"Repent, and turn yourselves from your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby you have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit, for why will ye die, O house of Israel?"[F]
[Footnote F: Ezek. xviii: 30, 31.]
Such was the word of the Lord to Israel through the prophet Ezekiel. I call the attention of the reader to the fact, that the idea of turning away from transgressions, and making a new heart and a new spirit, or in other word, a reformation of life, is associated with the commandment to repent, and forms part of it.
Paul wrote an epistle to the Corinthian saints, reproving them for their sins, and his sharp reproofs filled them with sorrow. In a subsequent epistle to the same people, and alluding to the effect of his former epistle, he said: "Though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent. * * * I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that you sorrowed unto repentance; for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death."[G]
[Footnote G: II. Cor. vii: 8-10.]
From this passage it appears that Paul recognized two kinds of sorrow, or repentance, one of which has need to be repented of, because unfruitful of reformation, and therefore not profitable in the way of salvation—the sorrow of the world which worketh death. On the other hand is godly sorrow, or repentance which bringeth salvation, known to both men and angels, aye, and likewise to God, by the fruit it bears— good works—forsaking evil, producing a reformation of life. It leads one who stole to steal no more; one in the habit of getting drunk, to get drunk no more; one who blasphemed the name of God to do so no more; and so on as to all things in which man violates the sacred principles of righteousness. It is written in James: "Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up."[H]
[Footnote H: James iv: 7-10.]
Because of the stress here laid upon the necessity of humility, and the people being commanded to mourn and weep, to let their laughter be turned to mourning, and their joy to heaviness, some religious teachers (like the Pharisees and scribes of old who tithed mint and anise and cummin, but omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith) give so much attention to weeping, mourning and crying aloud, in order to appear to be afflicted, that they have overlooked the weightier matters—cleansing their hands, purifying their hearts, resisting the devil and drawing nigh unto God. These ought they to do, and not leave the other—the weeping and mourning, inasmuch as it arises from a deep and heartfelt conviction of sinfulness—undone.
But at present there is too much of what Paul would call "worldly sorrow" mixed up with the idea of repentance. Too much mourning over sin, yet running into temptation; an excess of lamentation and not enough of turning away from evil; in a word, the sorrow of the world, which worketh death, is too prevalent. How weary must be the old, old story to God and angels, as well as to men—"we have done those things we ought not to have done, and have left undone those things we ought to have done!"
Then again, the sorrow of the world, the sorrow which worketh death, is too generally accepted for genuine repentance; the latter may be known and distinguished from the former by its being accompanied by a reformation of life, a turning away from that which is evil—the kind of repentance required in the Gospel, the only kind that will be accepted of God, or that savors of salvation. God, whom we esteem as a being in whom all the fullness of perfection dwells, must ever be more pleased with the substance of worship, or religion, or repentance than with the forms pertaining to it, and this is abundantly proven by instances recorded in holy writ.