Isaiah 55:8,9. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.
The mercy of God and the righteousness of Christ are two parallel truths; they run side by side along the whole gospel scheme. And this must ever be kept in view. Thus the mercy of God is infinite; it is a divine attribute and it is necessarily infinite. The righteousness of Christ is infinite, for it is the righteousness of God-man. The mercy of God would never have been manifested without the righteousness of Christ, and the righteousness of Christ would not have been wrought out but for the mercy of God. They can never be separated. Mercy originated the plan of redemption; righteousness opened up a channel through which mercy flowed to mankind; and thus “grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life”.
They must never be separated in our thinking. We must never think of the mercy of God apart from the righteousness of Christ; and we must never think of this righteousness without thinking of the guilt, the criminality and the sins which it covers. If we think we know the mercy of God without the righteousness of Christ, we deceive ourselves; and we must never think of the righteousness of Christ as if it made us independent of mercy: it only puts us into a situation in which we may receive mercy. Let us remember this, while we proceed to consider the nature and properties of God’s mercy and forgiveness.
1. God pardons freely.
In our dealings with our fellow-creatures we do not expect to receive favours without giving something equivalent for them, least of all favours from those whom we have deeply injured. We should consider the prince as most merciful who issued a proclamation of pardon to the subjects who had conspired against his throne – who did so on condition of their proving their return to loyalty by some actions that implied a more than ordinary measure of courage and patient exertion. It is contrary to all our preconceived notions to expect anything from God freely.
This indeed implies a fearful ignorance of His character and of our own dependence upon Him. But the workings of our mind, when we come to deal with Him about pardon and reconciliation, prove that we are thus ignorant. Rebels and beggars though we are, we want to bring some price with us. We come to Him with our prayers, our many duties, our fears and doubts, our tears and groans, and with this wretched and polluted compound we would barter with the Most High for the pardon purchased by the blood of His Son. O what a wonder that the impious and insulting offer, which is as a smoke in Jehovah’s nostrils, does not bring down fire from heaven to consume the offerer with his offering! And if the vanity and guilt of such a proposal are revealed to us, how we blush before Him, and how naturally we feel as if we were for ever shut out from mercy!
But God’s ways are not our ways. Having cast up the royal road of mercy in the bruising and death of His Son, He has enthroned Himself as the God of grace, taken into His hands the golden sceptre, thrown wide open His palace gates, and sent forth His heralds to proclaim that He, on His throne, bestows pardon freely on all who will receive it from Him. He pardons “for His own name’s sake”. This special honour He has secured for Himself by delivering up His own Son freely, whose obedience and death have so firmly established and so deeply fixed the foundations of the Father’s throne in justice and righteousness. Thus His law is honoured when the sinner is pardoned.
It is God’s glory, as the Sovereign of the universe, that He gives forth pardon freely and liberally, irrespective of the character of its objects; yet His holiness and majesty and rectitude are glorified in bestowing it. Thus He has secured a sure basis for the hopes of self-condemned rebels. When the soul rests on this basis, he feels he is perfectly sure. It is not for our sakes, for the sake of anything we do, that He pardons us. It is not for the sake of anything wrought in us by His Spirit, but it is for His own name’s sake.
Are you poor? Are you naked? Are you self-condemned before Him? Are your sins as scarlet and as crimson? Are you the very chiefest of sinners? Still the only question is, Will you have pardon from God’s royal hand as His free gift? He gives it for His own name’s sake; He gives it freely. O then seek to get your soul within the compass of this blessed truth, and you will see yourself in the fortified city!
2. God pardons fully.
When He pardons one sin, He pardons every sin. We are ready to suppose, in approaching Him, that if this or that number of sins was taken from the black catalogue, or if this or that particular horrid sin did not stand in the way, mercy might possibly reach us. But here we see such heinousness, there such abominations and evil, that we dare not entertain the hope. It is necessary to be thus burdened on account of our sins, to feel their gall and wormwood; it is essential that the remembrance of our evil ways, and of our doings that were not good, should be as a sting in the conscience and as a fire in the soul, consuming self-righteousness. And it is natural that some sins, distinguished by specially aggravated circumstances of enormity, should stand out vividly before us, interposing their huge heads between us and forgiveness.
