Spurgeon on Repentance

Now, a repentance which makes me weep and hate my past life because of the love of Christ which has pardoned it, is the right repentance. When I can say, "My sin is washed away by Jesus's blood," and then repent because I so sinned as to make it necessary that Christ should die—that dove-eyed repentance which looks at his bleeding wounds, and feels that her heart must bleed because she wounded Christ—that broken heart that breaks because Christ was nailed to the cross for it—that is the repentance which brings us salvation.

Again, the repentance which makes us avoid present sin because of the love of God who died for us, this also is saving repentance. If I avoid sin to-day because I am afraid of being lost if I commit it, I have not the repentance of a child of God; but when I avoid it and seek to lead a holy life because Christ loved me and gave himself up for me, and because I am not my own, but am bought with a price, this is the work of the Spirit of God.
And again, that change of mind… which leads me to resolve that in future I will live like Jesus, and will not live in the lusts of the flesh, because he has redeemed me, not with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with his own precious blood—that is the repentance which will save me, and the repentance he asks of me.
…He asks you to weep and wail because of him; to look on him whom you have pierced, and to mourn for him as a man mourns for his only son; he bids you remember that you nailed the Saviour to the tree, and asks that this argument may make you hate the murderous sins which fastened the Saviour there, and put the Lord of glory to an ignominious and an accursed death.

Preached July 1862

Wow! I think those words need to pierce our heart like an arrow to imbed this central tenet of the Christian faith.

Simon