What reasons have we to present before God why he should forgive sin?

What reasons have we to present before God why he should forgive sin?

I enter upon this inquiry, and bring up these reasons before your mind, in order to show you what reasons you may present before God, and to encourage you to present them.

1. You may plead that you entirely justify God in all his course. You must certainly take this position, for he cannot forgive you so long as you persist in self-justification. You know there is a breach of friendship between your soul and God. You have broken his laws. You either have good reason for your sin or you have not. If you have, God is wrong; if you have not, then you are wrong. You know how this case stands. You know beyond all question, with a force of reason that ought to silence all cavil, that all the wrong is on your side and all the right on God’s side. You might and should know also that you must confess this. You need not expect God to forgive you till you do. He ought not to publish to the universe that he is wrong and you are right, when there is no truth in such a proclamation. Hence you see that you must confess what your conscience affirms to be truth in the case.

Now, therefore, will you honestly say, not as the decision of your conscience merely, but as the utterance of your heart, that you do accept the punishment of your iniquities as just, and do honour and acquit your God in all the precepts of his law, and in all the course of his providence? Can you present this reason? So far as it goes, it is a good reason, and will certainly have its weight.

2. You may come to God and acknowledge that you have no apology whatever to make for your sin. You renounce the very idea of apology. The case, you deeply feel, admits of none.

3. You must also be ready to renounce all sin, and be able in all honesty to say this before God; you must utterly cease from all rebellion against God, and be able to say so from your very heart, else you can not reasonably expect to be forgiven.

4. You must unconditionally submit to his discretion. Nothing less than this is the fitting moral position for a sinner towards God. You must unqualifiedly surrender yourself to his will and utterly renounce your own. This will be an important element in your plea before God for pardon whenever you can honestly make it.

5. You may plead the life and death of Jesus Christ as sufficient to honour the law and justify God in showing mercy. It is plain that our reasons must reach other points besides our own state of mind. They must also refer to the penalty of law, and show that such arrangements are made as will insure the honour and sustain the dignity of the law, though sin be forgiven. Hence we see how much it is worth to us that we are able to plead before God that Christ has fully honoured the law, so that God can forgive sin without the danger of seeming to connive at it. It is everything to the purpose of a returning sinner that he may plead that forgiveness through Christ’s death is safe to the government of God. Pardon must not put in peril the holiness or justice of Jehovah. The utmost expression he could make, or need to make, of his holiness and justice, as touching the sins of man, is already made in the death of Christ, “whom God did himself set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past . . . that he might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.”

Now, therefore, can you say that you are willing to accept the sacrifice which he has made, and receive the gift of salvation through his blood as all of boundless grace, and in no sense or measure of meritorious works? If you can truly say this, it will become a strong reason before God why he should forgive you.

6. You may also urge his professed love for sinners. God has professed the greatest love for lost men; has even spoken of loving them “with an everlasting love,” and you are at liberty to urge this when you come to reason together with God. You may plead that he has manifested this love in the gift of his dear Son, and hence you must be sure that you understand his language, and there cannot be any mistake in the matter. All your life long, too, he has been manifesting his love towards you in his kind providence; so that he has not ever left himself without witness to both the fact and the greatness of this love for the lost of our race.

7. He has also invited you to come and reason with him. Therefore he has fully opened the way for the freest and fullest communion on this point. With amazing condescension he suffers you to come before him and plead, filling your mouth with arguments. You may speak of all his promises, and of that solemn oath in which he sware by himself, to the end that they all “might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us in the gospel.”

You may also plead his honour; that, seeing he is under oath, and stands committed before the universe, you may ask him what he will do for his great name if he refuses to forgive a repentant and believing sinner. You may plead all the relations and work of Christ. You may say to him, Lord, will it not induce other sinners to come to thee? Will it not encourage thy church to labour and pray more for salvation? Will not thy mercy shown to me prove a blessing to thousands?

You may urge the influence of refusing to do so. You may suggest that his refusal is liable to be greatly misapprehended; that it may be a scandal to many; and that the wicked will be emboldened to say that God has made no such exceeding great and precious promises.

You may urge that there is joy in heaven, and on earth also, over every sinner pardoned and saved; that the saints everywhere will be delighted, and will exceedingly rejoice in the Lord their God. The Psalmist represents the young convert as saying, “The humble shall hear thereof and be glad.” You may urge, that, since God loves to make saints happy in this world, he surely will not be averse to giving you his Spirit and putting away your sins — it will cause such joy in the hearts of his dear people.

You may also plead the great abhorrence you have of living in sin, as you surely will unless he forgives you. You may also plead that God hates sin, and therefore must be more than willing to turn your heart away from sinning, and make it wholly pure before his eyes. You may urge on him the worth of your soul, a thing which he understands far better than you do, and which he shows that he appreciates, inasmuch as he gave up his only Son to die that souls might not perish. Ask him if he does not know what it is for a soul to be saved, and what it is for a soul to be lost, and tell him that the great question between these two momentous states is now pending in your case and must be soon decided for eternity! Ask him, if, after all he has done and said about salvation, he can refuse to save your perishing soul. Say, O my God, dost thou not know how much my soul is worth, and how certainly it is lost for ever unless thou interpose to save it?

You may mention before him your lost estate, that you are entirely dependent on his grace and mercy; that you are utterly lost to God, to happiness, and to heaven, unless he has mercy on you, and you may conjure him by the love of his dear Son to take all these things into consideration.

You may also allude to his merciful disposition, and suggest how often his word has affirmed that “the Lord delighteth in mercy,” and that while “judgment is his strange work, mercy is his delight.” Ask him if he will not gratify his own love of showing mercy, and give you the salvation you so much need. Remind him that here is a great opportunity to magnify his mercy, and display the riches of his grace, and make an impression on the minds of both saints and sinners greatly to his own honour and to their good. Tell him that to save one so lost and so vile as you cannot but glorify his great mercy as far as the case is known in earth, or hell, or heaven. Tell him how he has said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and ask him if he will not take advantage of this opportunity to show all men how he loves to act on this divine law of benevolence.

Tell him, moreover, how wretched you are, and must be in your sins, if you cannot find salvation, and what mischief you will be likely to do everywhere, on earth and in hell, if you are not forgiven and renewed in holiness. Tell him that it is awful, and makes your soul shudder, to think of going on in sin, and of becoming hardened past all repentance. Remind him that he has invited you to come and reason with him, and that he has virtually promised to hear and to consider your case. You do not come to justify yourself, but only to plead his great mercy and what Christ has done for you. With these very strong reasons you come before him, on his own invitation, not to complain against his justice, but to intercede for his mercy; that you must beg of him to consider the awful ruin of hell, and that you cannot escape without his help, and cannot endure its everlasting horrors. He has himself said, “Can thy heart endure, or can thy hands be strong in the day that I shall deal with thee?” Tell him — your heart cannot endure this, and that this should be a strong reason why he should have mercy on your soul.

You also commit yourself entirely to his hands, and resign everything to his discretion and to his supreme disposal. Tell him you believe he will do the very best thing possible to him, all things considered, and that you shall by no means shrink from confiding your whole case to his disposal. You are not disposed to dictate or control what God shall do, but are willing to submit all to his wisdom and love. In fact, you have such confidence in him that you expect he will give you salvation, for you believe he has intended to encourage you to expect this great blessing, and on this ground you do expect to find mercy. You will therefore, at any rate, renounce all your sin henceforth and for ever. Say, “O Lord, thou knowest that I am purposed to renounce all sinning, and in this purpose I will persist, and die in it, if die I must, yea, go to hell, if so it must be, renouncing all my sin, and trusting in thy promised grace.”