Revelation 2:16 Repent; or else I will come to you quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. I. WHAT THAT REPENTANCE IS THAT IS HERE ENJOINED. Repentance in Scripture has a threefold acceptation. 1. It is taken for the first act by which the soul turns from sin to God; the first dividing stroke that separates between sin and the heart; the first step and advance that a sinner makes to holiness; the first endeavours and throes of a new birth. 2. It is taken for the whole course of a pious life, comprising the whole actions a man performs from first to last inclusively; from his first turning from a wicked life to the last period of a godly. 3. Repentance is taken for a man's turning to God after the guilt of some particular sin. It differs from the former thus: that the former is from a state of sin: this latter only from a sinful act. No repentance precedes the former, but this supposes a true repentance to have gone before. This repentance, therefore, builds upon the former; and it is that which is here intended. II. ARGUMENTS TO ENGAGE US IN THE SPEEDY AND IMMEDIATE EXERCISE OF THIS DUTY. I. No man can be secure of the future. Neither, indeed, will men act as if they were ha things that concern this life, for no man willingly defers his pleasures. And did men here well compute the many frailties of nature, and further add the contingencies of chance, how quickly a disease from within, or a blow from without, may tear down the strongest constitution, certainly they would ensure eternity upon something else than a life as uncertain as the air that feeds it. 2. Supposing the allowance of time, yet we cannot be sure of power to repent. It is very possible, that by the insensible encroaches of sin a man's heart may be so hardened as to have neither power nor will to repent, though he has time and opportunity. The longer the heart and sin converse together, the more familiar they will grow; and then, the stronger the familiarity, the harder the separation. A man at first is strong and his sin is weak, and he may easily break the neck of it by a mature repentance; but his own deluding heart tells him that he had better repent hereafter; that is, when, on the contrary, he himself is deplorably weak and his sin invincibly strong. 3. Admitting a man has both time and grace to repent, yet by such delay the work will be incredibly more difficult. The longer a debt lies unpaid, the greater it grows; and not discharged, is quickly multiplied. The sin to be repented of will be the greater, and power and strength to repent by will be less. And though a man escapes death, the utmost effect of his distemper, yet certainly he will find it something to be cut and scarified and lanced and to endure all the tortures of a deferred cure. We find not such fierce expressions of vengeance against any sinner, as the Spirit of God, in Deuteronomy 29:20, 21, discharges against him that obstinately delayed his repentance. (1) Because it is the abuse of a remedy. Certainly it cannot but be the highest provocation to see guilt kick at mercy, and presumption take advantage merely from a redundancy of compassion. He that will fight it out, and not surrender, only because he has articles of peace offered to him, deserves to feel the sword of an unmerciful enemy. (2) The reason why God is exasperated by our delaying this duty is, because it clearly shows that a man does not love it, as a duty, but only intends to use it for an expedient of escape. It is not because it is pleasing to God, grateful to an offended majesty, or because he apprehends a worth and excellency in the thing itself; for then he would set about it immediately: for love is quick and active, and desire hates all delay. (3) A third reason that God's displeasure so implacably burns against this sin is, because it is evidently a counterplotting of God, and being wise above the prescribed methods of salvation, to which God makes the immediate dereliction of sin necessary. But he that defers his repentance makes this his principle, to live a sinner and die a penitent. (R. South, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. |
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