After recently writing about repentance (see “Repentance”), I didn’t think I’d be revisiting the topic so soon. Then I came across the following quote from Puritan Josias (Josiah) Shute concerning genuine repentance: “True repentance is when a man grieves for his sin to the extent that he abandons it.” It is one thing to think we are sorry for disobeying the commands of God. It is another to resolve from doing it again.
But it is something else altogether for our sin to so grieve us that we abandon any thought of pursuing it in the future. We don’t just quit repeating the sin for a moment, or even for an extended period, but become so destroyed by even the thought of revisiting such sin that we scarcely even entertain a thought of it for the rest of our lives.