God is a holy Being; yea, " glorious in holiness," as well as in every other perfection. " He hateth all the workers of miquity :" " He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity ''," without the utmost abhorrence of it. In this respect also, as well as in the former, " there is no darkness at all in him ;" there is none in his nature ; there is none in his dispensatioiis.
Consider his nature: which of his attributes has the smallest mixture of unholiness ? His sovereignty is not a weak par- tiahty, but a holy exertion of his will, according to his own determinate and eternal counsels. His justice is not a rigorous severity, but a holy regard to the honour of his broken law. His mercy is not a weak exercise of pity at the expense of justice and truth, but a holy display of his un- bounded compassion, in a way that at the same time illustrates and magnifies all his other perfections.
Consider his dispensations : these, it is true, are oftentimes inscrutable to us ; yet is he " righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works'." We are sometimes indeed ready, through unbehef, to question his wisdom and his goodness '". When we see the wicked triumphing, and the righteous suffering under the accumulated trials of persecution from man and desertion from God, Ave are apt to be offended, and to ask. Whether there be a God that ruleth in the earth ? But in both these respects is his holiness expressly vindicated in the Sacred Writings : the Martyrs that are now in glory, at the same time that they expostulate, as it were, with God on the subject of his forbearance towards their persecutors, address him as " holy and true ^ :" and David, when com- plaining bitterly of the dereliction that he suffered, takes especial care to acknowledge that, in the midst of all, his holiness is unimpeached ; " O God I cry in the day-time, but thou hearest not ; and in the night-season I am not silent ; lut thou art holy°" When therefore we are not able to com- prehend tlie reason of God's dispensations, we must still con- fess, that though " clouds and darkness are round about him, righteousness and judgment are the basis of his throne?."]
The next part of the message points out to us,
II. The necessity and benefit of a conformity to him —
The
"Hab.i.lS. 'Ps.cxiv. 17. ^ Ps. Ixxiii. 12-14.
"Rev. VI. 10. "Ps.xxii. 1— 3. pPs.xcvii. 2.
208 J JOHN, I. b—1. [1177.
The saints are said to be renewed after the Divine imaje : and it is worthy of particular observation, that the only two ])oints in which this renovation is said to consist, are knowledg'e'', and holiness'. We see then from hence wherein that conformity, which we are to attain, consists: it consists in knowledge and in holiness, or, as my text expresses it, in " walking in the light as he is in the light :" our minds must be en/ightoied jvith the knowledge of God's trutli ; and our hearts must be purified in the performance of his 2vill.
Let us notice then,
1. The necessilij oi this conformity — ■
[Many will pretend to have communion with God, while they are ignorant of the salvation revealed in the Gospel, and Hving in the habitual indulgence of sin. But, while they thus " walk in darkness," what " fellowship can they have with God ?" What access can they have to him, when they do not so much as know the way of " access to him through the rent vail of the Redeemer's flesh ^?" and what regard can they feel in their hearts towards him, while they are under the allowed dominion of worldly and carnal lusts? Their profession is a system of falsehood and hypocrisy : " they lie, and do not the truth :" they may work up them- selves to ecstacies if they will ; but they neither have, nor can have, any fellowship with God ; for how " shall the throne of inicjuity (or one in whom sin reigns) have fellow- ship with him*?" "What fellowship hath righteousness with unri<;htcousness ? and what communion hath light with darkness" r""]