We judge of any power by the results which it effects. We gain some knowledge of the power of steam by its capacity to drive a huge mass of steel and wood weighing twenty thousand tons through the water at the rate of twenty knots an hour. There we have some standard by which we can gauge the force which sends our earth round the sun at twenty-five miles a second, or that which propels a whole solar system through space. But we may apply the same method, of estimation by results, to the powers of the moral and spiritual worlds. Judged thus, it was indeed a stupendous power which was exerted by Christ from the Cross. For what result can be more amazing than the reversal, at the last, of the character slowly built up by the habits of a lifetime? It is, of course, useless to speculate on the antecedents of the robber (not “thief”) who turned to our Lord with the words, “Jesus, remember me when Thou shalt come into Thy kingdom.” We know only what is implied by
the word “robber” or “brigand,” and the fact that he had joined, with his fellow-sufferer, in the mockery of our Lord. But the words thus addressed by him to Christ, in their context, represent the most wonderful “phenomenon” of human life, a genuine and thorough-going conversion. And the power which wrought that stupendous result was the patience and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. The weak things had, as so often since, confounded the strong. In His matchless forbearance, in the prayer for His executioners, the royalty of Christ our Lord was disclosed, and the “title” over His head was vindicated.
1. First then, we learn from the Second Word the Mind and Will of God towards penitence. There is no interposing of delay. Forgiveness is instantaneous. No pause intervenes between the prayer for pardon, and the pardon itself. But, that instant response was to genuine “change of mind,” not to the repentance which is merely regret for the past, still less to a cowardly shrinking from a deserved punishment, but to a definite act of the man’s will, repudiating sin, and ranging himself on God’s side. The rejection of sin, the identifying of self with God’s attitude towards it, that, we have seen, is alone, in the New Testament sense of the word, repentance.
2. The penitence of the robber, on analysis, discloses the three familiar elements—
(a) Contrition is obviously implied in the whole action.
(b) Confession—“we receive the due rewards of the things which we wrought.”
(c) Amendment—in the separation of himself from those with whom he had hitherto joined in reviling Christ.
Now it is worth noting, that our Catechism bids us examine ourselves not about our sins, but about our repentance; “whether they truly repent.” We are meant to ask ourselves—
(a) Is our contrition real? And here, for our comfort, we remember that God accepts as contrition the sincere desire to be contrite.
(b) Have we made such a painstaking self-examination as to ensure our making a good confession? “If we confess our sins” (separate, detailed sins, not our sinfulness in general terms), “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.”