Heap it up Mountain High

The founder of Westminster Seminary with a word in season to all of us who have trouble 'forgiving ourselves,' in a musty old book left for me by my grandfather a few years ago--

There may be some foul spot in our lives; the kind of thing that the world never forgives, the kind of thing, at any rate, for which we who know all can never forgive ourselves. But what care we whether the world forgives, or even whether we can forgive ourselves, if God forgives, if God has received us by the death of His Son?

That is what Paul means by 'boasting' in the cross of Christ. . . . Little care we whether our sin be thought unpardonable or no, little interested are we in the exact calculation of our guilt. Heap it up mountain high, yet God has removed it all.

We cannot explain God's act; it is done on His responsibility, not ours. 'I know not,' the Christian says, 'what my guilt may be; one thing I know: Christ loved me and gave Himself for me. Come on now ye moralists of the world, come on ye hosts of demons, with your whisperings of hell! We fear you not; we take our stand beneath the shadow of the cross, and standing there, in God's favor, we are safe. No fear of challenge now! If God be for us, who can be against us?'

--J. Gresham Machen, What Is Faith? (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1925), 82-83