There is more guilt in the sinfulness of our nature than in all our actual transgressions together.
Explain and illustrate from Scripture Mozley’s words, Essays, i. 32: With the growth in goodness grows the sense of sin.
Do you accept, and can you explain and vindicate the teaching of our best Protestant and Puritan divines concerning our personal and evangelical repentance for Adam’s sin?
Remark on verses 8 and 9 of Manasseh’s Apocryphal prayer: Surely Thou, O God, the God of the just, hast not appointed repentance for the just, for Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, who have not sinned against Thee. But Thou hast appointed repentance for me, who am a sinner. For I have sinned above the number of the sand of the sea.
Criticise and correct Dr. Johnson’s statement of his faith: Repentance is suppletory to obedience (Boswell, chap. lxiv.). On this utterance of “Our great Moralist” young divines should read note J. in O’Brien’s fine work, The Nature and Effects of Faith. That in such a writer such deviations are a matter of grave culpability, see John Foster’s Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion, Letter ix.
Explain Joseph Hall’s words, commenting on 2 Chron. xxxiii. 15: True repentance begins to decline at the ablative.