When the Son has made a sinner free, he is free indeed. The dear child, pardoned and reconciled, loves and longs for the Father's presence. What! is there neither spot nor wrinkle now upon the man, that he dares to challenge inspection by the Omniscient, and to offer his heart as Jehovah's dwelling-place? He is not yet so pure; and well he knows it. The groan is bursting yet from his broken heart: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. 7:24). Many a stains defile him yet; but he loathes them now, and longs to be free. The difference between an unconverted and a converted man is not that the one has sins and the other has none; but that the one takes part with his cherished sins against a dreaded God, and the other takes part with a reconciled God against his hated sins. He is out with his former friends, and in with his former adversary . . . Whereas his face was to his sins and his back to God, his face is now to God and his back toward his sins. This one turning, with its twofold result, is in Christ the Mediator, and through the work of the Spirit.
William Arnot, Illustrations of the Book of Proverbs (London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1890), 20-21.
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