But though this perception and feeling are essential to us welcoming pardon, and though the Holy Spirit subjects the soul to this awful discipline in its attempted approach to God, still neither the greatness of any one sin, nor the blackness of the catalogue of sins of any one sinner, interposes a barrier to the overflowings of mercy. The question on which our eternity rests is not, Is there a sufficiency of mercy? but, Are we willing to be debtors to infinite mercy?
The least of all our sins comparatively (though no sin is in itself little or trivial) would for ever shut us out from God’s presence if His ways were our ways, or His thoughts our thoughts. But as His ways and thoughts are infinitely higher than our ways and thoughts, the most heinous sin melts like snow before the sun at the touch of mercy. There is no sin too great for God’s mercy to pardon and Christ’s righteousness to cover. Were it otherwise, the basis of our hopes would be a quicksand and not a rock. But it is not thus that God has prepared peace for sinners. The basis on which we are to trust for the forgiveness alike of our wandering thoughts in prayer, and of the blackest sin that condemns us before God, is one and the same: it is the infinite mercy of God resting for its exercise in the infinite worth of His dear Son’s atonement.
And in pardoning one sin, God pardons all. He does not say, This sin I forgive you, but that other I cannot blot out but must leave it recorded against you. As He dispenses pardon, so He dispenses it in a manner worthy of the gift and of the Giver; giving pardon freely, He gives it also fully. Whether they are the sins of 10 or 20 or 50 or 70 years, He takes the heap of the believer’s sins and casts it all into the depths of the sea, not leaving one behind.
3. God pardons heartily.
O how false and unworthy are our natural views of God! We regard Him as a jealous and cruel tyrant – yet He follows us day after day with His forbearance, unwilling that we should perish. If our consciences are awakened from their stupor and our sins are placed in our view, His wrath drinks up our spirits – and it cannot fail to do so when we realise that it abides on us. But if we were to be left in this situation, our desperately wicked hearts would never own His glory and His excellence in punishing sin. And even if, through the omnipotent and all-overcoming influence of the Holy Spirit, the soul is prostrated before Him, dumb and self-destroyed in its own experience; still, if it was left in this posture, how utterly would it fail to attain a knowledge of God’s graciousness!
We are ready to suppose that God is much more ready to punish than to pardon; we think, if we shall ever obtain pardon, that it must be extorted from Him; that He gives it grudgingly, preferring rather to use the sword of vengeance than to stretch forth the sceptre of mercy. Do we not often come before Him as if we were to steal forgiveness from Him, instead of honouring Him by accepting it? How many there are who view Him as made placable and merciful by the sacrifice and atonement of His Son!
Yet we know nothing of His true character till we see the spring of mercy in His heart gushing forth in the gift of His Son, and now ready to satisfy us with its living waters. The Lord Himself tells us that judgement is His strange work, and that He delights in mercy. It is for the display of mercy that He has erected the throne around which the brightest manifestation of His glory is now made. He has revealed Himself as the God of grace, and He wishes us to know Him; it is for mercy that He desires us to plead with Him; it is in dispensing mercy that He desires to be glorified. And it is only on those who refuse and despise His mercy that His rod of vengeance falls.
The Lord is slow to anger, unwilling to punish, till His glory requires it; but He is swift to show mercy, opening His arms wide to the soul who is afar off, to encourage it to come to His embrace. There is nothing in which God’s heart goes forth more fully than in showing mercy to the soul for whom His dear Son died, and whom the Eternal Spirit has brought nigh. Though he may have lain among the pots and been cast out in the open field to the loathing of his person – a polluted, vile object for infinite purity to rest upon; yet when he comes seeking for mercy, all vile and loathsome though he is, God’s very heart goes forth to meet him; He receives him with a welcome, not with upbraiding; He stretches over him the sheltering wings of His mercy and rejoices in his security. He takes off his vile garments and, with His own hand, puts on him a change of raiment; He puts a ring on his hand. Rejoicing over him to do him good, He calls on all heaven to unite in songs of praise, for His mercy has secured another of its wished-for trophies.
