God’s moral purity and infinite hatred of sin, serves to magnify our impurity. And when we see this, we will cry out as Isaiah did, n dismay, rendering ourselves undone, against the other majesty of God.
And yet we’re called to holiness and purity as He is holy and pure. It’s humanly impossible. Whether a person is deceived and blinded by the prince of the air and puffed up with so much pride and arrogance to know his own sin, or it be a person who lives in perpetual contrition and fear before the Lord of hosts, it is impossible to walk in the holiness it requires to see God.
Being in the realm and reign of sin, since the fall of Adam, and so from our births, not one man is free from this wretched condition, except the Holy Incarnate One Himself, the God-Man, Christ Jesus. The Only One who’s soul was continuously in perfect conformity to the will of His Father. The One who’s perfectly just and yet infinitely tender, sternly severe and yet immeasurably gracious; the One who is altogether lovely and an infinite array of wonders and attributes that the sinful eye and heart may not and cannot see.
And when the soul lays hold of this dilemma – the Creator calling for the image bearing creation to be that which He is in every respect (wholly holy) – even in light of the eternal incapability of the fallen, sin filled, human to even begin to take upon the challenge, is when Jesus’ righteousness becomes appealing and beautiful and we will then and only then, flee for refuge there.
Why only in such a brokeness can The Son of Man and all of His perfections be enticing? Because it’s only the poor in spirit and the soul mourners who shall inherit the land and be comforted by the righteousness of Jesus becoming theirs, thus allowing them full dominion of the land and sweet comfort from The Comforter Himself – God the Holy Spirit.
It is not a work in ourselves that provides us this reality. It is not a matter of “making oneself right with God” “cleaning up our act” or performing religious duties. Personal holiness cannot be wrought out in this earthly, filthy raggish state. And woe unto the ones who never sees what’s so plainly obvious – our falleness and that God will have no communal dealings with such a one apart from Christ, though one may presumptuously declare His love upon themselves without Christ’s merits credited to their account.
A necessary aside: Who gave you the right to nullify Christ’s work on the cross by preaching/believing a gospel that says you can live hellish, think blasphemously, act lawlessly and have no warm affections for God, and yet still relate to God apart from embracing the most gloriously-horrific moment in human history – the death of the Eternal One, (and instead having familiar occupations with the world, the devil and sin) and without being raised from the dead and bought from the slave bondage of sin to righteousness? The dead must be made alive.
Sin is no small matter to trifle with because it is not against a small Sovereign. He is infinitely worthy of admiration. And so failing to love who is eternally admirable is not trivial – rather treason.
And So the Son of Man came to live the life we couldn’t, die the death we deserve for defaming God, and absorb the just wrath we store up for ourselves, and raised again on that glorious 3rd day, satisfying the wrath of the Father, and now “offers Himself to us as the all satisfying treasure, and lover of our souls” (brindle), calling us to turn from our sins and embrace Christ in His substitutionary death – “the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God”
And when that union happens, through faith, is when we can behold the glory of God in His redemptive plan, Jesus’ humiliation and the Spirit’s immanence. And the overflow of that is life, adoration, reverence and beseeching Him for His holy workings In our hearts. That’s when the gospel is cherished. And may it be cherished all the days of our lives!
That’s what I call sweet sanctification 
