>
“It was a look of full forgiveness. Who can doubt but that, at this moment, Jesus, by his blessed Spirit, did secretly write upon the heart of his backsliding disciple the free pardon of his sin. And such is ever the look of Christ to us. Be it a look expressive of wounded love; be it a look of mournful remembrance; or be it a look of searching reproof; it yet is always a look of most free and full forgiveness. “I have pardoned,” is its language. And this is the meaning of Christ’s look now penetrating the dark cloud of your heart’s grief, suffering believer. It may revive the recollection of past offences; it may search, and rebuke, and alarm; yet beware of interpreting it all of displeasure; it is a look of loving forgiveness. The sharpest reproof the look of Christ ever conveyed to a believer, spake of pardoned sin. It must be so, since the covenant of peace provides, and the atonement of Jesus secures, the entire canceling of all his sin. Meet the eye of Jesus, then, with confidence and love. There may be self-reproach in your conscience; there is no harsh reproach in his look. The uplifted glance of your eye may be sin-repenting, the downward beaming of his is sin-forgiving. O! press to your heart the consolation and joy of this truth,—the glance of Jesus falling upon his accepted child ever speaks of pardoned sin. Chastened, sorrowful, and secluded, you may be, yet your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake. O! I know not a truth more calculated to light up the gloom of a lone chamber, to lift up the drooping spirit of a heart-sick child of God, than the announcement that God, for Christ’s sake, has pardoned all his transgressions and his sins, and stands to him in the relation of a reconciled Father. Suffering child of God! with this divine declaration would I come to you in your sorrow and seclusion:—“O Israel! thou shalt not be forgotten of me. I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins. Return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.” O! that the Spirit, the Comforter, may sweeten your solitude and cheer your gloom, and give you this song to sing in the night season of your grief: “Bless the Lord, O my soul! and forget not all his benefits; who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, and crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies.” Forget not that the look of Christ is ever, to his saints, a look of pardoning love.” ~Octavius Winslow