Psalm 130:4 But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.
Psalm 85:8. I will hear what God the Lord will speak: for He will speak peace unto His people, and to His saints; but let them not turn again to folly.
Your attention is directed particularly to the conjunction but, which occurs in both verses. For the intelligent reading of Holy Scripture, there is much to be derived from these little words which shew the connection between things. It is important that our views of divine truth should be regulated and balanced by the connection of one truth with another. The word but in these verses indicates one truth contrasted with another. In the first verse, the contrast is between divine holiness, the strictness of divine justice, and the fulness and freedom of divine grace.
The strictness of divine justice. “If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” The eyes of the Lord are as a flame of fire going through the whole earth, beholding the evil and the good. God knows heart secrets and, in this way, He cannot but mark iniquity. It is a righteous thing in God to mark iniquity. It is against Him; it is contrary to the holiness of His nature, to the rectitude of His will, to the equity of His law, to all the principles of His moral government. “Verily, there is a God that judgeth in the earth.” Yet in contrast to this, there is forgiveness of transgressions. “If Thou . . . shouldest mark iniquities . . . who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with Thee.” If we direct our view solely to God’s holiness, to His abhorrence of sin, to His awful threatenings, which are all true, nothing could be left to the children of men but despair. For the world of sinful men is described in the words: “If Thou . . . shouldest mark iniquities . . . who shall stand?” “Moses and Aaron among His priests, and Samuel among them that call upon His name . . . Thou answeredst them, O Lord our God; Thou wast a God that forgavest them, though Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.”
None can stand. “What things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” The meaning of the words therefore is: If God should do nothing else but mark iniquity – if He should so mark iniquity as not to forgive any iniquity – then no one could stand; mankind must fall. The judgement of God in condemning the whole world would be just; the judgement of God in leaving the world, if He had chosen to leave the world as He left another order of beings, would have been perfectly just.
“Who shall stand?” Stand before what? Before power? Before wisdom? No, but before strict justice, holy righteousness. None can stand; they must fall, condemned justly, because they are iniquitous. Now it is in view of this strict justice, in full view of it being strict and just, that there rises the glory of the astonishing contrast: “But there is forgiveness with Thee”.
“With Thee.” Forgiveness with whom? With the Holy One. How can that be? Forgiveness of what? Of the thing which His soul hates, of that which is an outrage against His legislative authority and His righteous law; forgiveness of that which He has threatened with His wrath and curse; forgiveness of that which casts dishonour on His perfections, which are essential to Him, and therefore dishonour on His very being as well as His authority. But here stands the contrast: all the justice is in God, and all the forgiveness is with God. It is with Him: “There is forgiveness with Thee”. It is not separated from Him: it is only in repairing to Him that it can be found, for forgiveness is with Him. It is not with the sinner; iniquity is with him. There is no standing of the sinner before Him without it, and there is nothing in the sinner to deserve or attract it – it is with Him. God is to be viewed by us – faith views Him – as He reveals Himself in all that strict justice, and in all that tenderness and amplitude of forgiveness. With Him “mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other”.
It is wonderful in God – it is a mighty heart, a magnanimous heart in God – to forgive sins. Not the less that it is through the atonement, for it is His sovereign grace that admits of mediation and atonement, and provides it. It is grace, not the less grace that it reigns through righteousness; and as grace, it is magnanimity in God to forgive sins. Moses takes it as such. He says to God: “Let the power of my Lord be great”. In what? In forgiveness: “as Thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt even until now”. It flows from greatness of heart, from magnanimity. Yes, it is grace, and free grace; but this grace could not be exercised, magnanimous as it is, at the expense of the divine perfections; it could not be exercised at the expense of holiness, abhorring sin; or of justice, threatening punishment. God could forgive; mercy is in Him an attribute of His nature; He is “the Lord God, merciful and gracious, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin”. Whatever perfection is in Him belongs to His nature, and as this is infinite, so the grace and mercy in Him is infinite, an unbounded ocean of sweetness.
But it is sovereign in its outgoing, its exercise. Mercy belongs to Him and is therefore essential to His nature, but the exercise of it is not so. Neither can the merit of the creature deserve it or the misery of the creature draw it forth. He can be infinitely merciful, and He would be, even if He shut up His tender mercies in His wrath – if He shut them up and did not give them exercise, as in the case of the angels who left their first estate. For the quality of mercy is not forced, it comes of its own sweet free will. And further, it cannot be manifested to God’s dishonour; He cannot deny Himself or misrepresent His own character and stand out before His world as if sin was no offence to Him, a matter of indifference, or a small concern. Mercy He can and will show if He pleases: mercy in Him is infinite; the out-goings of mercy are at His pleasure. But if grace reigns at all, it must reign through righteousness.
