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.
You can't carve up the world. It's not a pie.
It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
Dan Brown, is a character from Foucault's Pendulum! I invented him. He shares my characters' fascinations - the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist.
A little flesh, a little breath, and a Reason to rule all - that is myself.
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