Repentance
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Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also
do good, that are accustomed to do evil.”
Jeremiah 13:23
. There is
help for us only in God. We must not wait for stronger persuasions,
for better opportunities, or for holier tempers. We can do nothing of
ourselves. We must come to Christ just as we are.
But let none deceive themselves with the thought that God, in His
great love and mercy, will yet save even the rejecters of His grace.
The exceeding sinfulness of sin can be estimated only in the light
of the cross. When men urge that God is too good to cast off the
sinner, let them look to Calvary. It was because there was no other
way in which man could be saved, because without this sacrifice it
was impossible for the human race to escape from the defiling power
of sin, and be restored to communion with holy beings,—impossible
for them again to become partakers of spiritual life,—it was because
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of this that Christ took upon Himself the guilt of the disobedient and
suffered in the sinner’s stead. The love and suffering and death of
the Son of God all testify to the terrible enormity of sin and declare
that there is no escape from its power, no hope of the higher life, but
through the submission of the soul to Christ.
The impenitent sometimes excuse themselves by saying of pro-
fessed Christians, “I am as good as they are. They are no more self-
denying, sober, or circumspect in their conduct than I am. They love
pleasure and self-indulgence as well as I do.” Thus they make the
faults of others an excuse for their own neglect of duty. But the sins
and defects of others do not excuse anyone, for the Lord has not given
us an erring human pattern. The spotless Son of God has been given
as our example, and those who complain of the wrong course of pro-
fessed Christians are the ones who should show better lives and nobler
examples. If they have so high a conception of what a Christian should
be, is not their own sin so much the greater? They know what is right,
and yet refuse to do it.
Beware of procrastination. Do not put off the work of forsaking
your sins and seeking purity of heart through Jesus. Here is where
thousands upon thousands have erred to their eternal loss. I will not
here dwell upon the shortness and uncertainty of life; but there is a
terrible danger—a danger not sufficiently understood—in delaying
to yield to the pleading voice of God’s Holy Spirit, in choosing to
live in sin; for such this delay really is. Sin, however small it may be
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