ing
darkness and clouds over themselves by the anxious scrutinising
question: 'Is my sorrow deep enough?' Deep enough! What for? What is the
use of sorrow for sin? To lead a man to repentance and to faith. If you
have as much sorrow as leads you to penitence and trust you have enough.
It is not your sorrow that is going to wash away your sin, it is
Christ's blood. So let no man trouble himself about the question, Have I
sorrow enough? The one question is: 'Has my sorrow led me to cast myself
on Christ?'

II. Still further, look now for a moment at the next stage here. 'Godly
sorrow worketh repentance.'

What is repentance? No doubt many of you would answer that it is 'sorrow
for sin,' but clearly this text of ours draws a distinction between the
two. There are very few of the great key-words of Christianity that have
suffered more violent and unkind treatment, and have been more obscured
by misunderstandings, than this great word. It has been weakened down
into penitence, which in the ordinary acceptation, means simply the
emotion that I have already been speaking about, viz., a regretful sense
of my own evil. And it has been still further docked and degraded, both
in its syllables and in its substance, into _penance_. But the
'repentance' of the New Testament and of the Old Testament--one of the
twin conditions of salvation--is neither sorrow for sin nor works of
restitution and satisfaction, but it is, as the word distinctly
expresses, a change of purpose in regard to the sin for which a man
mourns. I cannot now expand and elaborate this idea as I should like,
but let me remind you of one or two passages in Scripture which may show
that the right notion of the word is not sorrow but changed attitude and
purpose in regard to my sin.

We find passages, some of which ascribe and some deny repentance to the
Divine nature. But if there be a repentance which is possible for the
Divine nature, it obviously cannot mean sorrow for sin, but must signify
a change of purpose. In the Epistle to the Romans we read, 'The gifts
and calling of God are without repentance,' which clearly means without
change of purpose on His part. And I read in the story of the mission of
the Prophet Jonah, that 'the Lord repented of the evil which He had said
He would do unto them, and He did it not.' Here, again, the idea of
repentance is clearly and distinctly that of a change of purpose. So fix
this on your minds, and lay it on your hearts, dear