“We have known and believed the love that God hath to us” (1 John 4:16).
Love cannot be enjoyed if there is a bad conscience. You must get the conscience purged. Satan may act on the conscience, as well as the Spirit of God—Satan always acts in the way of despair, while the Spirit of God always points to a resource in God.
The distressed soul feels there is goodness in God, if it can only get at it. The prodigal knew his need—there is “bread enough and to spare” in my father’s house (Luke 15:17). Thus the soul knows and believes God’s love. When the Father is on the neck of the prodigal, that settles every question.
Having peace with God, we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. “God is love” (1 John 4:16)—not a word of what man is. God is love—that is the only God I know and the only way that I can know Him. I have sins, but they have all been judged in Christ; God will not judge them again.
What difficulty we have in believing what God really is!
J. N. Darby (Gems From My Reading; adapted)