The Book of Isaiah begins with a series of warnings to Judah because of their sins. For instance, they had “rebelled” against God; they had “provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger”. The result was that even the offering of incense was “an abomination” to Him. Was He casting them off completely? No, by no means, He was calling them to repentance; He told them: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well”. Indeed He encouraged them: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (1:18). There was indeed a prospect, in God’s great mercy, of being truly forgiven. And He was encouraging them to reason with Him in their great need.
God had been reasoning with His people time and again throughout their generations. He had told them, through Moses, “Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord He is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else. Thou shalt keep therefore His statutes, and His commandments, which I command thee this day” (Deut 4:39,40). They were to apply their minds to what God was telling them, but they were to do so on the basis of what He had revealed. Thus, starting with this particular verse, they were to consider His greatness, His uniqueness, His authority over them as One who is ruling over everything that takes place on earth and everywhere else in the universe. They were to submit wholeheartedly to all that He had commanded them. Thus, whatever command they might consider, they were to say, God is speaking to us. So we should realise that it is our duty to obey Him in everything He commands us in Scripture, and we must do so willingly.
This is one example of how we should reason before God. We should be conscious of being in His presence always. We should be absolutely clear that the Bible must be the basis of all our reasoning, especially on religious matters. In the Bible we have God speaking to us; it is therefore entirely reliable from beginning to end. So the Psalmist acknowledged, “Thy word
is true from the beginning: and every one of Thy righteous judgements endureth for ever” (Ps 119:160). The Bible will never become outdated, and we are therefore safe when we follow its teachings.
But we are not safe if we set our reasoning against the Bible, and try to decide, for instance, what parts of it are authentic. To attempt to judge what passages are accurate, while feeling free to reject other parts as unreliable, is rationalism; it is the human mind taking to itself the authority to be the supreme judge of what God has spoken. It is what the so-called higher critics of the nineteenth century occupied themselves with, thereby seriously undermining the foundations of large swathes of the Christian Church; they gave free rein to their imaginations to develop unbelieving theories about how the Bible had been put together. This was not the kind of reasoning that God was encouraging in Isaiah 1:18.
In particular, such thinking undermined the scriptural foundations of the nineteenth-century Free Church of Scotland, and much of the responsibility for the widespread unbelief in Scotland today belongs to the professors in various theological schools in the country who propagated such theories to students for the ministry. When the authority of Scripture came under attack, Free Churchmen – as well as people in other Scottish denominations – weakened in their allegiance to other doctrines of Scripture. This led to the Free Church passing the Declaratory Act of 1892, which forced the formation of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland the following year.
Yet in spite of the extent to which the authority of the Bible is rejected in society today, and in spite of the extent to which the Bible and its teachings are neglected in the professing Church today, the Bible remains authoritative. That is so because God has not lost any of His right to direct His creatures. He is ruling over everything; He retains full authority over every human being, whether they acknowledge Him or not. It illustrates the degree to which England has departed from submitting to the Bible when we find in his last will and testament a chancellor of the exchequer, Sir William Mildmay, in the time of Elizabeth I, speaking of God’s “most holy Scripture [as] the only way to know His good will and pleasure”.1
When God calls everyone to reason with Him, we must not ignore His call. We – in common with all other human beings – are duty bound to respond to Him. When, through the Apostle Paul, God declares that “all have sinned” (Rom 3:23), we are to go to Him and confess, I have sinned. This is a confession that all have sinned in Adam, and we have inherited his fallen, sinful nature. We must also take seriously the next part of the verse just quoted: “and come short of the glory of God”. We must confess, I am
1 Quoted in Patrick Collinson, English Puritanism, The Historical Association, 1983, p 34.
coming short of the glory of God; I am doing so continually. Adam and Eve, before their first sin, lived fully to the glory of God; they were completely obedient. But since the Fall, in Eden, no one apart from Christ has been consistently obedient; no one has lived fully to the glory of God.
Having confessed our sin, we are to reason further before God. Basing our thinking on the Word of God, we should acknowledge that we deserve to be punished because we do not give Him the glory that is due to Him. Yet God makes Himself known as One who is “merciful and gracious” (Ex 34:6), who is “ready to forgive” (Ps 86:5). How powerfully the publican reasoned with God when he prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Lk 18:13). To be sure, it was by divine grace that the publican prayed, sincerely confessing he was a sinner and that he needed God to show him mercy. He implied that he could not save himself; he needed God to do for him what he was utterly incapable of doing himself. He knew he could not save himself, but God could. His prayer to God was no long-drawn-out chain of reasoning, but he was using his mind to think out what he needed to bring before God, and looking to Him to supply his great, vital need of salvation. No doubt it was significant for the publican that he was at the temple, where sacrifices were offered for sinners. It gave him hope that he could be forgiven.
We, in this New Testament age, are to come before God with the same plea for mercy and salvation. The sacrifices at the temple could not actually take away sin, but they pointed to Jesus Christ, who came into the world to save sinners by the one sacrifice of Himself. So, when we find Christ calling on us to come to Him – that is, to believe on Him – we should ask the Lord to make us able and willing to believe. No matter how strong our unbelief may be, we should, in our reasoning before God, bring before Him the fact, “Nothing is too hard for Thee” (Jer 32:17).
Sinners may also mention the infinite value of the redemption purchased by Christ in their reasoning. Sinners concerned about the seriousness of particular sins are not to hold back from Christ; they may take encouragement from His words, “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men” (Mt 12:31). Whatever their sins may be, they cannot be cast away if they will only believe in the Saviour (those who have any concern for their souls have never committed the sin “against the Holy Ghost” which, the verse just quoted says, “shall not be forgiven”). Remember that Christ “is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb 7:25). Sinners are to go on reasoning with God, reverently basing all their arguments on Scripture, which remains totally reliable in spite of all that atheists may say, and even some professing Christians. “Let God be true but every man a liar” (Rom 3:4).