Wandering Crusader #276 A Reason for Mercy

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Isaiah 1:18

When God called all the animals together for Adam to name, it was a lesson in taxonomy. The name Adam called each one was not of grave importance. The important lesson Adam learned was about himself. He was different. He could reason.

Our ability to reason is one way in which we bear God’s likeness. Because of this likeness, God invites us to commune with Him. Reasoning from the natural world will put us on the pathway to God and peace with Him. God is in the world upholding it all by His power, and nothing exists except as it shares His existence.

Knowledge of God is more than a philosophical exercise. It’s more than knowing or even proving that God exists. None of these things, in and of themselves, is what God wants. God wants a loving relationship with us. He loved and made us. Now, He seeks after those who will freely, lovingly return His love.

Everyone seems to know God is love. What we neglect to consider is that God is perfect love. That is, His love is perfectly just, perfectly true, perfect from Alpha to Omega. He made us for fellowship in His perfect love. We are not worthy of it, and as imperfect creatures cannot make ourselves worthy.

By grace, God offers to make us worthy through the atonement of Christ. He asks one thing of us. Accept the offer by acknowledging Christ as Lord through surrender to Him.

Isaiah uses the imagery of the Mercy Seat to explain how this works. In the Ark were three things: the tables of the ten commandments, a pot of manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded. Three scarlet symbols of man’s rejection of God. The high priest sprinkled blood on the Mercy Seat, the “lid” of the Ark. Looking down from above the Mercy Seat through the red blood, the red sin looked white. Christ’s blood, shed for us, makes our sin vanish into white.

Maranatha