Pensees: Repenting to the Gate of Heaven

Repenting to the Gate of Heaven

Repentance should be routine. As a Puritan is said to have stated, “We are sinners still. We repent to the gate of heaven.” But another intriguing fact about repentance in the life of the believer is that, where it is prevalent, it is also intensifying. Strong emotions and deep sorrow for indwelling sin should intensify as we grow in Christ, not lessen.

Have you ever read the biographies or journals of godly people and marvel at the depth of feeling they had toward their sinfulness? It is this that made them holy. Even as they grew in the Word, the repentance of new growth seemed to eclipse the repentance of earlier days.

The Baptist theologian, A.H. Strong commenting on this trend in the life of godly people is not ashamed to prove his point with biographies.

In proof of these statements we appeal to the biographies and writings of those in all ages who have been by general consent regarded as most advanced in spiritual culture and discernment.

You have noticed it. I have noticed it. Godly people feel deeply. One biography that has had a great impact on me personally is the biography of Henry Martyn. John Sargent, Martyn’s biographer, gives one of the most insightful explanations that I have ever seen of holy feelings toward sin and righteousness as is often evident in the lives of godly people.

He that has much grace apprehends, much more than others, that great height to which his love ought to ascend, and he sees better than others how little a way he has risen towards that height, and, therefore, estimating his love by the whole height of his duty, it appears astonishingly little and low in his eyes. It most demonstratively appears that true grace is of that nature, that the more a person has of it, with remaining corruption, the less does his goodness and holiness appear, in proportion, not only to his past deformity, but to his present deformity, in the sin that now appears in his heart, and in the abominable defects of his highest affections and brightest experience.

A.H. Strong explains this very same thing in other words:

We affirm, then, that just in proportion to his spiritual enlightenment and self-knowledge, the Christian regards his outward deviations from God’s law, and his evil inclinations and desires, as outgrowths and revelations of a depravity of nature which lies below his consciousness; and repents more deeply for this depravity of nature, which constitutes his inmost character and is inseparable from himself, than for what he merely feels or does.

To buttress his point, Strong cites the godly Jonathan Edwards, a man that perhaps influenced early America for the glory of God like no other man.

Often since I have lived in this town I have had very affecting views of my own sinfulness and vileness, very frequently to such a degree as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping, sometimes for a considerable time together, so that I have been often obliged to shut myself up. I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness and the badness of my heart than ever I had before my conversion. It has often appeared to me that if God should mark iniquity against me, I should appear the very worst of all mankind, of all that have been since the beginning of the world to this time; and that I should have the lowest place in hell. . .

My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly ineffable and swallowing up all thought and imagination - like an infinite deluge, or mountains over my head. I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite on infinite and multiplying infinite by infinite.

Very often for these many years, these expressions are in my mind and in my mouth: ‘Infinite upon infinite - infinite upon infinite!’ When I look into my heart and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell. And it appears to me that were it not for free grace, exalted and raised up to the infinite height of all the fulness and glory of the great Jehovah, and the arm of his power and grace stretched forth in all the majesty of his power and in all the glory of his sovereignty, I should appear sunk down in my sins below hell itself, far beyond the sight of everything but the eye of sovereign grace that can pierce even down to such a depth.

But get this! Edwards was ashamed of his insensitivity! “it is enough to amaze me that I have no more sense of my sin”, he complained. “I know certainly that I have very little sense of my sinfulness.” It disturbed him to think of how “how ignorant [he] was, when a young Christian, of the bottomless, infinite depths of wickedness, pride, hypocrisy, and deceit left in [his] heart.”

This almost seems like a foreign language. Surely, this must be the language of a profligate sinner who is guilty of the most vile things. But Strong, commenting on this well-known passage from Edwards, says,

Jonathan Edwards was not an ungodly man, but the holiest of his time. He was not an enthusiast, but a man of acute, philosophic mind. He was not a man who indulged in exaggerated or random statements, for with his power of introspection and analysis he combined a faculty and habit of exact expression unsurpassed among the sons of men.

I think the old Puritan was right:

We are sinners still. We repent to the gate of heaven.

The godliest of saints repent the most.