Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

October 13– Morning

 by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“Godly sorrow produces repentance.” 

—2 Corinthians 7:10

Genuine, spiritual mourning for sin is the work of the Spirit of God. Repentance is a flower too beautiful to grow in nature’s garden. Pearls grow naturally in oysters, but penitence never shows itself in sinners unless divine grace works it in them. If you have one particle of real hatred for sin, God must have given it to you because human nature’s thorns never produced a single fig. As the Scripture says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.”

True repentance, by necessity, involves a Savior. When we repent of sin, we must have one eye on the sin and the other on the cross; or, better still, we could fix both of our eyes on Christ and see our transgressions only in the light of his love.

True sorrow for sin is quite practical. No man has the right to say that he hates sin if he, in fact, lives in it. Repentance makes us see the evil of sin not merely as a theory but experientially– as a burnt child dreads fire. We should be afraid of it like a man who has been recently robbed fears a thief. Shouldn’t we turn away from sin wherever we see it– not only in the “big things” but in the small ones as well? After all, many people fear little snakes as well as big ones.

If we are truly sorry for sin, we will be very careful to watch our tongue so that we don’t say a wrong word. We’ll watch every action throughout the day, and, if we find anything out of place, we will end the day with painful confessions of shortcoming and each morning awaken with anxious prayers asking God to keep us from sinning against him.

Sincere repentance is continual. Believers repent until their dying day without a break. Every other sorrow decreases with time, but the sorrow for sin increases with our growth in Christ. It’s a sweet bitterness that God permits us to both suffer and enjoy until we enter our eternal rest. [M&E]