1880 87 God makes us understand that He occupies Himself with our sins long before we ourselves were occupied with them. If the goodness of God is occupied with them, it must be that He is so to get rid of them altogether, and He has given Jesus for this purpose. To blot out our sins completely — there is what God's goodness would and must do. But if one would arrive at pardon by progress in holiness, it is to choose the road for oneself. God puts the sinner at his ease in His presence by showing him his sins on the head of Jesus. His glory would not be complete if the believer were not justified. It is a salvation accomplished forever that God presents to us, and the soul is in peace. All this is for His name's sake.
If the soul is assured of the goodness of God, would it love to keep some sins? No; the conscience set free from the thick layer of old sins becomes more delicate. If we are truly quickened, what we find in ourselves after our conversion is much more painful to us than the sins were before conversion. But Jesus is dead, knowing what we were and because of what we are. Such as I am, God loves me; His name is here in question, and His name in goodness. God has condemned sin in the flesh (Rom. 8:3.), in that Christ, having become man, was made sin for us. (2 Cor. 5:19-21.) He has been sacrificed for us. (Heb. 9) The name of God who is love is thus revealed by everything that God has done for us in Jesus.
God is upright also, and He teaches the sinner and leads him. This comes after pardon. The first is He is good; then comes truth, though man's heart thinks the inverse. If we are in relation with a God of goodness, how will that appear? Up to what point should He be manifested to us? Up to showing to the ages to come the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. (Eph. 2:7.) God has before Him the most wretched of sinners (take the robber on the cross); and what will He do to display to the angels, etc., in heaven the riches of His goodness; He will take us, once wretched, and set us in the same glory as Christ Himself.
It is in us God shows what He is. You, who say you are most feeble and miserable, it is you God would choose, if He would show the immense riches of His grace. He cannot stop in this goodness; and it is not humility to put limits to His goodness by saying we are too little and unworthy. He forgives for the sake of His own name. (1 John 2:12.) He restores and leads for His own name's sake. He begins, continues, and finishes up to heaven itself and always for the sake of His name. (Phil. 1) There is the only thing which makes the soul upright, sincere, and open before God, because there remains no subject of fear with regard to sin, and there is never uprightness in the heart till our consciences have seen and felt what we are before God as sinners pardoned. The moment that the soul says, "For thy name's sake, O Jehovah, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great," it cannot but be that God manifests Himself. One then makes progress in Him, and one finds the sweet assurance that God is ever good and upright for the sinner.