14 January 2015

Diving Into it for All Eternity

'...to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth...' --Ephesians 3:18
Sin is a great depth, therefore the apostle saith, 'it doth abound,' Rom 5:20, and is 'above measure sinful,' Rom 7:13, and so you will find it when you gauge it to the bottom. And so the devils and damned spirits in hell shall find it, whilst they are a-studying their sinfulness in hell to all eternity (that being their business), and can never fathom it.

But yet this of God's free grace and Christ's love is a depth, which swallows up this of sin, more than the heavens do the earth. This passage seems to compare it to a mighty sea, so deep, as it wants a bottom; so as though the thoughts of men and angels shall be diving into it to all eternity, they shall not come to ground. Of the length and breadth also, that it knows no shore, that though they shall be sailing over it with that small compass of their capacities for ever, yet they shall never come to land.
--Thomas Goodwin, 'The Glory of the Gospel,' Works, 4:236

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