The Biblical Illustrator
Psalms 38:18
I will declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin.
Of confession of sin
I. What confession of sin is. It is a declaration of acknowledgment of some moral evil or fault to another.
II. How far confession of our sins is necessary.
1. It is a necessary part of repentance, that we should confess our sins to God, with a due sense of the evil of them (Proverbs 28:18; 1 John 1:9).
2. As for our confessing our sins to men, both Scripture and reason do, in some cases, recommend and enjoin it.
(1) In order to the obtaining of the prayers of good men for us (James 5:16).
(2) In order to the ease and satisfaction of our minds, and our being directed in our duty for the future.
(3) In case our sins have been public and scandalous, both reason and the practice of the Christian Church do require, that, when men have publicly offended, they should give public satisfaction and open testimony of their repentance. (J. Tillotson.)
Sorrow for sin
I. The nature of this passion. Sorrow is a trouble or disturbance of mind, occasioned by something that is evil, done or suffered by us, or which we are in danger of suffering, that tends greatly to our damage or mischief: so that to be sorry for a thing is nothing else but to be sensibly affected with the consideration of the evil of it, and of the mischief and inconvenience which is like to redound to us from it; which, if it be a moral evil, such as sin is, to be sorry for it, is to be troubled that we have done it, and to wish with all our hearts that we had been wiser, and had done otherwise; and if this sorrow be true and real, if it abide and stay upon us, it will produce a firm purpose and resolution in us, not to do the like for the future.
II. The reason and grounds of our sorrow for sin.
1. The great mischief that sin is like to bring upon us.
2. Another and better principle of sorrow for sin is ingenuity; because we are sensible that we have carried ourselves very unworthily towards God, and have been injurious to Him, who hath laid all possible obligations upon us.
III. The measure and degree of our sorrow for sin.
1. Sin being so great an evil in itself, and of so pernicious a consequence to us, it cannot be too much lamented and grieved for by us; and the more and greater our sins have been, and the longer we have continued and lived in them, they call for so much the greater sorrow, and deeper humiliation from us; for the reasoning of our Saviour, “She loved much, because much was forgiven her,” is proportionably true in this case--those who have sinned much, should sorrow the more.
2. If we would judge aright of the truth of our sorrow for sin, we must not measure it so much by the degrees of sensible trouble and affliction, as by the rational effects of it, which are hatred of sin, and a fixed purpose and resolution against it for the future.
IV. How far the outward expression of our inward grief by tears is necessary to a true repentance. The usual sign and outward expression of sorrow is tears; but these being not the substance of our duty, but an external testimony of it, which some tempers are more unapt to than others; we are much less to judge of the truth of our sorrow for sin by these, than by our inward sensible trouble and affliction of spirit. He that cannot weep like a child may resolve like a man, and that undoubtedly will find acceptance with God. Two persons walking together espy a serpent; the one shrieks and cries out at the sight of it, the other kills it: so it is in sorrow for sin; some express it by great lamentation and tears, and vehement transports of passions; others by greater and more real effects of hatred and detestation, by forsaking their sins, and by mortifying and subduing their lusts: but he that kills it does certainly best express his inward displeasure and enmity against it. The application shall be in two particulars--
1. By way of caution, and that against a double mistake about sorrow for sin.
(1) Some look upon trouble and sorrow for sin as the whole of repentance. If this were so, there would be store of penitents in hell; for there is the deepest and most intense sorrow, “weeping, and wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
(2) Another mistake which men ought to be cautioned against in this matter is, of those who exact from themselves such a degree of sorrow for sin as ends in deep melancholy, as renders them unfit both for the duties of religion, and of their particular callings. The end of sorrow for sin is the forsaking of it and returning to our duty; but he that sorrows for sin, so as to unfit him for his duty, defeats his own design, and destroys the end he aims at.
2. The other part of the application of this discourse should be to stir up this affection of sorrow in us. If the holy men in Scripture, David, and Jeremiah, and St. Paul, were so deeply affected with the sins of others as to shed rivers of tears at the remembrance of them, how ought we to be touched with the sense of our own sins, who are equally concerned in the dishonour brought to God by them, and infinitely more in the danger they expose us to! Can we weep for our dead friends; and have we no sense of that heavy load of guilt, of that body of death which we carry about with us? Can we be sad and melancholy for temporal losses and sufferings, and “refuse to be comforted;” and is it no trouble to us to have lost heaven and happiness, and to be in continual danger of the intolerable sufferings and endless torments of another world? I shall only offer to your consideration the great benefit and advantage which will redound us from this godly sorrow; “it worketh repentance to salvation, not to be repented of.” If we would thus “sow in tears,” we should “reap in joy.” (Samuel Martin.)
Hindrances to repentance
I. There are various ways, and there are many ways, in which men try to hide themselves from themselves; to escape their own detection; wilfully to evade their own nominal search.
(1) One of these is the sorcery of words. Men call sins, which they see others commit, by their true names; they call their own sins by false and glozing names. What is pride in others is in themselves proper spirit; what is slander in others is in themselves moral indignation; what is cheating in others is in themselves legitimate profit; what is in others an immoral acquiescence is in themselves a practical common sense; what is in others licence is in themselves Christian liberty.
(2) Men will hardly ever look at their own actual deeds in connection with their own true motives. They live two lives. One is their common, habitual round of conduct, which is often base, and mean, and unworthy. The other is their traditional and imaginative homage to righteousness, which is upright and respectable. Their lives are a stately temple front; its frieze is sculptured with heroic imagery; its entablature, like that of our Royal Exchange, is enriched with a pious inscription. Alas! alas I Enter beyond the vestibule, and in some inmost shrine, noiseless and far away, approached, it may be, only by secret stairs and half-hidden entrances--there, in little, mean, dark closets, so completely behind their ostensible lives and their expressed opinions, that they almost succeed in hiding it from themselves, all the bad, the impure, the dishonourable work of their lives is done!
(3) They freely condemn every other sin but the one to which they are themselves addicted.
(4) They find the sweet, soft pleadings of egotism and of self-love so irresistible, that anything seems to be at least excusable which results from yielding to such temptations. Religion appeals to the reason and to the spirit; it nerves and braces; it puts iron into our resolutions; it infuses the soul with manliness, and the will with strength. And, on the other hand, sins--the sins of the world, the flesh and the devil--degrade us into the animal: they unnerve, they effeminate, they debase, they paralyze; they bid us listen to the base pleadings of a “miserable, hungry, shivering self,” which is, like a crawling serpent, ever rustling amid the dead leaves of our weakened purposes, and ever hissing in our own ears: “Only this once.” “There is no harm in it.” “Thou shalt not surely die.” This is the explanation, and the only possible one, of the insane infatuation which so often marks either the whole lives or the sudden actions of many men.
2. What should be our protection against these specious thoughts of our own heart and our own counsel? God has not left you unshielded. He has assigned the soul of man to the special, immediate guardianship of two pure and strong holy spirits. The name of one of those great archangels of our being is Duty--Duty, that angel so stern and yet so beautiful! And the name of the other great archangel is Conscience--Conscience, “that aboriginal vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas,” with a voice now like the blast of a trumpet, now thrilling, and still, and small. (Dean Ferret.)