God Pardoned, God Reconciled,
Sin Delivered, God Arrayed, Heaven Entitled Souls, by Archibald
Brown. Come and hear, all you who fear
God, and I will declare what He has done for my soul. Psalm
66, verse 16. No one word can fully express
all that God has done for my soul, though in general it may
be described as saved. Saved! Ah, that is a grand word
worthy of being written in letters of gold. A saved soul includes
many things. I can only mention them. 1. A saved soul is a God-pardoned
soul. All its sins are forgiven, and
its iniquities are drowned in that deluge of pardoning love
that rises high above the topmost peaks of all its mountain sins. 2. A saved soul is a God-reconciled
soul. Once at enmity, God and the sinner
are now at peace. All differences are at an end.
The prodigal sinner has been embraced and kissed by the Father. The rebel has thrown down his
weapons and bent his knee to the monarch. and the monarch
has raised him up, and with a smile of love has put him among his
children. If I may so express it, God and
the sinner have met and shaken hands beneath the shadow of the
cross. They are at atonement there. 3. A saved soul is also a sin-delivered
soul. This is something more than pardon
or reconciliation. It is a higher blessing. Pardon
remits the punishment of sin, but leaves the guilt of sin.
but justification acquits the person of every charge. Believer,
your sins are not merely forgiven, but they are done away with,
put out of sight, removed from you as far as the remotest east
is from the extreme west. in the eye of God. You are as
guiltless as His spotless Son. You are altogether beautiful,
my love. There is no flaw in you. Song of Songs 4, verse 7. 4. A saved soul is also a God-arrayed
soul. This is higher still. The former
blessing was a negation of guilt. This is a possession of righteousness. A righteousness, mark you, that
is not capable of improvement, but a righteousness that is superlative
in its quality. It is the righteousness of God
Himself. A saved soul, even to the omniscient
eye of Deity, is not only without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
but it is altogether lovely and glorious. robed in the splendor
of Jehovah Sidkenu, the Lord our righteousness. 5. A saved soul is a heaven-entitled
soul. This crowns all. Not merely am
I delivered from hell, but in my hand is placed a title deed
to eternal glory. This is no fiction or flight
of imagination, but a blessed fact. Possessed by every saint
is a title to heaven that God Himself will declare to be valid
to all eternity. If all these things are included
in what God has done for our souls, then did I not say rightly
that many words were necessary to describe the work? Let us
then, as God pardoned, God reconciled, sin delivered, God arrayed heaven-entitled
souls, call on all, far and near, to come and listen to our joyous
tale. God looks upon His redeemed people
as the masterpiece of His love and power, and He will before
assembled worlds exhibit us as the grandest trophies heaven
contains.