“Infinite upon Infinite”
Merry Saturday by Parris Bailey
“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Isa.1:18
There is a little nugget that I came across years ago that calms my soul when it seems to be stormy within. I can still remember the feeling when I knew I was forgiven almost 40 years ago. Christianity to me is a dream come true. Someone paid for my mess? The sins I committed are wiped away as if they never happened? He takes my old nature and exchanges it with a Divine one? As far as I am concerned it’s all a win win. Then if that isn’t enough He sends this special friend the Holy Spirit to guide through this howling wilderness, fights for me and teaches me to things to come. The Holy Spirit gives me supernatural power to overcome this world’s traps. My nugget is “INFINITE UPON INFINITE” coined by Jonathan Edwards. He says, “My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly ineffable, and swallowing up all thought and imagination; like an infinite deluge, or mountain over my head. I know not how to express better, what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite. Very often, for these many years, these expressions are in my mind, and in my mouth, ‘Infinite upon infinite! Infinite upon infinite!’ When I look into my heart, and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell. And it appears to me, that were it not for free grace, exalted and raised up to the infinite height of all the fullness and glory of the great Jehovah, and the arm of his power and grace stretched forth in all the majesty of his power, and in all the glory of his sovereignty, I should appear sunk down in my sins below hell itself; far beyond the sight of every thing, but the eye of sovereign grace, that can pierce even down to such a depth.”
I think the modern day seeker sensitive Christian or unbeliever laughs at even the thought that we even did sin! It’s not even a consideration in our lives and colleges still today study “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and jeer at the content, yet deem it a literary masterpiece. Let’s listen to what Spurgeon says about sin; “Though our sins have been as scarlet and crimson, as deep dye, a double dye, first in the wool of original corruption and afterwards in the many threads of actual transgression–though we have been often dipped, by our many backslidings, into sin, and though we have lain long soaking in it, as the cloth does in the scarlet dye, yet pardoning mercy will thoroughly discharge the stain, and, being by it purged as with hyssop, we shall be clean, Ps. li. 7.”
Yes, infinite upon infinite yet all forgiven by a wonderful Savior.