June 5 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins" (Isa. 40:2).

Devotional

By sealing a sense of pardon upon the conscience, God comforts the disconsolate. There is no comfort equal to this. Just as our deepest sorrow flows from a sense of sin, so also our deepest joy springs from a sense of its forgiveness. What comfort can there be where this is absent? What sorrow where this is felt? "It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?" (Rom. 8:33–34).

This is the comfort that God commanded the prophet to speak to his spiritual Jerusalem: "Cry to her... that her iniquity is pardoned" (Isa. 40:2) And this is the message which the Lord sends to his whole church. This is the comfort that God gives to all his saints. Your sins, O believer, are forgiven. "I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist," says God (Isa.44:22).

You are not called to believe that God will pardon, but that he has pardoned you. Forgiveness is a past act; the sense of it written upon the conscience is a present one. "By a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" (Heb. 10:14); he has forever put away their sins. Faith in the blood of Jesus brings the soul into the possession of a present forgiveness. And when God the Holy Spirit thus imprints a sense of pardon upon the troubled conscience, all other sorrows dwindle into insignificance in comparison. "Strike, Lord," said Luther, "I bear anything willingly because my sins are forgiven."

Thus, beloved, God comforts his conscience-troubled people. He loves to speak comfort to their hearts. Is it any delight to him to see you carrying your burden of conscious sin day after day and week after week? Ah no! He has procured the means of your pardon at a great price—nothing less than the sacrifice of his beloved Son! And will not the very same love that procured your forgiveness also speak it to your heart? Oh yes! The sun in the heavens does not shed its light more freely, light itself does not speed more rapidly, and the mountain stream does not rush on more gladly and freely than the pardon of sin flows from the heart of God to the humble and contrite.

Is sin your trouble? Does conscious guilt cast you down? Look up, disconsolate soul! There is forgiveness with God (Ps. 130:4)! It is in his heart to pardon you. Hurry to his throne of grace, acknowledge your transgression over the head of the atoning sacrifice, and he will forgive the iniquity of your sin. And oh, what will be the joy of your heart, the music of your lips, the grateful surrender of your person when Jesus says, "Your sins are forgiven... go in peace" (Luke 7:48, 50)!

Thy works, not mine, O Christ,
speak gladness to this heart;
they tell me all is done;
they bid my fear depart.

(Horatius Bonar, 1857)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2025.