It is forgiveness with Him – but how? Let us hear an apostle: “In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace”. The righteousness through which grace reigns, grace provides: it is therefore all of grace. The righteousness which is provided by grace does not make the absolute freedom of grace any less; but so, and so only, can it reign. It must be the forgiveness of the holy, just, true God, who cannot, will not, let the sentence of His violated justice go unexecuted. It is forgiveness “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood”.
But mark the contrast. We are to look, on the one side, to iniquity and to God marking it, which He will do; whenever He forgives, it is displayed that He does so, And on the other hand, we are to look to the forgiveness with Him. It is this: no standing point for sinful man before God; but there is a standing point with God, in His forgiveness – with Him. This is pictured in the case of Moses, when he was hidden in the cleft of the rock and God passed by and proclaimed His name. “Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” None standing before justice, yet the just standing through His justification: such is the astonishing contrast indicated by this word, but.
The Other Contrast
Let us pass on to the other contrast: “He will speak peace unto His people and to His saints: but let them not turn again to folly”. “He will speak.” The priests, the sons of Korah, had been asking God to manifest to Israel that grace and favour which He had shown in former times, turning away the fierceness of His anger and coming to them in the multitude of His mercies. And having prayed, they listen. The Korahites, the sons of Aaron, having prayed, one of them, probably the leader of the singing, says, “I will hear what God the Lord will speak”. Prayer is useless if God does not hear. And prayer will be useless to us if, having called, we do not listen that we may get an answer. Otherwise we are speaking words into the air.
We do not speak to a dumb God any more than to one who is deaf. He is a speaking as well as a hearing God, and we but speak words in the air when we do not hearken to what He will say. “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands; they have mouths, but they speak not; they have ears, but they hear not.” “But Jehovah is the true God, He is the living God, and an everlasting King.” And as the living God, He is a hearing, speaking God. So, having prayed, this Korahite says, “I will hear what God the Lord will speak” – in answer to their supplications. And an answer is anticipated – not in the way of running away without the answer; not inferring, “I have prayed, and therefore the answer will come”. I hear something very much like that in these days: “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. I have called upon the name of the Lord. So I shall be saved.” An inference instead of an answer. No. Yet there is anticipation: I will hear what He will speak – anticipation of what the speaking will be, yet they wait on till they hear the anticipated answer come from His lips who alone can give it. “I will hear what God the Lord will speak: for He will speak peace unto His people, and to His saints.”
“He will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when He shall hear it, He will answer thee.” “I,” says Jehovah, “create the fruit of the lips, peace, peace to him that is near, and to him that is far off.” He who made peace, by the blood of His cross, comes now and proclaims peace; and He is the peace – of believers in the Father’s message, believers in Him who made the peace and speaks it. If He speaks war, who shall speak peace? And if He speaks peace, who shall dare speak war? Or, if any dares, no weapon formed against those to whom He speaks peace shall prosper.
Yes, provision is made in the forgiveness with Him, against all the terror which guilt should inspire, against despair and despondency and distrust. So against all trifling, all light dealing with Jehovah’s peace – “He will speak peace to His people and to His saints” – a caveat is made: “But let them not turn again to folly”. Is there need of this, you may ask, when Jehovah speaks peace? Will not the very peace spoken prevent their returning to folly? Yes, if rightly understood, it will; but rightly understood means taking this and similar caveats along with it. It is needed, or it would not be given.
When He speaks peace, He will accompany it with solemn warning, and not without good cause. God treats believers as those in whom there are still the remnants of the flesh. They know the battle; He knows it; He knows that in them there is the flesh which lusts against the Spirit, as well as the Spirit which lusts against the flesh. And these very caveats and warnings are means which He uses to prevent and which – His grace giving efficacy to them – do prevent their return to folly. We may abuse the perseverance of the saints, but it is a doctrine clearly taught in Scripture. The fear of apostasy set before believers, is one of the means by which God creates and maintains that holy caution, self-distrust and confiding trust in Him by which His people are kept from apostasy and, short of apostasy, from return to folly. Alas, many of God’s people have to confess that many times He has delivered them, and yet by their folly they have so provoked Him that they have been brought very low.
