Repentance (part 2)

In The Doctrine of Repentance, Thomas Watson takes two chapters (3 and 4) to expound upon the fact that “repentance is a spiritual medicine made up of six special ingredients.” He lists these ingredients as (1) Sight of sin, (2) Sorrow for sin, (3) Confession of sin, (4) Shame for sin, (5) Hatred for sin, (6) Turning from sin. By God's grace, we must learn to mix these together.

Going on…here are some more quotes. I'd encourage you to read them slowly, and let the ones that stick out strike your soul!



A true turning from sin is a divorcing it, so as never to come near it any more. (56)

It is not falling into water that drowns, but lying in it. It is not falling into sin that damns, but lying in it without repentance. (62)


CHAPTER 6 – A SERIOUS EXHORTATION TO REPENTANCE

There is no rowing to paradise except upon the stream of repenting tears. (63)

Till sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet. (63)

Either men must turn or God will overturn. (66)

If prayer does not make a man leave sin, sin will make him leave prayer. (68)

The hypocrite carries his Bible under his arm, but not in his heart….God’s anger will fall heavier upon hypocrites. They dishonour God more and take away the gospel’s good name. Therefore the Lord reserves the most deadly arrows in his quiver to shoot at them. If heathens be damned, hypocrites shall be double-damned. (68-69)

Repentance is necessary for God’s own people. Repentance is a continuous act. (69)

The sins of God’s people do more provoke God than do the sins of others. The sins of the wicked pierce Christ’s side. The sins of the godly go to his heart. (72)

Sin hangs weights upon us so that we move but slowly to heaven. (73)


CHAPTER 7 – POWERFUL MOTIVES TO REPENTANCE

What is knowledge good for without repentance? It is better to mortify one sin than to understand all mysteries. Learning and a bad heart is like a fair face with a cancer in the breast. Knowledge without repentance will be but a torch to light men to hell. (77)

Repentance unravels sin and makes it as if it had never been. (79)

Never do the flowers of grace grow more than after a shower of repentant tears. (79)

We tasted the apple, and [Christ] the vinegar and gall. We sinned in every faculty, and he bled in every vein. Can we look upon a suffering Saviour with dry eyes? (81)

After a few showers that fall from our eyes, we shall have perpetual sunshine. (82)

A hard heart is the worst heart. It is called a heart of stone (Ezek. 36:26). If it were iron it might be mollified in the furnace, but a stone put in the fire will not melt; it will sooner fly in your face. Impenitence is a sin that grieves Christ. (83)

It is not so much the disease that offends the physician as the contempt of his physic. It is not so much the sins we have committed that so provoke and grieve Christ as that we refuse the physic of repentance which he prescribes. (84)

A hard heart is the anvil on which the hammer of God’s justice will be striking to all eternity. (84)


CHAPTER 8 – EXHORTATIONS TO SPEEDY REPENTANCE

Repentance requires haste. (86)

Sin is a poison. It is dangerous to let poison lie long in the body. (88)

It is dangerous to procrastinate repentance because the longer any go on in sin the harder they will find the work of repentance. Delay strengthens sin and hardens the heart and gives the devil fuller possession. A plant at first may be easily plucked up, but when it has spread its roots deep in the earth, a whole team cannot remove it. It is hard to remove sin when once it comes to be rooted. (88-89)

Conscience is a bosom-preacher. Sometimes it convinces, sometimes it reproves. It says, as Nathan to David, ‘Thou art the man’ (2 Sam. 12:7). (90)


CHAPTER 9 – THE TRIAL OF OUR REPENTANCE, AND COMFORT FOR THE PENITENT

He that repents of sin, his spirit rises against it, as one’s blood rises at the sight of him whom he mortally hates. Indignation is a being fretted at the heart with sin. (93)

A true penitent pursues his sins with a holy malice. He crucifies his lusts. A true child of God seeks to be revenged most of those sins which have dishonoured God most. (95)

Take heed that you do not ascribe too much to repentance. We please God by repentance but we do not satisfy him by it. To trust in our repentance is to make it a saviour. Though repentance helps to purge out the filth of sin, yet it is Christ’s blood that washes away the guilt of sin. (96-97)

When a spirit of repentance is open in the heart, a spring of mercy is open in heaven. (97)

The true penitent may look on death with comfort. His life has been a life of tears, and now at death all tears shall be wiped away. Death shall not be a destruction, but a deliverance from goal. (98)


CHAPTER 10 – THE REMOVING OF THE IMPEDIMENTS TO REPENTANCE

Sin is a sugared draught, mixed with poison. The sinner thinks there is danger in sin, but there is also delight, and the danger does not terrify him as much as the delight bewitches him. (101)

Delighting in sin hardens the heart. In true repentance there must be a grieving for sin, but how can one grieve for that which he loves? He who delights in sin can hardly pray against it. (102)

Remember, great sins have been swallowed up in the sea of God’s infinite compassions. (103)

The Lord indeed is longsuffering towards sinners and would by his patience bribe them to repentance, but here is their wretchedness; because he forbears to punish they forbear to repent. (104)

The longer God’s arrow is drawing, the deeper it will wound. (104)

The world so engrosses men’s time and bewitches their affections that they cannot repent. They had rather put gold in their bag than tears in God’s bottle. (105)