Complete Forgiveness From Thoughts
of God by John McDuff 1864 How precious are your thoughts unto
me, O God! For I will be merciful to their
unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember
no more. Hebrews chapter 8 verse 12. No
thought can be more precious than this, God's thought of mercy
to the unrighteous and undeserving. The consciousness of past sin
lies like a cold avalanche on many a heart. How can man be
just with God? If you, Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who shall stand? What then shall I do when God
rises up? And when he confronts me, what
shall I answer him? These are the solemn questions
which, despite of all efforts to silence or evade them, are
ever and always confronting the most indifferent and unconcerned. Blessed be God! He has not left
them unanswered. He can bestow pardon on the unrighteous
and bury the remembrance of sin in the depths of oblivion. There
is forgiveness with you that you may be feared. With the Lord
there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption. By a
precious, peerless thought of infinite love, He has devised
ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from
Him. He spared not His own Son, but
delivered Him up for us all. The true, antitypical scapegoat
has borne away the burden of imputed sin into a land of forgetfulness. so that on that great day, when
God rises up, the iniquity of Judah shall be sought for and
shall not be found. May I be enabled joyfully to
accept this glorious method of salvation by which, in strict
accordance with every attribute of the divine nature and every
requirement of the divine law, forgiveness may be dispensed
to the chief of sinners. Nothing I could do, or that others
could do for me, would prove in any way availing to purchase
that salvation. Lebanon itself, with all its
cedars piled for altar and for fuel, and all its flocks for
the sacrifice and burnt offering, would have been an insufficient
atoning sacrifice. But this precious thought comes
winged with love from the cross of Calvary. God is in Christ
reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses. He is as able as he is willing,
and as willing as he is able to save unto the uttermost. Is it crimson and scarlet sins?
Some deep, dark, foul blots on the tablet of memory? Their terrible
remembrance haunting like specters from the abyss? God says, I will
make even these like the spotless snow and the stainless wool. What is that great mountain of
transgression before the true Zerubbabel, the storms of judgment
brooding over it? It has become a plain. The work
of Jesus has leveled it. What is that great cloud, the
aggregate of bypassed sin, charged with condemnation spreading itself
overhead? Lo, it has melted away. I have blotted out, as a thick
cloud, your transgressions, and as a cloud, your sins. The sun
of righteousness has shone upon it. His rays like burning arrows
have dispersed the elements of wrath. There is nothing now seen
but the bright azure of radiant heaven. And a voice is heard
amid the glorious sunshine, uttering the words, Return unto me, for
I have redeemed you. who is a God like you, who pardons
sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance.
You do not stay angry forever, but delight to show mercy.