Merry Christmas!
Good morning, Immanuel! Jesus is the greatest gift to the world.
“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (Isaiah 1:18).
Three things strike me about this verse.
The first is the Lord’s tone. Imagine a father walking into a trashed house. His children are in high school. They know better. They have done real damage. But the father calls them into the living room and invites them to sit. “Come now, let us reason together,” he says. The Lord’s tone is dignifying and earnest.
The second thing that strikes me is the Lord’s verdict. We read Isaiah on the other side of Christmas and Easter, of the incarnation and the resurrection, so the cost, the means, and the extent of redemption are known to us. Alec Motyer describes the shocking, life-giving verdict of Isaiah 1:18: “The Lord calls his people to the bar of justice where, of course, they can only be found guilty. But it is there that they hear words of free pardon based on the substitutionary death of a divinely appointed sacrifice.”
The third and perhaps most striking thing about this verse is the nature of the Lord’s cleansing. We are not put through a heavy-duty wash cycle and brought out less soiled (but worn down) in the process. Our sins are not simply scrubbed or bleached out of us. Snow is naturally white. So is wool. What’s happening here? Again, Motyer nails it: “The promise, therefore, is of a new, holy nature, not just the cleansing away of the past.” We don’t just get an improved version of our past. We get a gloriously new reality!
Hear the Lord’s gracious tone, marvel at this shocking verdict, and meditate on the miracle of the Lord’s cleansing. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).
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Amen. Thank you Vince 🙏🏼