Expositions of Holy Scripture: Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians Chapters; I to End. Colossians, Thessalonians, and First Timothy.Maclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians Chapters; I to End. Colossians, Thessalonians, and First Timothy.
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Epistles of Paul -- Commentaries
But, remember, there is no prescription about depth or amount or length
of time during which this sorrow shall be felt. If, on the one hand, it
is essential, on the other hand there are a great many people who ought
to be walking in the light and the liberty of God's Gospel who bring
darkness and clouds over themselves by the anxious scrutinising
question: 'Is my sorrow deep enough?' Deep enough! What for? What is the
use of sorrow for sin? To lead a man to repentance and to faith. If you
have as much sorrow as leads you to penitence and trust you have enough.
It is not your sorrow that is going to wash away your sin, it is
Christ's blood. So let no man trouble himself about the question, Have I
sorrow enough? The one question is: 'Has my sorrow led me to cast myself
on Christ?'
II. Still further, look now for a moment at the next stage here. 'Godly
sorrow worketh repentance.'
What is repentance? No doubt many of you would answer that it is 'sorrow
for sin,' but clearly this text of ours draws a distinction between the
two. There are very few of the great key-words of Christianity that have
suffered more violent and unkind treatment, and have been more obscured
by misunderstandings, than this great word. It has been weakened down
into penitence, which in the ordinary acceptation, means simply the
emotion that I have already been speaking about, viz., a regretful sense
of my own evil. And it has been still further docked and degraded, both
in its syllables and in its substance, into _penance_. But the
'repentance' of the New Testament and of the Old Testament--one of the
twin conditions of salvation--is neither sorrow for sin nor works of
restitution and satisfaction, but it is, as the word distinctly
expresses, a change of purpose in regard to the sin for which a man
mourns. I cannot now expand and elaborate this idea as I should like,
but let me remind you of one or two passages in Scripture which may show
that the right notion of the word is not sorrow but changed attitude and
purpose in regard to my sin.
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