Do we then address any who feel their need of mercy? We would bid them look up and see God enthroned on the seat of mercy, bearing the sceptre of mercy, with His Son seated at His right hand, and all to exalt mercy. Is it mercy you seek? Would you value, more than the world and life, the least crumb of mercy that the Lord might cast to you? Then approach the throne of grace in the name of Him who is seated on its right hand and, as surely as that throne has been erected, so surely will you be satisfied with mercy.
4. God pardons unalterably.
He does not suspend forgiveness on condition of future loyalty and obedience, but He teaches the pardoned rebel to love and obey because he is forgiven. Nor does He, in announcing pardon for the past, insert a clause in the deed of indemnity, by which He may again revoke the sentence. His gifts and calling are without repentance. His people often provoke Him grievously; yet He never does speaks of them like He said of the old world, It repenteth Me that I have forgiven them; nor do their bitterest provocations move Him to give them over to the law for punishment. He is God, and not man, and therefore they are not consumed.
If indeed they forsake His law and do not walk in His commandments, He visits their iniquities with stripes and brings their sins to their remembrance. Indeed He plunges them in deep waters and, hiding His face from them, leaves their consciences to be the abode of guilt and fear, and a highway for Satan and his agents to drive through at their pleasure. But though sin thus brings returning torment to them, and He takes vengeance on their inventions, yet at the time when they are sinking deepest in the mire, when His waves and billows pass over them, and the prospect in the distance is that of apostasy and everlasting separation from God – at this very time, not one sin that had been forgiven appears again in His book to condemn them; not one drop of the wrath of the Judge is poured into their cup of bitterness.
Let no one here mistake us. Far be it from us blasphemously to assert that God can ever view sin, even in His people, without loathing and abhorrence, or to assert that they, as others, do not deserve His wrath. Far be it from us to assert that the believer’s future as well as past sins are pardoned when he is pronounced a justified person. Such an unworthy and dangerous notion is no part of the truth of God. Equally removed from truth is every statement that would lead to the conclusion that the believer may or does commit sin with less scruple because His forgiveness is sure – a notion abhorrent to the character of God and to the workings of His grace, and contradicted by the experience of every child of God.
But while we thus warn those who have hitherto neither part nor lot in forgiveness against perverting any part of the truth regarding it, we must not and dare not shrink from stating that truth, to the glory of God’s grace and the consolation of His people. If the believer falls into sin, the peace and the comforts of God forsake his soul, and he may become, in his own experience, a very brand of hell; the Lord may at times bring old sins to his remembrance, so as to fix guilt afresh in the conscience; He may make him possess the sins of his youth and visit him on account of them. Still, the wondrous and blessed truth is that in this remembrance and this visitation there is no wrath; and despite all that person’s self-accusations, not one of his countless sins appears at the bar of God to condemn him and demand that he be punished. These sins have ceased to exist, as to their power of condemnation. They have been buried and, as accusers, they shall never rise again either in this world or at the judgement seat. The memory of them is gone; their existence in that character has ceased to be a fact. The record of their commission is erased. Open up and examine the book of God’s remembrance, and you will find no trace of them. Once his sins lay over him like a heavy frowning dark cloud, charged with God’s lightning and thunder; but now look up and nothing appears in the cloudless heavens but the Sun of Righteousness. “The iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found.”
