Rejecting God's Pardon

Nor are we more mindful of the restraining influence of the love of God. We disregard the fact that the Being against whom we sin, is He to whom we owe our existence and all our enjoyments; who has carried us in his arms, and crowned us with loving kindness and tender mercies; who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy; who has not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities, but has borne with our provocations, waiting that his goodness might lead us to repentance. We have despised his forbearance, deriving from it a motive to sin, as though he were slack concerning his promises, and would not accomplish his threatenings; thus treasuring up for ourselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Besides all this, we disregard the love of Christ. He came to save us from our sins, and we will not accept of his mediation, or reciprocate his love. There stands his cross, mutely eloquent; at once an invitation and a warning. It tells us both of the love and justice of God. It assures us that he who spared not his own Son, is ready to be gracious. All this we disregard. We count the blood of the covenant, an unholy thing; we act as if it were not the blood of the Son of God, shed for us for the remission of sins. Or, it may be, we turn the grace of God into licentiousness, and draw encouragement from the death of Christ to continue in sin. This unbelieving rejection of the Saviour involves guilt so peculiarly great, that it is often spoken of as the special ground of the condemnation of the world. He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed on the only begotten Son of God. When he, the Spirit of truth is conic, he shall convince the world of sin, because they believe not in me....

This great sin of rejecting Jesus Christ as a Saviour, it must be remembered, is an often repeated and long continued sin. It is also one which is chargeable not on the openly wicked merely, but upon those whom the world calls moral. They too resist the claims of the Son of God; they too refuse his love and reject his offers. It was when all other messengers had failed, the Lord of the vineyard sent his Son to his disobedient servants, saying, They will reverence my Son. The guilt of thus rejecting Christ, will never be fully appreciated until the day when He shall sit on the throne and from his face the earth and heaven shall flee away and no place be found for them.

Source: Charles Hodge, The Way of Life. Philadelphia, American Sunday-school Union (1841).