July 8

Because he loves Me, I will deliver him; because he knows My name, I will protect him. — Ps 91:14 BSB

A person must know the Lord’s name before they can feel any real love for him. This is what the Lord does for his people—he causes them to know his name. “They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest” (Jer. 31:34). The Lord has declared it: “They shall know me.” But what is the name of the Lord? When God revealed himself to Moses, he said, “I AM THAT I AM.” This was how God taught Moses his name, and we can learn from this that whatever God is, that is his name. God is holy, just, merciful, and loving. The sinner must come to know these truths. At first, when they begin to learn that God is pure and holy, they are completely astonished and frightened. It causes them to shrink back, wondering, “How can I stand before God, who is too pure to look on sin?” And this brings distress to their conscience.

The Spirit’s first work is to “convict of sin,” and it’s a sense of God’s holiness that brings this conviction—our sin is exposed in the light of God’s purity. How can the sinner approach God? While under the terrors of the law, the sinner is full of distress, sometimes wishing they had never been born, other times having hard thoughts about God, seeing him as harsh and demanding. The devil plays on these thoughts, trying to harden the sinner’s heart against God. But the terrors of the Almighty grip them, and they try many ways to remove these arrows of conviction, only making the wound worse. It continues until they are brought to see that God is a God of mercy, revealed through the Lord Jesus. This is the turning point—when they see Christ bleeding on the cross. There, they see that God is both just and the Savior. God, in his purity and holiness, demands full payment for sin, but through Christ, to the broken heart, he also shows his mercy.