Comfort for the Repenting Sinner
Bernard said, "the wine of angels." Yet, tears are not satisfactory for sin. We drop sin with our tears; therefore they cannot satisfy.
Augustine said it well: "I have read of Peter's tears, but no man ever read of Peter's satisfaction." Only Christ's blood can merit pardon.
We please God by repentance, but we do not satisfy him by it. To trust in our repentance is to make it a Savior. Though repentance helps to purge the filth of sin, it is Christ's blood that washes away the guilt of sin. Therefore, do not idolize repentance. Do not rest on this: that your heart has been wounded for your sin. Rather, rest on the fact that your Savior has been wounded for your sin. When you have wept, say with Peter: "Lord Jesus, wash my tears in your blood."
Comfort for the Repenting Sinner Let me in the next place speak by way of comfort. Christian, has God given you a repenting heart? If so, know these three things for your everlasting comfort:
1. Your sins are pardoned Pardon of sin circumscribes blessedness within it. (Psa 32.1). Whom
God pardons he crowns: "who forgives all your iniquities, who crowns you with lovingkindness" (Psa 103.34). A repenting condition is a pardoned condition. Christ said to that weeping woman, "Your sins, which are many, are forgiven" (Luk 7.47). Pardons are sealed on 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 (Zec 13.1). Have you repented? God looks at you as if you had not offended. He becomes a friend, a father. He will now bring out the best robe and put it on you. God is pacified towards you and will, as with the father of the prodigal, fall upon your neck and kiss you. Sin in Scripture is compared to a cloud (Isa 44.22). No sooner is this cloud scattered by repentance than pardoning love shines forth. Paul, after his repentance, obtained mercy: "I was all bestrewed with mercy" (1Tim
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 forgives sin in such a way that 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 (Isa 43.25). Some ask the question, whether the sins of the godly will 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 prejudice, for the debt-book is crossed.
3. Conscience will now speak peace O the music of conscience! Conscience is turned into a paradise, and there a Christian sweetly solaces himself and plucks the flowers of joy (2Cor 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 (Luk 6.20). He is encircled with promises. He no sooner shakes the tree of the promise than some fruit falls from it.
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 will be wiped away. Death will not be a destruction, but a deliverance from jail.
Thus you see what great comfort remains for repenting sinners.
Luther said that before his conversion he could not endure that bitter word "repentance;" but afterwards he found much sweetness in it.