There is nothing so hard for our hearts as to abide in the sense of grace. It is by grace that the heart is “established;” but there is nothing more difficult for us really to comprehend than the fullness of grace.
Grace supposes all the sin and evil in us, and is the blessed revelation that through Jesus all this sin and evil has been put away. A single sin is more horrible to God than a thousand sins, nay, than all the sins in the world, are to us; and yet, with the fullest consciousness of what we are, all that God is pleased to be towards us is LOVE!
It is vain to look to any extent of evil – a person may be (speaking after the manner of men) a great sinner or a little sinner; but this is not the question at all. Grace has reference to what God is, and not to what we are, except indeed that the very greatness of our sins does but magnify the extent of the “grace of God.”
I have got away from grace, if I have the slightest doubt or hesitation about God’s love. I shall then be saying,
“I am unhappy, because I am not what I should like to be.”
But this is not the question: the real question is, whether God is what we should like Him to be – whether Jesus is all we could wish.
If the consciousness of what we are – of what we find in ourselves – has any other effect than, while it humbles us, to increase our adoration of what God is, we are off the ground of pure grace. The effect of such consciousness should surely be to humble us, but to make our hearts reach out to God and to His grace as abounding over it all.