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The flaming sword of justice quenched
in the holy, loving bosom of Jesus!
(From Octavius Winslow's "Contrition and Confession")
The most significant and appalling demonstration
of God's holiness that the universe ever beheld,
infinitely distancing and transcending every other, is
the sufferings and death of His only and beloved Son!
The cross of Calvary exhibits God's hatred and
punishment of sin in a way and to an extent
which the annihilation of millions of worlds,
swept from the face of the universe by the
broom of His wrath, could never have done!
"Who His own self bore our sins
in His own body on the tree."
Behold the most awful display of God's hatred
of sin! Finding the sins of the Church upon Christ
as its Surety, Substitute, and Savior, the wrath of
God was poured out upon Him without measure!
God finding the sins of His people laid upon His
Son, emptied upon His holy soul all the vials of
His wrath due to their transgressions!
Go, my soul, to Calvary, and learn how holy
God is, and what a monstrous thing sin is, and
how imperiously, solemnly, and holily bound
Jehovah is to punish it, either in the person
of the sinner, or in the person of a Surety.
Never was the Son of God dearer to the
Father than at the very moment that the
sword of divine justice, flaming and flashing,
pierced to its hilt His holy heart!
But it was the wrath of God, not against
His beloved Son, but against the sins which
met on Him when presenting Himself on
the cross as the substitutionary sacrifice
and offering of His Church.
He "gave Himself for us."
What a new conception must angels have
formed of the exceeding sinfulness of sin,
when they beheld the flaming sword of justice
quenched in the holy, loving bosom of Jesus!
And in what a dazzling light does this fact
place the marvelous love of God to sinners!
Man's sin and God's love; the indescribable
enormity of the one, and the immeasurable
greatness of the other; are exhibited in the
cross of Christ as nowhere else.
Oh, to learn experimentally these two great facts;
sin's infinite hatefulness, and love's infinite holiness!
The love of God in giving His Son to die;
the love of Christ in dying; the essential
turpitude and unmitigated enormity of sin,
which demanded a sacrifice so Divine,
so holy, and so precious!
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