Comfort for the Repenting Sinner

by Patte Smith on Sunday, May 13, 2012 at 2:18pm ·

Comfort for the Repenting Sinner
by Thomas Watson

Christian, has God given you a repenting heart? Know these three things for your everlasting comfort:


1. Your sins are pardoned.
Pardon of sin brings blessedness within it. (Psalm 32:1). Whom God pardons—He crowns. "Who forgives all your iniquities, who crowns you with loving-kindness" (Psalm 103:34). A repenting condition is a pardoned condition. Christ said to that weeping woman, "Your sins, which are many—are forgiven" (Luke 7:47). Pardons are sealed upon soft hearts. O you whose head has been a fountain to weep for sin—Christ's side will be a fountain to wash away sin! (Zech. 13:1). Have you repented? God looks upon you as if you had not offended. He becomes a friend, a Father. He will now bring forth the best robe and put it on you. God is pacified towards you and will, with the father of the prodigal, fall upon your neck and kiss you. Sin in scripture is compared to a cloud (Is. 44:22). No sooner is this cloud scattered by repentance, than pardoning love shines forth. Paul, after his repentance, obtained mercy, (1 Tim. 1:16). When a spring of repentance is open in the heart—a spring of mercy is open in heaven!


2. God will pass an act of oblivion.
He so forgives sin as He forgets. "I will remember their sin no more" (Jer. 31:34). Have you been penitentially humbled? The Lord will never upbraid you with your former sins. After Peter wept we never read that Christ upbraided him, with his denial of Him. God has cast your sins into the depths of the sea (Mic. 7:19). How? Not as cork—but as lead. The Lord will never in a judicial way account for them. When He pardons, God is as a creditor that blots the debt out of His book (Isaiah 43:25). Some ask the question, whether the sins of the godly shall be mentioned at the last day. The Lord said He will not remember them, and He is blotting them out, so if their sins are mentioned, it shall not be to their harm, for the debt-book is crossed out.


3. Conscience will now speak peace.
O the music of a clean conscience! Conscience is turned into a paradise, and there a Christian sweetly solaces himself and plucks the flowers of joy (2 Cor. 1:12). The repenting sinner can go to God with boldness in prayer, and look upon Him not as a Judge—but as a Father. He is "born of God" and is heir to a kingdom (Luke 6:20). He is encircled with promises. He no sooner shakes the tree of the promise, but some fruit falls.


To conclude, 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 jail. Thus you see what great comfort remains for repenting sinners.

http://www.gracegems.org/Watson/repentance4.htm