There is forgiveness with Him, but it is that He may be feared. And while, throughout the Old Testament, the fear of God is used as a general term comprehending the whole of true religion, yet fear is still fear. The expulsion from Eden was an awful thing; the deluge was an awful thing; the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was an awful thing; what befell the ancient people of God in the destruction of Jerusalem was awful; the events of the last day will be awful; hell is very awful. Yet there is something more awful still: it is the cross of the Lord Jesus. All the others are effects on finite creatures, but here is the full manifestation of God’s holy, just indignation against sin. So forgiveness through the blood of Christ, what is indeed the most joyful, is at the same time the most awful. It shows forth the riches of forgiving grace, leading to self-loathing and Christ-magnifying, and shows forth sin-avenging justice. There is forgiveness that He may be feared. So peace is spoken, with a warning not to turn again to folly.
Was it a solemn thing God did to you when He brought you to know your terrible guilt, when He brought you to the bar of His justice, and made you stand guilty – and it was not made less, but all the more, awful by the consideration that you were one of a rebellious race? Your guilt was not less awful because all the world was guilty before God, when He brought you to say, “If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” And when He brought you to the cross, opening your eyes to behold and your ears to hear, He made you hear with more or less distinctness: There is forgiveness, mercy, acceptance, salvation. Was that not a solemn thing? When He reckoned with you, was that not a solemn thing?
When He reckoned with you for being a transgressor, and though He had freely, fully forgiven all, yet He put a bill into your hand and said, “Behold, your debt,” and you had to say, “Lord, that is my debt,” and when He said, having freely forgiven you, “Look at your pardon, look at each obliteration; it is made with blood – not the blood of bulls and goats, but of My Son” – did God suffer any trifling then? Is there any encouragement there to return to folly? There is reason to be glad and rejoice, yea, to rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory; but there is no room for levity, for mirth. It is too great and good for foolish mirth and levity; it is pardon at too costly an expense; it contains in itself the warning not to return to folly.
Now with these two “buts”, what, in the first place, is left for despair? You cannot stand, you say; you know and feel that you cannot stand. It is true. But something else is true too: there is forgiveness with God. It is as true that there is forgiveness with God as that you could not stand, that none could stand. And forgiveness with Him must be like Himself: divine forgiveness, generous forgiveness – just and holy forgiveness, still generous forgiveness.
Would you have it? You must go to Him for it; it will not be found anywhere short of Him; it will not be found by any faith of your own that deals with something about Him, and not with Him – even a faith that deals with His Word in any other sense than dealing with Himself according to and by His Word. It is “with Him”; therefore return to Him. Iniquity is with you, by it there is no standing for you, but fall down at His footstool and implore. Yet look up and see that, while iniquity is with you – confessed, bewailed and loathed iniquity – with Him is forgiveness. And when His penitent is at His footstool, saying, I have sinned, and committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled; He is saying, “Hearken to Me, ye stout-hearted, that are far from righteousness”. I think that is a word you will take if you are at His footstool: “I bring near My righteousness, and My salvation shall not tarry.”
And hearken to what God the Lord will say, to what voice comes from the mercy seat: “I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins”; “I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins; return unto Me, for I have redeemed thee”. So let us not set our sin above the forgiveness which is with God. Let us neither deem our sin too little or too great. Too little, as if anything short of all the bowels of divine mercy, all the obedience unto death of the Son of God, and all the riches of divine regenerating and sanctifying grace, were sufficient – as if anything short of that were our salvation. Too great, trembling, tempted one, magnifying thy sin needlessly? Do not set your sin above the bowels of God’s mercy, against the merit of the obedience and death of the Son of God; do not set the strength of sin in you against the almighty power of the Holy Ghost.
And what, in the second place, is left for presumption? Is any one tempted to say, It is nothing but repenting, nothing but believing? Nothing but repenting! Do you know the depths that are in repentance? Do you know what it is to stand with the bill of your indictment in your hand, to plead guilty before God, and to have not a word to say for yourself why the sentence of eternal death should not pass and be put into execution? Do you know what it is? And nothing but believing! Do you know the cost of believing? Nothing but that the Son of God should become man and labour and toil and die under the law, nothing but that He should be made sin and a curse, nothing but that the Father should hide His face from His doleful cry, nothing but that. Or do you know how hard a thing it is first for an unsaved sinner to believe that God is so strict in His justice, and then for a convinced sinner to believe that God is so rich in His mercy? You will find faith no such easy task then, and you will be brought to acknowledge that it needs the mighty power of the Holy Ghost to enable a convinced sinner to believe.
May God shew us that He has forgiveness, and keep us both from contempt of His justice and despair of His mercy! May He speak His peace to us, with warning not to return to folly! And calling “on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work,” may we pass the time of our sojourning here in fear, knowing that we were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious things of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot!
1Taken, with editing, from Duncan’s Pulpit and Communion Table. The sermon was preached in Callander on 23 May 1869.