A Word in Season: Heavenly Reasoning (Isaiah 1:18)

Human Reasoning and the Lord’s Call to Reason

If I asked you to reason with me, there'd probably be something of a confession in the request. I'd be saying, in effect, that I'm not quite sure whether or not I'm speaking the truth, that I'm at least open to being persuaded that I might be wrong, or I want to hear your side of the story, and that perhaps somewhere between your contribution and mine, my opinion and yours, we can find some mutual and hopefully fairly accurate understanding.

That's not the way that the Lord God is speaking in Isaiah chapter 1 when he says to the people in verse 18, come now and let us reason together. In fact, the whole chapter shows what is the issue and what is at stake.

Judah’s Sin, Judgment, and Hypocritical Worship

The Lord God is speaking through his servant Isaiah to his covenant people who have rejected him and who are now suffering under his wrath. This is a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corrupters.

They have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel, they have turned away backward. God knows that they are suffering punishments and he asks them in effect, why do you keep going in this way, that you will be wounded and stricken more?

He reminds them of the desolation that surrounds them, the blessings that he held out to them if they walked in his ways. They have turned their back upon those things, they want nothing to do with them, and as a result they've lost not just God, but all the goodness that God would have given as well.

And the Lord God is telling them that their worship now is performance only, it's hypocritical and insincere, it lacks substance. He will not receive it because there's no reality in it. Their hands are full of blood and so he says, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doing from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.

In other words, having rejected God, there is nothing of real godliness left in their lives. There's no truth, there's no mercy, there's no justice, there's no goodness. Come now, says the Lord, and let us reason together.

Divine Reasoning, Scarlet Sin, and the Blood of Sacrifice

And that then is not God saying, have I got this wrong, is there some problem with my assertions? It's the Lord God calling them to the bar of his justice. It's the Lord God saying that they now need to assess themselves in the light of his holy law.

He's the standard of reason. He is the one who is truth itself. And he's saying to them, you need to see yourself accurately in the light of what I have said. How then can they make themselves clean when everything that they are and do is filthy with sin?

Well, the Lord God, as part of his divine reasoning, then says to them, though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Now, if you were offered a cleaning product that would produce such cleanness out of such stains, I think you'd say it borders on the miraculous.

And it is indeed a miracle that the Lord God is offering here. Sin stains the souls of these people. It's a stark and striking stain. It's scarlet. It's crimson. And until these people are washed entirely clean, they cannot come before the God of Israel, this holy and living Lord.

And yet God will provide something for them by which the sins like scarlet can be made white as snow. The souls that are red like crimson with transgression can be like wool. What can turn crimson into white like snow?

It is nothing but the blood of sacrifice. There is no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood. Now, here is divine reasoning. Blood will make your crimson soul white. The stains of your sin washed away by the shed blood of the lamb that you might be clean and whole before me.

And you and I need that reasoning just as much as old covenant Israel ever did. There is no cleansing apart from the divine reasoning of God and the divine provision of a sacrifice for our sins.