We are immortal beings and are
hastening to an eternal state. By Charles Simeon. Blessed is
he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed
is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him. Psalm
chapter 32 verses 1 and 2. A man who has no prospects beyond
this present world will seek happiness in the things of time
and sense. But a man's life does not consist
in the abundance of the things that he possesses. We are immortal
beings and are hastening to an eternal state, then our past
earthly existence will appear only as the twinkling of an eye.
In that state, either blessedness or misery awaits us, according
as we enter upon it under the guilt of our former sins or with
our sins forgiven. We may justly say, therefore,
that true blessedness consists, as our text informs us, in having
our sins forgiven. Who that is in the smallest degree
conscious of the number and heinousness of his sins, and of the awful
punishment due to him on account of them, must not regard it as
an unspeakable mercy to have them all blotted out and cast
into the depths of the sea. I, even I, am he who blots out
your transgressions for my own sake, and remembers your sins
no more. I have swept away your offenses
like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. What in the
whole universe can, in his estimation, be compared with this? If he
could possess the world—yes, if he could possess ten thousand
worlds—what comfort would the acquisition give him, if he had
the melancholy prospect of being speedily plunged into the bottomless
abyss of hell? If there were a large company
of condemned criminals, some rich and noble, others poor and
evil, and one of the vilest of them had received the king's
pardon, while all the rest were left for execution, then who
among them would be accounted the happiest? How much more,
then, when the death to which unpardoned sinners are consigned
to is an everlasting damnation in the lake that burns with fire
and brimstone? No one who reads the parable
of the rich man and Lazarus, and sees the termination of their
respective states, can for a moment hesitate to pronounce Lazarus,
with all his miseries and privations, far happier in a sense of reconciliation
with God, than the rich worldling in the enjoyment of all his pomp
and luxury. God made him who had no sin to
be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness
of God. Forgiveness exempts from punishment,
but an imputation of the Redeemer's righteousness to us ensures to
us an eternal blessedness in glory. Sin is pardoned and righteousness
is imputed purely through the free grace of God to the chief
of sinners without any good works performed by them. O how blessed
must that man be who is clothed in the unspotted robe of Christ's
righteousness, and can, on the footing of that righteousness,
be assured of all the glory and felicity of heaven! He may look
forward to death and judgment, not only without fear, but with
holy confidence and joy, assured that in God's sight he stands,
without spot or blemish. the vilest sinner upon earth,
shall find Christ's blood able to cleanse from all sin, and
His righteousness sufficient to clothe our souls. Who, we
would ask, can be blessed, like the man who has been begotten
to a living hope, that in and through Christ there is reserved
for him an incorruptible and undefiled and glorious inheritance
in heaven,