p. 3 | SIN AND MERCY by Arthur Fox

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 10, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 32.

SIN AND MERCY.

By Arthur Fox

BY ARTHUR FOX.

I HAVE blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins.” Isa. 44:22.

There are two thoughts in this text; there is the thought of sin, and the thought of mercy. There is, first, the thought of sin. “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins.” The individuals to whom these words were originally addressed were guilty of crimes of great enormity and aggravation, crimes that had gathered themselves up until they were black and dense as a thick cloud. In the beginning of his prophecy the prophet paints their turpitude in very graphic and in very awful colors. He brings them, you remember, into very degrading comparison with the beasts of the field—“The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.” He represents them as burdened with iniquity, crouching down under the inexorable tyranny of evil—“Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity.”

He tells them that this transgression has been perpetuated from the father to the child—“a seed of evil-doers.” Sin is everywhere! Broad and deep, the wide world over, you may trace the fire-written syllables, “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Upon the fairest, loveliest, and most blameless specimen of natural morality, Christ looks and says: “I know that you have not the love of God within you, and it is just because of this one fact that every mouth must be stopped and all the world be counted guilty before God.”

There is mercy. It might seem strange—it does seem strange—that after this declaration of apostasy and of impenitence the prophet should not have gone away after pronouncing sentence of doom. We might have supposed that his very heaviest thunders would have been launched out against the transgressors, that when he spoke of sin as a cloud he would have gone away without leaving any hope of mercy. Is not God a just God? Are not His perfections united to oppose sin wherever it is found?

Do not sins of enormity and aggravation expose to a terrible punishment? And yet, when the voice does speak it is not the voice of vengeance, but of mercy. The whirlwind passes over us, but the Lord is not in the whirlwind; the earthquake comes, but the Lord is not in the earthquake; the fire burns fiercely, but the Lord is not in the fire; and, after the whirlwind has spent its force, and after the rocking earth is still, and after the fire has ceased to burn, there whispers the still, small voice, and as we listen we hear it speak, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins.”

The Everlasting Son of the Everlasting Father became the Babe in the manger at Bethlehem, became the homeless Traveler along the journey of life, became the saddened Victim in the Garden of Gethsemane, became the Spotless Sacrifice upon the accursed tree; and the declarations of Scripture which announce that by that sacrifice salvation has been purchased are both explicit and numerous. It is on the cross of Christ that the law is magnified and the bargain is sealed, and holiness glories in its most illustrious radiance. The cross is the fulness of love; the cross is the security of peace; the cross is the pledge of salvation; and the application of the blood of Jesus, not its intellectual apprehension, but the application of the blood of Jesus, secures pardon, and holiness, and heaven.

St. Helena, Cal.