Micah 6:6-8 With which shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings… The first rites of all religions but one are rites of propitiation. Men everywhere, feeling themselves sinners, justly conceive it necessary that, in order to obey God acceptably, they must first be reconciled to Him, and obtain indemnity for past offences. Among the pro fessors of idolatry, ancient and modern, the principle of self-atonement has taken up its residence. Even we may think that our sufferings ought to be accepted as a partial atonement for our offences. The mistake is not man's conviction of the necessity of an atonement, but the way in which that atonement is sought. The mistake is man's making his conviction a foundation for his pride to erect its fancied claims on the Divine justice, and his self-righteousness to flatter itself with the hopes of meritorious exertion. God has provided the necessary burnt. offering. He has provided it in a way at once the most suitable to His own glory, the most congenial to the harmony of the Divine attributes, and adapted, with unspeakable wisdom and felicity, to the lost and hopeless state of His guilty creatures. Being justified by His grace, through the atonement which He has accepted, we have a ground of confidence before God. And being reconciled to God through the death of His Son, we should walk acceptably before Him, in newness of life. (C. R. Maturin.) Parallel Verses KJV: Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? |
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