THE above words were uttered by a lady, as her soul received the truth that “God is light.” Before this, she had been thinking of God only as a loving and merciful God. To her it was as if God could make little of sin, because He is merciful. She had read in the Bible, “God is love,” and had drawn the very false inference that God can look at sin lightly and that He will not judge the sinner eternally, who dies unrepentant.
She had not seen that God’s love is a pure love, and as far separated from sin as He Himself is. But it pleased God to bring before her, and to give her to take in, the truth that God is light, as well as that God is love. She was brought face to face with the truth that “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:55This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)); and that He is “of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on iniquity.” (Hab. 1:1313Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he? (Habakkuk 1:13).)
This truth, unknown before, broke in upon her soul, and commanded her attention. Sin in the presence of a holy God is rebellion, and must be judged; and so this lady exclaimed, “I see, I have been robbing God of half His character.”
The fact is that God is “light,” as well as “love.” He is not one more than the other, and consequently there is a moral necessity in God to judge sin. God is the Governor of the universe, and He is light. If He were to allow sin to go unpunished it would tarnish His holy character, connect sin with Himself, and deny His own nature. This can never be. In all God’s dealings with His creatures, He acts in consistency with Himself in all that He is as “light” and “love.” In the Scriptures we have the ways of God spread before us, and the consistency of those ways, whether in saving or judging.
It is also true that man has departed from his Creator, and fallen under the power of Satan. He has sinned and earned for himself a portion in the lake of fire; but God has espoused his cause, and has not left him to hopeless and everlasting misery. But if God has espoused man’s cause, surely it is not in a way that will bring dishonor upon Himself, or tarnish His glory in the least. If there is in God the moral necessity for the judgment of sin, there was also the necessity of love in the death of Jesus to put sin away. “The Son of Man must be lifted up.” (John 3:1414And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: (John 3:14))
My dear reader, it is of the utmost importance to mark the word “must” in the text quoted from the 3rd of John, “The Son of Man must be lifted up.” There was an absolute necessity for the death of the Son of Man. If God would save, His Son must die; for “without shedding of blood is no remission.” (Heb. 9:2222And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. (Hebrews 9:22)). The cross then stands out where God was displayed as “light” and “love”: as “light,” in the execution of judgment upon sin laid on Christ, the Lamb of God; and as “love” in the gift of Him who died there. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:1010Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10)) In the cross, then, we learn that God loves the sinner, but that He hates the sinner’s sins.
It is an immense thing for the sinner to learn that man can do nothing, absolutely nothing, for his own salvation; but we can say, “Behold, I am vile”; “I am undone”; “I have sinned”; and this being so, God meets us with full forgiveness, and a free salvation, through the finished work of His blessed risen Son. M. L. A.