Christian Repentance
“The very best that can be said of the fallen and redeemed race of Adam is that they confess their fall and condemn themselves for it and try to recover themselves. And this state of mind, which is in fact the only possible religion left to sinners, is represented to us in the parable of the prodigal son, who is described as receiving, then abusing, and then losing God’s blessings, suffering from their loss, and brought to himself by the experience of suffering. A poor service indeed to offer, but the best we can offer, to make obedience our second choice when the world deserts us, when that is dead and lost to us wherein we were held!
Let it not be supposed that I think that in the lifetime of each of us there is some clearly marked date at which we began to seek God, and from which we have served him faithfully. This may be so in the case of this person or that, but it is far from being the rule. We may not so limit the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit. He condescends to plead with us continually, and what he cannot gain from us at one time, he gains at another. Repentance is a work carried on at various times, and but gradually and with many reverses perfected. Or rather, and without any change in the meaning of the word repentance, it is a work never complete, never entire, unfinished both in its inherent imperfection, and on account of the fresh occasions which arise for exercising it. We are ever sinning; we must ever be renewing our sorrow and our purpose of obedience, repeating our confessions and our prayers for pardon. No need to look back to the first beginnings of our repentance, should we be able to trace these, as something solitary and peculiar in our religious course. We are ever but beginning. The most perfect Christian is to himself but a beginner, a penitent prodigal, who has squandered God’s gifts and comes to him to be tried over again, not as a son, but as a hired servant.
The prodigal son waited not for his father to show signs of mercy. He did not merely approach a space, and then stand as a coward, curiously inquiring, and dreading how his father felt towards him. He made up his mind at once to degradation at the best, perhaps to rejection. He arose and went straight on towards his father, with a collected mind; and though his relenting father saw him from a distance and went out to meet him, still his purpose was that of an instant frank submission. Such must be a Christian repentance. First, we must put aside the idea of finding a remedy for our sin; then, though we feel the guilt of it, yet we must set out firmly towards God, not knowing for certain that we shall be forgiven. He, indeed, meets us on our way with the tokens of his favor, and so he bears up human faith, which else would sink under apprehension of meeting the Most High God. Still, for our repentance to be Christian, there must be in it that generous temper of self-surrender, the acknowledgment that we are unworthy to be called any more his sons, the abstinence from all ambitious hopes of sitting on his right hand or his left, and the willingness to bear the heavy yoke of bond-servants, if he should put it upon us.
This, I say, is Christian repentance. Will it be said, ‘It is too hard for a beginner’? True, but I have not been describing the case of a beginner. The parable teaches us what the character of the true penitent is, not how we actually at first come to God. The longer we live, the more we may hope to attain this higher kind of repentance, namely, in proportion as we advance in the other graces of the perfect Christian character. The truest kind of repentance as little comes at first, as perfect conformity to any other part of God’s law. It is gained by long practice it will come at length. The dying Christian will fulfill the part of the returning prodigal more exactly than he ever did in his former years. When first we turn to God in the actual history of our lives, our repentance is mixed with all kinds of imperfect views and feelings. Doubtless there is in it something of the true temper of simple submission. But the wish of appeasing God on the one hand, or a hard-hearted insensibility about our sins on the other, mere selfish dread of punishment, or the expectation of a sudden easy pardon, these, and such-like principles, influence us, whatever we may say or may think we feel. It is, indeed, easy enough to have good words put into our mouths, and our feelings roused, and to profess the union of utter self-abandonment and enlightened sense of sin, but to claim is not really to possess these excellent tempers. Really to gain these is a work of time. It is when the Christian has long fought the good fight of faith, and by experience knows how few and how imperfect are his best services, then it is that he is able to acquiesce, and most gladly acquiesces in the statement, that we are accepted by faith only in the merits of our Lord and Savior. When he surveys his life at the close of it, what is there he can trust in? What act of it will stand the scrutiny of the Holy God? Of course, no part of it, so much is plain without saying a word. But further, what part of it even is sufficient evidence to himself of his own sincerity and faithfulness? This is the point which I urge. How shall he know that he is still in a state of grace after all his sins? Doubtless he may have some humble hope of his acceptance. St. Paul speaks of the testimony of his conscience as consoling him; but his conscience also tells him of numberless actual sins, and numberless omissions of duty; and with the awful prospect of eternity before him, and in the weakness of declining health, how shall he collect himself to appear before God? Thus he is after all, in the very condition of the returning prodigal, and cannot go beyond him, though he has served God ever so long. He can but surrender himself to God, as after all, a worse than unprofitable servant, resigned to God’s will, whatever it is, with more or less hope of pardon, as the case may be, doubting not that Christ is the sole meritorious author of all grace, resting simply on him who, ‘if he will,’ can make him clean (Mt 8:2), but not without fears about himself, because unable, as he well knows, to read his own heart in that clear unerring way in which God reads it. Under these circumstances, how vain it is to tell him of his own good deeds, and to bid him look back on his past consistent life! This reflection will rarely comfort him, and when it does, it will be the recollection of the instances of God’s mercy towards him in former years which will be the chief ground of encouragement in it. No, his true saying is that Christ came to call sinners to repentance (Mt 9:13), that he died for the ungodly (Rom 5:6). He acknowledges and adopts, as far as he can, St. Paul’s words, and nothing beyond them. ‘The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And I am foremost of sinners’ (1 Tm 1:15).”
