MISTAKES by Calvin Green

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 10, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 35.

MISTAKES.

By Calvin Green

BY CALVIN GREEN.

It has been said, "Let a person recover from a serious mistake he will not be liable to be overcome by it again." This depends much upon the nature of the mistake, the effect it has over him, and the course or steps taken to rectify it. If it is a mistake deeply affecting his moral nature, bringing him to the very verge of ruin, and is distinctly discerned and realized, it will require much more than a superficial effort to regain the lost ground, and a full command of all the faculties of the mind, and the feelings of the heart, affected and despoiled by a wrong course and a foul sin. No one who has thus violated the spiritual laws of his nature can, or should, expect a full restoration to the favor of God or man, or can have full confidence in himself even, until he has by humble confession and reparation as far as lies in his power, amended the wrong he has by his weakness been led to do.

God in his word has laid down explicit instruction for all such mistakes and wrongs. Not only has he done this, but in his word caused to be recorded the names and mistakes or sins of many who have taken this way to recover their vantage ground. Jacob is mentioned, David's sinful course is recorded, and his humiliation and repentance brought out in words and acts corresponding with the evil done. Peter's denial of his Master is given and his after repentance of his perfidious act. These things are not only written for encouragement to return to God with humiliation and confession, but show also that the wound must be probed and thoroughly cleansed before the remedy for healing—God's forgiveness and manifested favor—can be applied. And then, after all this, not one guilty of any wrongdoing of a grievous character, need expect the work is done. Grave mistakes, resulting in grievous sins that have stained the soul and brought reproach on God and his cause, demand, even when deeply and sincerely repented of, a life of constant watchfulness lest we repeat them; even then we often are brought to feel their effects by their repetition in those very near and dear to us.

Jacob realized this over and over again by deceptions practiced upon him by his own sons as well as others. David heard and felt from his own children the awful words of retribution, "The sword shall never depart from thy house," and there can be no doubt that Peter experienced at times the repeated efforts of Satan "to sift him as wheat."

No, not always will a person so fully recover from a mistake as to be wholly and entirely free from its consequences in this life. He may, by God's grace, and sincere repentance, so far regain his hold on the strong arm of his Deliverer as to be saved from repeating it again, but he must keep his hold, never expecting so long as life shall last to be the one he might have been had he from the first remembered "the rock whence he was hewn, and the hole of the pit whence he was digged."