The wrath of God let loose upon
His Son!
(Winslow, "The God of Holiness")
Divine holiness is best exhibited in the cross of Jesus.
Not hell itself, dreadful and eternal as is its suffering:
the undying worm, the unquenchable fire, the smoke
of the torment that goes up forever and ever; affords
such a solemn and impressive spectacle of the
holiness and justice of God in the punishment of
sin, as is presented in the death of God's beloved Son.
An eminent Puritan writer thus strikingly puts it:
"Not all the vials of judgment that have or shall be
poured out upon this wicked world, nor the flaming
furnace of a sinner's conscience, nor the irrevocable
sentence pronounced against the rebellious devils,
nor the groans of the damned creatures, give such
a demonstration of God's hatred of sin, as the
wrath of God let loose upon His Son!"
Never did Divine holiness appear more beautiful
and lovely than at the time our Savior's countenance
was most marred in the midst of His dying groans.
This Himself acknowledges in that penitential psalm,
when God turned His smiling face away from Him, and
thrust His sharp knife into His heart, which forced
that terrible cry from Him, "My God, my God, why
have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from
saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
...Yet You are enthroned as the Holy One." Ps. 22:1-2
Such an impressive view of God's holiness the angels
in heaven never before beheld; not even when they
saw the non elect spirits hurled from the heights of
glory down to the bottomless pit, to be reserved in
chains of darkness and woe forever!
Jesus was the innocent One dying for the guilty
ones, the holy One dying for the sinful ones.
Divine justice, in its mission of judgment, as it
swept by the cross, found the Son of God impaled
upon its wood beneath the sins and the curse of
His people. Upon Him its judgment fell, on His soul
its wrath was poured, in His heart its flaming sword
was plunged; and thus, from Him, justice exacted
the full penalty of man's transgression; the last
farthing of the great debt.
Go to the cross, then, my reader, and learn the holiness of God.
Contemplate...
the dignity of Christ;
His preciousness to His Father's heart;
the sinlessness of His nature.
And then behold...
the sorrow of His soul,
the torture of His body,
the tragedy of His death,
the abasement,
the ignominy,
the humiliation, into the fathomless
depths of which the whole transaction
plunged our incarnate God!
And let me ask, standing, as you are, before
this unparalleled spectacle, "Can you cherish
low views of God's holiness, or light views
of your own sinfulness?"