Quotable

The God of the law and the God of the Gospel is the same God--unchanged, unchangeable. His mercy beams forth more gloriously in the Gospel than in the law, but His holiness is not obscured by the effulgence of His mercy. No, the displeasure of God against sin is more strongly marked in the sacrifice of His Son, than in all the hecatombs of victims which bled on the Jewish altars; and we may rest assured, that "if he who despised Moses' law died without mercy, he will be accounted worthy of much sorer punishment, who treads under foot the Son of God, treats as unclean the sanctifying blood of the covenant, and does despite to the Spirit of grace." The Gospel despiser, the impenitent apostate, will find that there is no wrath like the wrath of contemned, abused mercy, and that it is indeed "a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." The belief of the infinitely energetic holiness of God, manifesting itself both in the sufferings of Christ and in the peculiarly sore punishment of the despiser and neglecter of the Gospel, is admirably fitted to produce that "which is in perfect harmony with that grateful love which arises from the faith of the truth as it is in Jesus.~John Brown, Hebrews, commentary on Hebrews 12:28-29