God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
If Christ has borne whatever our sins deserved, and by doing so has satisfied God’s justice to the full, then God cannot, in justice, punish us for sin, for that would require the full payment from Christ and yet demand part of it from us... God does not chastise us as a means of satisfaction for sin, but for rebuke and caution, to bring us to mourn for sin committed, and to beware of the like. It must always be remembered that, although Christ has borne the punishment of sin, and although God has forgiven the saints for their sins, yet God may correct His people in a fatherly way for their sin. Christ endured the great shower of wrath, the black and dismal hours of displeasure for sin. That which falls upon us is as a sun-shine shower, warmth with wetness, wetness with the warmth of His love, to make us fruitful and humble… That which the believer suffers for sin is not penal, arising from vindictive justice, but medicinal, arising from a fatherly love. It is His medicine, not His punishment; His chastisement, not His sentence; His correction, not His condemnation.
Only one who has a strong desire to be holy will ever persevere in the painfully slow and difficult task of pursing holiness. There are too many failures. The habits of our old nature and the attacks of Satan are too strong for us to persevere unless the Holy Spirit is at work in us to create a desire for holiness. The Holy Spirit creates this desire, not only by showing us our sins, but also by showing us God’s standard of holiness. He does this through the Scriptures. As we read and study the Scriptures or hear them taught, we are captivated by the moral beauty of God’s standard of holiness.
