It has pleased God to give to man a revelation of His glory as the infinitely holy Jehovah. The Scriptures of truth make clear to every unbiased and unprejudiced mind the consummate purity and holiness of the being, nature and character of the God of eternity. The revelation given of Him in His holy law brings out the immaculate holiness of His character: the revelation given of Him in the Gospel confirms it. We are faced then with this tremendous and yet glorious truth concerning God — the unstainableness of His holiness. That God ever was, is, and ever shall be, the infinitely glorious, infinitely holy Jehovah, is a truth that we may impugn only to our own ultimate ruin and confusion of face.
From such a revelation of the glory of God we learn the revulsion that is in God to all sin and evil. He is the sin-hating and sin-avenging God. Sin cannot dwell with Him. The prophet Habakkuk had to declare of Him: “Thou are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.” He is a consuming fire against sin. Impenitent sinners will find this out to their cost in a lost eternity — “where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.” The thought of the holiness of the God of eternity ought to strike terror into the hearts of Christ’s enemies, and ought to put an awe upon the spirits of God’s people. It is with such a God that we have to do. The Lord by His Spirit alone can make the revelation of the glory of His holiness and of the infinite magnitude of sin — as against an infinitely holy God — real to us. May we be led to see sin in its true light as that which God hates and as that which is against God. We must be brought to know this if we are ever to be taken up with the further revelation of God’s glory as a sin-pardoning God.
That we find a revelation given in Scripture of God as a sin-pardoning God ought to be a matter of wonder to us. It will be a matter of wonder to the saints in glory throughout eternal ages that God ever found out a way to pardon sin, iniquity and transgression. They will praise God throughout eternity for finding out that way and providing such a way so that pardon, peace and reconciliation might flow out to poor needy sinners. What will fill their hearts with most joy in heaven is that God’s glory remained unsullied while pardoning and blotting out sin. No attribute of God is marred in extending mercy to the guilty.
But what is the way of pardon? God is a sin-pardoning God in Christ. It was at infinite cost that the way was opened for mercy to flow out to the guilty. It was to flow forth to the unworthy and to the hell-deserving through the rent veil of Christ’s flesh. His body must be broken, His blood must be shed before pardon and peace could reach the sinner. He must render obedience to the divine law, He must pay the penalty due to sin if His people were to go free. This Christ did in His humiliation in this world. He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And now the message can go forth to poor, lost, needy sinners that God is a reconciled God in Christ. He is now willing, for Christ’s sake, to pardon sin, iniquity and transgression. Let us then come in our sin-laden, guilty and polluted condition to the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness and discover there that God is a sin-pardoning God in Christ and that “the blood of Jesus Christ God’s Son cleanseth us from all sin.”