~John Henry Newman (from Waiting For Christ: Meditations for Advent and Christmas)
Let it not be supposed that I think that in the lifetime of each of us there is some clearly marked date at which we began to seek God, and from which we have served him faithfully. This may be so in the case of this person or that, but it is far from being the rule. We may not so limit the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit. He condescends to plead with us continually, and what he cannot gain from us at one time, he gains at another. Repentance is a work carried on at various times, and but gradually and with many reverses perfected. Or rather, and without any change in the meaning of the word repentance, it is a work never complete, never entire, unfinished both in its inherent imperfection, and on account of the fresh occasions which arise for exercising it. We are ever sinning; we must ever be renewing our sorrow and our purpose of obedience, repeating our confessions and our prayers for pardon. No need to look back to the first beginnings of our repentance, should we be able to trace these, as something solitary and peculiar in our religious course. We are ever but beginning. The most perfect Christian is to himself but a beginner, a penitent prodigal, who has squandered God’s gifts and comes to him to be tried over again, not as a son, but as a hired servant.
The prodigal son waited not for his father to show signs of mercy. He did not merely approach a space, and then stand as a coward, curiously inquiring, and dreading how his father felt towards him. He made up his mind at once to degradation at the best, perhaps to rejection. He arose and went straight on towards his father, with a collected mind; and though his relenting father saw him from a distance and went out to meet him, still his purpose was that of an instant frank submission. Such must be a Christian repentance. First, we must put aside the idea of finding a remedy for our sin; then, though we feel the guilt of it, yet we must set out firmly towards God, not knowing for certain that we shall be forgiven. He, indeed, meets us on our way with the tokens of his favor, and so he bears up human faith, which else would sink under apprehension of meeting the Most High God. Still, for our repentance to be Christian, there must be in it that generous temper of self-surrender, the acknowledgment that we are unworthy to be called any more his sons, the abstinence from all ambitious hopes of sitting on his right hand or his left, and the willingness to bear the heavy yoke of bond-servants, if he should put it upon us.
This, I say, is Christian repentance. Will it be said, ‘It is too hard for a beginner’? True, but I have not been describing the case of a beginner. The parable teaches us what the character of the true penitent is, not how we actually at first come to God. The longer we live, the more we may hope to attain this higher kind of repentance, namely, in proportion as we advance in the other graces of the perfect Christian character. The truest kind of repentance as little comes at first, as perfect conformity to any other part of God’s law. It is gained by long practice it will come at length. The dying Christian will fulfill the part of the returning prodigal more exactly than he ever did in his former years. When first we turn to God in the actual history of our lives, our repentance is mixed with all kinds of imperfect views and feelings. Doubtless there is in it something of the true temper of simple submission. But the wish of appeasing God on the one hand, or a hard-hearted insensibility about our sins on the other, mere selfish dread of punishment, or the expectation of a sudden easy pardon, these, and such-like principles, influence us, whatever we may say or may think we feel. It is, indeed, easy enough to have good words put into our mouths, and our feelings roused, and to profess the union of utter self-abandonment and enlightened sense of sin, but to claim is not really to possess these excellent tempers. Really to gain these is a work of time. It is when the Christian has long fought the good fight of faith, and by experience knows how few and how imperfect are his best services, then it is that he is able to acquiesce, and most gladly acquiesces in the statement, that we are accepted by faith only in the merits of our Lord and Savior. When he surveys his life at the close of it, what is there he can trust in? What act of it will stand the scrutiny of the Holy God? Of course, no part of it, so much is plain without saying a word. But further, what part of it even is sufficient evidence to himself of his own sincerity and faithfulness? This is the point which I urge. How shall he know that he is still in a state of grace after all his sins? Doubtless he may have some humble hope of his acceptance. St. Paul speaks of the testimony of his conscience as consoling him; but his conscience also tells him of numberless actual sins, and numberless omissions of duty; and with the awful prospect of eternity before him, and in the weakness of declining health, how shall he collect himself to appear before God? Thus he is after all, in the very condition of the returning prodigal, and cannot go beyond him, though he has served God ever so long. He can but surrender himself to God, as after all, a worse than unprofitable servant, resigned to God’s will, whatever it is, with more or less hope of pardon, as the case may be, doubting not that Christ is the sole meritorious author of all grace, resting simply on him who, ‘if he will,’ can make him clean (Mt 8:2), but not without fears about himself, because unable, as he well knows, to read his own heart in that clear unerring way in which God reads it. Under these circumstances, how vain it is to tell him of his own good deeds, and to bid him look back on his past consistent life! This reflection will rarely comfort him, and when it does, it will be the recollection of the instances of God’s mercy towards him in former years which will be the chief ground of encouragement in it. No, his true saying is that Christ came to call sinners to repentance (Mt 9:13), that he died for the ungodly (Rom 5:6). He acknowledges and adopts, as far as he can, St. Paul’s words, and nothing beyond them. ‘The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And I am foremost of sinners’ (1 Tm 1:15).”
~John Henry Newman (from Waiting For Christ: Meditations for Advent and Christmas)
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