the Third Week after Easter
Click to donate today!
Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
"Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity?’ - Micah 7:18.
There is a little flock who are acquainted with God; are so far acquainted with his essential perfections, and see so much of his glory in Christ, that God is not ashamed to be known as their God, and to have it understood among the angels of heaven that the members of this flock do know him. But viewing these as exceptional, innumerable conceptions of God possess the minds of men; to express it otherwise, innumerable gods of, widely different characters exist in the conceptions of men, and frown upon the only true God. " righteous Father, the world hath not known thee," said Christ; but the world angrily asserts that it knows him very well. Every natural man has his deity, whom he prefers to the God of the Bible; and conversion is just consenting that the true God shall be God, and the god of one’s fancy be annihilated. Men have the highest idea of their own faculty of bodying forth the true God, and look with proud disdain upon what seem to them the bungling attempts of Scripture. One boasts that his God has made no decrees concerning the salvation of particular persons. Another that his God saves all that are baptized. Another that his God finds much merit in man. The God of another will actually save all.
But almost all these gods of men’s devising, agree in one respect. They make light of man’s iniquity. They entertain no sterner view of it than man himself, man the sinner, ordinarily entertains. Of course they are ready to forgive it; for it is a light thing.
When, however, men begin to come to the knowledge of the true God, then their iniquity rises from its tomb in all its dread proportions, and the dread specter lifts its head to the skies, stretches out its hands to the East and to the West, blots out creation from their view, and bids them come with it to the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone. Their former God is fled into everlasting night; and all their former conceptions of divine grace, though multiplied a million times, would fall short of that grace which they now see to be required. What shall they "do? Perish? No, says God; look unto the cross, know my grace, and live. Then from an amazed heart cometh the ejaculation, "Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity? "
-
