Repentance is not mere self-contempt,
self-pity, or remorse. It is sorrow for sin, which has for its motive
the love of GOD and the realization that human sin meant and means in
the experience of GOD the Cross.
Nothing so deepens the religious life as true repentance, nor is there
anything so fatal to true religion as self-righteousness. "If we say
that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in
us." "To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." But the
first prerequisite of repentance is self-knowledge--a difficult
matter. Gross carnal offences, strong and flagrant sins, if such there
be, are obvious and upon the surface. The subtler sins of the spirit--
thoughtlessness, for example, or snobbishness or priggishness and
pride--though we are quick to remark upon them in others, are apt in
our own case to pass undetected. It is the Spirit who convinces men of
sin. Only as we are resolute to enter into "the mind of the Spirit"
can we hope to know ourselves as in the sight of GOD we really are.
The matter is complicated by the fact that those who, as things are,
most systematically practise self-examination and confession of sin
too often view the matter in a somewhat narrowly ecclesiastical
spirit, and make use of forms of self-examination which mix up real
and serious moral offences with "sins" which are merely ceremonial,
trivial, or imaginary, as though the two stood precisely upon the same
level.
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