Acts 3:26 To you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities. The history of man on this side of the grave is like the history of the natural world: the seasons change; if the winter chills, the summer warms; if darkness wraps in its shade, light cheers with its brilliancy. Thus joy and sorrow, hope and fear, satisfaction and perplexity are mingled together. Under these circumstances it is very material to know whether there be any mode of defending ourselves against such an increase of sorrow, and of insuring to ourselves such an increase of comfort. Here in the text is a chart to the wanderer, a light to the benighted, a shelter to the forlorn, a certainty to the dubious! The misery of man lies chiefly in the circumstances of his moral condition; he is wretched under the effects of his iniquities. His remedy must be found in the return of his affections to God; God sent Christ to bless you by turning you away from your iniquities. The sorrows of man mainly issue from the depravity of his affections. He is guilty before God. Certainly his passions, earthly and selfish, spurn every barrier when occasions exasperate their movements. To restrain them under such excitements is as impracticable, as, by the weight of the dews of heaven, to chain down the fiery matter which a volcano is about to cast forth. But to come to individual experience. From whence does the largest portion of man's sufferings arise? Is it not from the disordered state of his affections? Is there not a disease of the heart, which is widely prevalent, and which no skill can heal? To reproduce happiness in a sinful being requires, therefore, a remedy applicable to the inward disease in his mind; a remedy which not only respects a new and favourable relation on the part of God, but also a new and holy state of the affections on the part of man. In other words, the happiness of a sinner will depend first upon, the conviction that God has pardoned him, and secondly, upon the consciousness that he loves the Being who has thus tenderly dealt with him. Now the remedy which Christianity brings forward to the view of him who believes it, is exactly of this kind. "Jesus Christ came to bless you by turning away every one of you from his iniquities." He holds out to us pardon and peace, and He gives us the disposition to love the nature and the heart from which that pardon flows! In this complex operation the means of human happiness are unfolded. The pardon of sin is complete and free, unclogged with any condition or qualification. "There is no more condemnation," but perfect reconciliation and peace. Now the belief in this truth, under the agency of the Spirit, conveys healing to the heart. Sin becomes loathsome when its consequences are thus made visible in the personal sufferings of Jesus Christ, and obedience to the will and mind of God then becomes identical with peace and happiness. Thus Christ blesses by turning away from iniquity, by procuring at once the pardon of sin, and by healing the disease of sin; by restoring peace in the relations between God and man, and by making God's character the glowing object of attractive imitation. (G. T. Noel, M. A.). Parallel Verses KJV: Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities. |
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