The Godly Person Weeps !

The Godly Person
Weeps!


CHRIST CALLS HIS SPOUSE His "dove" (Song
2:14). The dove is a weeping creature. Grace dissolves
and liquefies the soul, causing a spiritual
thaw. The sorrow of the heart runs out at the eye. A
godly heart grieves that it is not more holy. It troubles
him that he falls short of the rule and standard
which God has set. "I should", he says, "love the
Lord with all my heart. But how defective my love
is! How far short I come of what I should be, no, of
what I might have been!"

A godly man sometimes weeps out of the sense of
God's love. Gold is the finest and most solid of all
the metals, yet it is soonest melted in the fire. Gracious
hearts, which are golden hearts, are the soonest
melted into tears by the fire of God's love.

A godly person weeps because the sins he commits
are in some sense worse than the sins of other men.
The sin of a justified person is very odious, because
it is a sin of unkindness. Peter's denying of Christ
was a sin against love. Christ had enrolled him
among the apostles. He had taken him up into the
Mount and shown him the glory of heaven in a
vision. Yet after all this mercy, it was base ingratitude
that he should deny Christ. This made him go
out and "weep bitterly." He baptized himself, as it
were, in his own tears. The sins of the godly go
nearest to God's heart.

The sins of the wicked anger the Lord. The godly
man's sins grieve Him. The sins of the wicked pierce
Christ's side. The sins of the godly wound his heart.
The unkindness of a spouse goes nearest to the heart
of her husband. How far from being godly are those
who scarcely ever shed a tear for sin! If they lose a
near relation, they weep, but though they are in
danger of losing God and their souls, they do not
weep.

Thomas Watson (1620-1686) - Non-conformist
preacher in England. Wrote many influential books in
his day and is read widely by many evangelicals in
our day.