Some make a mockery of the holy things of God. One part of the year they will be holy; a rotten, foolish affection of people that are popish. In Lent they will use a little austerity, oh! they will please God wondrously! but before and after they are devils incarnate. So they make that part of the year as a good parenthesis, in an unlearned and unwitty speech. A good parenthesis is unseemly in a wicked speech, and a good piece is unseemly in a ragged garment; so their lives that make a good show then (and there are few that do so, they are scarce among us; men are such atheists that there is not outward reformation, but if there be), if they give themselves leave to be civil, and to respect holy things a little time, afterward they return to their looseness again. Doth this patching out of a holy life please God? No, no! ‘I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep thy righteous statutes,’ saith David, Ps. 119:106. And St Paul, ‘I have resolved to be so to the end;’ I will be myself still. So where grace is, there is a resolution against all sin for the time to come. If you entertain not this resolution, to walk ‘in holiness and righteousness all the days of your life,’ Luke 1:75, acknowledge no benefit by Christ’s redemption, and come not near the holy things of God.
Richard Sibbes, The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, vol. 3 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; W. Robertson, 1862), 313.
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R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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I made a meme alongside the same principle. Lent: Because living like a Christian the rest of the week is just too much trouble.