And as old sins are thus obliterated, so provision has been made for the continued forgiveness and blotting out of new sins. The believer’s daily sins – for he ever comes short and often grievously offends – are not hung up against him to be yet reckoned for; but each new sin, as it appears, is borne away “to a land not inhabited”. Let it be remembered, however, that the believer’s sins do not cease to be sins; so his continued pardon is connected, not only with his continued possession of the garment of Christ’s righteousness, but with a continued act of faith in Christ as the Lord his Righteousness.
The life of the justified and accepted saint is the life of the consciously unworthy and polluted sinner, who stands, in his own experience when nearest heaven, in as great need of the righteousness and blood of Christ as when it first covered his nakedness and cleansed his pollution. There is therefore no such thing as a state of continued pardon separated from a life of continued and deepening repentance, and from the continued exercise of faith in Christ’s blood, righteousness, and intercession. Where this character and these actings of soul are lacking, a state of condemnation, not of justification, is the state of the sinner.
But remembering this, the believer never can come into condemnation. He may indeed often offend; fear of coming short, doubts of acceptance, and suspicions of rejection in the end, may assault him, and at times lodge in his breast; he may often be found prostrated before God, crying for mercy with greater importunity than when he first sought it. He will, without doubt, grow in daily acquaintance with the feelings and language of the publican as those which best befit him. And the more his experience of the riches of God’s mercy in pardoning, the greater will be his wonder at mercy ever reaching him, the deeper will be his humiliation, and the more unfeigned and holy his sorrow and repentance for doing so little to testify his gratitude to God, and because that little is so defiled and imperfect. But his state is fixed and irrevocable; once pardoned and accepted, he is for ever pardoned and accepted; once arrayed in the garment of Christ’s righteousness, it shall never be taken from him till he is presented faultless before God.
What a wonderful view this truth of the righteousness of Christ opens up to us! In consequence of the honour brought by His obedience and satisfaction to the justice and truth of God, He who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity is now glorified in taking into His favour and embrace His enemies and rebellious subjects, and in continuing them in this state fixedly and irrevocably. This is so notwithstanding the sin which remains in them, adheres to them, and defiles all they do. On what a basis must the throne of grace rest when the Holy God can thus manifest Himself! And what wonder if the redeemed should contemplate the work of the Redeemer throughout eternity!
In conclusion, let all beware of perverting this great truth. If any go about to establish their own righteousness, let them beware lest that fearful stone fall on them of which it is said, “On whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder”. They are fighting against God, and they shall not prevail. But especially they are fighting against that which is dearest to Him – the honour of His dear Son.
But there are those who sin because grace abounds. Grace does indeed abound – free, rich grace; but if any continue in sin, they put themselves outside the pale of mercy and lay themselves open to all the vials of God’s wrath.
Let the people of God – those whose sins have been pardoned – see to it that, because much has been forgiven them, they love much. Let them be humbled that they love so little. And let them see to it especially that they walk circumspectly, and thus stop the mouth of the slanderous world and stop the slanderous mouth of Satan, which says that the grace of God leads to licentiousness.
But however it may be perverted, it is our duty as ambassadors of Christ to proclaim that “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself”, that there is a free pardon “without money and without price”, and that “now is the accepted time”. But it is also our solemn duty to declare that the time is coming when many shall knock at mercy’s door, saying, “Lord, Lord, open to us,” but it shall be shut against them. Beware lest you will be among that number, and lest God will say of you that you shall perish, because you would not honour His Son.
The language of faith is, I am satisfied not to know what Christ has not thought it proper to reveal; the language of humility is, I do not wish to know it. The language of faith with respect to the roughness of the path which leads to heaven is, It is a hard path; but as it is of God’s ordering, it is no doubt the best. The language of humility is, The road is rough, but it is good enough for me. Under the combined influence of these kindred graces, the Christian holds on this way, following his Lord; and in God’s good time he attains the end of his faith, even the salvation of his soul.
A D Davidson
By a humble confession of sin, we give [God] the glory of His holiness, owning He is a holy God, and we are unholy sinners, and that He is of purer eyes than that He can behold iniquity.
Ralph Erskine