“God is love”; yet ever since the fall of Adam, Satan has had agents at work trying to make men believe that God at best is indifferent to the woes and sorrows of mankind. In spite of the fact that the Spirit of God is love, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, and meekness, children even of Christian parents have grown up afraid of Him. The altogether too prevalent thought, unexpressed and even unformed in direct terms, is that although God may be willing to save men, he is not specially anxious; that, instead of seeking to save, he is on the lookout for opportunities to condemn and destroy. When such thoughts of God are held by people who all their lives have heard the sound of the Gospel, it is not difficult to conceive how God is regarded by people in the darkness of heathendom.MEDM February 17, 1909, page 136.1

The worst feature of the case is that the arch enemy of mankind, not content with working on the natural unbelief of the sinful human heart, has presumed to use the Bible to aid his wicked designs, and by perversions of texts and the production of distorted views, to increase doubt and despair. One of the blessed assurances that has been so abused is in 1 John 3:18-21:MEDM February 17, 1909, page 136.2

“My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemns us not, then have we confidence toward God.”MEDM February 17, 1909, page 136.3

A superficial reading of this text has led to the thought that if our heart condemns us, the condemnation of God, who knows all things, must be much greater. There is certainly no comfort in that thought. If it were true, there could be no hope except the false hope of the Pharisee; for the publican would say, as so many sinners do, “God can never receive and forgive so sinful and unworthy a person as I am.”MEDM February 17, 1909, page 136.4

But what are the facts? Whoever condemns, “it is God that justifieth.” For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” Self-condemnation is obviously the acknowledgment of sin committed; and “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us front all unrighteousness.” There are many self-condemned sinners, trembling under the thought that they are condemned by God, to whom the servant of Christ is commissioned to say, as did the Master to the palsied man, “Be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.”MEDM February 17, 1909, page 136.5

God, who commands light to shine out of darkness; creates courage from despair; and the fact that our heart condemns us should be to us the assurance that God forgives. This is what is really suggested by the text that we are studying, as plainly appears from the reading of the Revision: “Hereby shall we... assure our heart before him, whereinsoever our heart condemn us; because God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” Just because he knows all things, he justifies. “By his knowledge shall my righteous Servant justify many,” says the Lord.MEDM February 17, 1909, page 136.6

There is abundance of Scripture in corroboration of this truth. The one hundred and thirty-ninth psalm, one of the most comforting assurances, derives its comfort from the fact that God has searched us and known us; that he understands our thoughts afar off, and is acquainted with all our ways. Because God’s Word is “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart,” and “all things are naked and laid open before the eye of Him with whom we have to do,” we are urged to “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may, obtain mercy; and find grace to help time of need.”MEDM February 17, 1909, page 136.7

Uninstructed humanity, like Adam and Eve in the Garden, tends to hide itself from God; the thought, “Thou God seest me,” is to them terrible; yet from the history of Adam and Eve we know that God was seeking then to announce to them the Gospel of a Saviour who should destroy sin and Satan. We fly from God until we learn that he fills all things, and then we fly to him, and find escape from God in God. As one with keen perception of the truth has written:MEDM February 17, 1909, page 136.8

“If there had anywhere appeared in space
Another place of refuge, where to flee,
Our hearts had taken refuge in that place,
And not with Thee.
“But only when we found in earth and air,
In heaven or hell, that such might nowhere be,
That we could not flee from Thee anywhere,
We fled to Thee.”MEDM February 17, 1909, page 136.9

When our heart, knowing its own plague, condemns us, we appeal from it to the Supreme Court, which sits continually for the sole purpose of justifying the ungodly who flee to it for refuge; and none who appeal to it are ever lost, for “he that believeth is not condemned.” “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”MEDM February 17, 1909, page 136.10

February 3, 1909