Isaiah 6:6-7 Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:… This would, perhaps, be quite intelligible to the contemporaries of the prophet; but it is undoubtedly very obscure to us. The act is intended to shadow forth in some way the cleansing of the prophet from sin; but what is the connection between such cleansing and the touching of Isaiah's lips with the stone heated on the altar fire? The stone is a means of applying fire; when, therefore, it is brought to the lips of the prophet, it is the same as if the whole altar fire had been brought there; and that again is the same as if the prophet's "unclean lips" had been laid on the altar. The everyday use of the stone would at once suggest this to the mind of Isaiah's hearers. The angel's act, therefore, is as much as to say: "Lo, I lay thy sinfulness on the altar fire; and thou art cleansed from sin thereby." But how should laying on the altar cleanse from sin? To lay on the altar is to give up to God — to make wholly His. Here, then, the angel says to Isaiah in substance this: "Thy sin-defiled nature ('lips') I lay on God's altar. I make it all His again. The uncleanness of thy nature consisted in its opposition to God, for all sin is selfish action, as opposed to action for God, and now all the opposition of thy nature to God is taken away. Thy nature is, by this act, devoted wholly to God. By Divine power thou hast been suddenly, miraculously, turned into one from whom all selfish thoughts and words and deeds are taken away, into one whose every thought and desire is toward God; into one wholly consecrated and devoted to God; and therefore into one wholly pure." All this is done only in symbol, of course; not in reality. What the prophet receives is in truth only God's twice-repeated assurance that He looks on the prophet as one thus cleansed and devoted; that He overlooks the prophet's past sins; that He imputes to him the purity of consecration; or, in short, that God pardons and forgives him. The essential core of the idea of forgiveness, in the New Testament as well as in the Old, is just this, that God treats guilty but penitent men as if they were not guilty, with a view to freeing them from their guilt and making them righteous. Isaiah conceives of His forgiveness under forms familiar to his time. He, a sinful man, is laid on the altar of God, and made wholly clean in God's sight, whatever the imperfections that may still cling to his nature, whatever selfishness or self-will may still mar his reconciliation to the will of God. Of course, however, the change of will does not long continue merely imaginary, or in symbol only; for, in all time, God's treatment of men as if their wills were devoted to Him, God's loving forgiveness of men's sins, has been the chief means of subduing man's will to Him in actual fact. (P. Thomson, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: |
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