An endless, meaningless string of apologies signals a failure to change one’s own behavior. What matters is not whether the person was authentic or really meant it in those passionate expressions of remorse. All that counts is whether that person follows through so there is no repeat performance.
John Calvin comments on today’s passage: God is only rightly served when his law is obeyed. It is not left to every man to frame a system of religion according to his own judgment, but the standard of godliness is to be taken from the Word of God.
