When God accepts a sinner, He is, in fact, only accepting Christ. He looks into the sinner's eyes, and He sees His own dear Son's image there, and He takes him in.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the belief that God's acceptance comes through the acceptance of Jesus Christ.
Charles Spurgeon suggests that when God forgives and accepts a sinner, it is not merely the sinner that is accepted, but rather it is the image of Christ within the sinner that God acknowledges. This highlights the Christian concept of redemption, where the value of a person's acceptance in the eyes of God is grounded in their relationship with Christ, symbolizing love, forgiveness, and transformation.
In practice
A pastor might use this quote during a sermon on redemption to encourage those feeling unworthy.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
It has served us well, this myth of Christ.
I wonder if it hurts to live, And if they have to try, And whether, could they choose between, They would not rather die.
Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.
For every life and every act consequence of good and evil can be shown and as in time results of many deeds are blended so good and evil in the end become confounded.
As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.
Awareness requires a rupture with the world we take for granted; then old categories of experience are called into question and revised.
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