A Gracious Pardon from Thoughts
of God by John McDuff, 1864 How precious are your thoughts unto
me, O God! I, even I, am he who blots out
your transgressions for my own sake and will not remember your
sins. Isaiah 43, 25. I, yes, I alone,
the great, the pure, the holy, the righteous God, Surely if
there is one way more than another, in which God's thoughts are not
as man's thoughts, it is this, pardoning the rebel, welcoming
the undeserving, forgiving and forgetting. how we remember the
sins and the failings of others, how we harbor the recollection
of ingratitude or unkindness. We say, I forgive, but I cannot
forget. God does both. Forgiveness is
with him no effort. It is a delight. The Lord is
well pleased for his righteousness sake. I, yes, I alone, the god
who for weeks and months, and it may be for years, we have
been wearying with our iniquities, whose book of remembrance is
crowded with the record of our guilt. I, yes, I alone, the very
being who has registered that guilt, is ready to take the recording
pen and erase the pages thus blotted with transgression. How
can he thus forgive? How can the God who is of purer
eyes than to behold iniquity cancel the handwriting that is
against us in these volumes of transgression so that they are
remembered no more? It is through the atoning work
of Jesus. The son of man has power to forgive
sins. He shed his precious blood that
he might have a right to say, your sins, which are many, are
all forgiven. What a complete erasure. Crimson sins, scarlet sins, sins
against grace, love, warning, and privilege. See them all cast
into the depths of the sea, never again to be washed on shore.
Whatever our guiltiness is, says Rutherford, yet when it falls
into the sea of God's mercy, it is but like a drop of blood
fallen into the great ocean. The ancients said there was nothing
so pure as snow, but we know of something purer, a human soul
washed in the blood of Christ. What is the impelling motive
with God in so wondrous a forgiveness as this? It is, it can be, nothing
he sees in us. No repentance however sincere,
no good works however imposing or splendid. It is his own free
sovereign grace, for my own sake, Thus says the Lord God, I do
not do this for your sake, O House of Israel, but for my holy name's
sake. If he had meted out retribution
in proportion to our deserts, his thoughts towards us must
have been of evil, not of peace. Our blood, who had long before
now have been mingled with our sacrifices. But He is God and
not man. It is of the Lord's mercies that
we are not consumed. O Israel, you have destroyed
yourself. But in me is your help found."
Most wondrous chapter in the volume of God's thoughts. His
full, free, unconditional, everlasting forgiveness of the guilty and
undeserving. All the most gigantic thoughts
of man look poor and shabby after this. God, the just God, yet
the savior, just in justifying the ungodly. Lord, I accept the
gracious overture of pardon. I joyfully repose on this thought
of your forgiving mercy. My debt is very great, neither
can I pay anything thereof myself, but I trust in the riches and
graciousness of my surety. Let him free me who became surety
for me, who has taken my debt upon himself, John Gerhardt. Yes, he has taken my debt. Think of God, not only willing
to blot out and bury in oblivion a guilty past, but hear him giving
the assurance that the Legion's sins are already cancelled, the
debt has been discharged, the wages paid. He makes it an argument
for immediate return and acceptance. I have blotted out, as a thick
cloud, your transgressions, and as a cloud, your sins. Return
unto me, for I have redeemed you. What can we say about such
wonderful things as these, if God is for us? Who can ever be
against us?