A devil in an angel’s dress – Thomas Brooks

“Repent! Turn away from all your offenses; then sin will not be your downfall.” Ezekiel 18:30

True repentance is a turning, not from some sin but from every sin. Every sin strikes at the law of God, the honor of God, the being of God, and the glory of God; and therefore the penitent must strike at all. Every sin fetches blood from the heart of Christ, and every sin is a grief and vexation to the Holy Spirit and therefore the penitent must set upon crucifying of all.

Herod turned from many sins but not from his Delilah, his Herodias, which was his ruin! Judas, you know, was a devil in an angel’s dress; he seemed to be turned from every sin but he was a secret thief, he loved the money bag; and that golden devil, covetousness, choked him, and hanged him at last! Saul for a time turned from several evils but his sparing one, Agag, cost him his soul and his kingdom at once!

He who had the spot of leprosy in any one part of his body was accounted a leper, although all the rest of his body were sound and whole, Lev. 13. Just so, he who has but one spot, one sin which he does not endeavor to wash out in the blood of Christ, and in the tears of true repentance he is a leper in the account of God.

The true penitent is for the mortifying of every lust which has had a hand in crucifying of his dearest Savior.

The sin-sick soul must break, not some but all its idols in pieces, before a cure will follow. It must deface its golden idols, its most costly idols, its most darling idols! The returning sinner must make headway against all his sins, and trample upon all his lusts or else he will die and be undone forever!

Then you will defile your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold; you will throw them away like a menstrual cloth and say to them Away with you!” Isaiah 30:22