“Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy; for thou renderest to every man according to his work.
”
The notion that the salvation of Jesus is a salvation from the consequences of our sins is a false, mean, low notion. The salvation of Christ is salvation from the smallest tendency or leaning to sin. It is a deliverance into the pure air of God’s ways of thinking and feeling. It is a salvation that makes the heart pure, with the will and choice of the heart to be pure. To such a heart, sin is disgusting. It sees a thing as it is—that is, as God sees it, for God sees everything as it is. The soul thus saved would rather sink into the flames of hell than steal into heaven and skulk there under the shadow of an imputed righteouness. No soul is saved that would not prefer hell to sin. Jesus did not die to save us from punishment; he was called Jesus because he should save his people from their sins.
I have no desire to change the opinion of man or woman; but I would do my utmost to disable such as think correct opinion essential to salvation from laying any other burden on the shoulders of true men and women than the yoke of their Master; and such burden, if already oppressing any, I would gladly lift. They press their theories upon others, insisting on their thinking about Christ as they think, instead of urging them to go to Christ to be taught by him whatever he chooses to teach them. From such and their false teaching I would gladly help to deliver the true-hearted. Let the dead bury their dead, but I would do what I may to keep them from burying the living.
Commentary
by Jolyn Canty
“It is a deliverance into the pure air of God’s ways of thinking and feeling. It is a salvation that makes the heart pure, with the will and choice of the heart to be pure. To such a heart, sin is disgusting.”
All of creation functions on cause and effect. Choices have consequences. Sin is a choice with horrid consequences. Jesus came to free us from horrid sin and deliver us into His pure air of forgiveness, light, and truth. As George MacDonald says, He did not come to save us from the consequences of our sin, but from sin itself.
May we learn to choose Him, moment by moment; desiring His purity at all cost.
God’s thinking. Into the pure air. Clean and clear air. Clean and pure. Not an atom of sin. This is true breathing. This is my heart’s desire.
Love through me,
Love of God;
Make me like Thy clear air
Through which, unhindered,
Colors pass
As though it were not there.
Powers of the love of God,
Depths of the heart Divine,
O Love that faileth not,
Break forth
And flood this world
Of Thine.
--Amy Carmichael
Artist unknown :>(