A writer often speaks in another person’s voice—almost all the time in works of fiction. But speaking by proxy occurs in non-fiction as well. This is the case from Genesis to Revelation, even when Job is voicing his side of the debate, for example, because all of Scripture is the word of God. The Spirit of God is not only breathed into Scripture. In some places, God speaks out from it to address the reader directly. The following Bible verse (Isaiah 1.18) is attributed to Isaiah, but it is the voice of God that we hear:
Come now, and let us reason together,
saith the LORD:
though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool.
Whether this verse of poetry speaks to you or not will depend on your standing with God and how receptive he has made you to his word. As universal as this verse is, speaking as it does to each sinner in need of cleansing from sin’s pollution, the original correspondent was the southern half of God’s children, the kingdom of Judah. As did the poem by Williams, Isaiah’s words identify me. My sins were as scarlet and crimson but now are white as snow and wool. The voice of the LORD has gone out beyond Old Testament Judah and forward in time. I heard God’s voice of reason and I hear it regularly. Like a poet, Isaiah reaches beyond the grave in the words that he wrote, not merely to resonate through the voice of mortal man, but to reason and to save through the voice of God.
Unlike the poet, Isaiah did not use up a lot of stationery to compose his verse. God inspired; Isaiah wrote; the verse was completed. Like in The Red Wheelbarrow, Isaiah’s verse is colorfully qualified, and the same two colors are employed. Sins are scarlet and crimson, and then white as snow and wool. Instead of describing kinds of sin, Isaiah simply paints them red—the color of blood—the color of penalty and redemption, murder and sacrifice. Then suddenly he paints them white—the color of purity and righteousness. Sins are depicted as red and then white to convey the effect produced by atonement: the covering of sin with righteousness divine. Only by the shedding of blood are sins made white. The contrast of red and white will suggest pictures from the Bible: blood running over wool—even drops of blood on snow. In Isaiah’s day the lamb was led to the slaughter to cover the sins of Judah. When the lamb was cut, the blood spilled over the wool—a sacrifice made for sin. Red sins are dyed white in the crimson tide of a sinless lamb.
Sins are pictured red, Isaiah’s color for guilt; then they are pictured white, the color of purity. The change is effected through the blood of the innocent victim. By bleeding for the sins of the guilty, the innocent victim provides a pure covering for the sinner. The sinner becomes, in the eyes of God in the court of heaven, white like the lamb whose blood is the color of sin. From God’s holy perspective, sin’s penalty and the innocent blood must come together to atone for sin; atoning blood is required to reconcile man to God. It is the only medium through which sinners may be cleared of guilt. An innocent victim must become guilty red, the color of sin that needs whitening. Sins are turned white by the blood of a pure victim; the red stain of guilt is dyed white like snow through sacrifice. “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow,” the prophet says. “Scarlet in the Greek is called ‘dibasson’, because it is ‘twice dipped’, and the art of man cannot wash out the dye again. But though our sins are of a scarlet colour, God’s mercy can wash them away” (Thomas Watson, The Doctrine of Repentance, pp. 78, 79.)
A Personal Lamb is prefigured for atonement, then, not only in animal sacrifices, but in poetic verses. Now the blood of Jesus Christ has done away with typical sacrifices; and thousands of new appeals to ‘reason together’ about this intersection of history have been composed in the forms of sermons and hymns by members of God’s Church. “Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?/Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?/Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour?/Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?/Are you washed in the blood,/In the soul cleansing blood of the Lamb?/Are your garments spotless?/Are they white as snow?/Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?” (Elisha A. Hoffmann, Are You Washed in the Blood?) So fully did the pure Lamb of God suffer for sin that the apostle Paul says that on the cross he was ‘made sin.’ His scarlet blood covers guilt with whiteness; his blood, the color of sin, is the purifying element: the only way given by God, through grace and faith, to appropriate righteousness in exchange for damning iniquity. Isaiah 1.18 speaks of atonement; Jesus Christ is the atoning Word. The KING of KINGS and LORDS of LORDS is the only lasting solution for sin, for he is the final sacrifice for it, without benefit of which each and every sinner is doomed to be covered in his own red guilt forever. “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still” (Revelation 22.11.) The Lamb of God is termed the ‘lamb to the slaughter’ in Isaiah 53. As prophesied, the pure Lamb was bled to turn red sins white. “And in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain” (Revelation 5.6.) By virtue of his immaculate blood, the unjust, the filthy, the unrighteous, and the unholy may be as white as wool and snow—as white as the righteousness of Christ in the eyes of a presently offended God. The verses surrounding Isaiah’s compacted poem on atonement are instructive for showing us some of the necessary connections and benefits that attend forgiveness (which forgiveness is on the ground of atonement), as well as the consequences that follow should the sinner refuse to reason with God. To ‘put away the evil of your doings’ (Isaiah 1.16) speaks of repentance. To ‘learn to do well’ (verse 17) is to gain understanding for doing good works, several of which are mentioned: as relieving the oppressed, pleading the widow’s case, and defending the fatherless. To be doing good works is a mark of having repented. He that is willing and obedient (verse 19); that is, willing to repent, willing to do good, and willing to have his sins made white ‘shall eat the good of the land,’ which land, spiritually considered, can be nothing and nowhere but heaven. He who chooses to rebel instead of reason ‘shall be devoured with the sword’ (verse 20.) As with the poem by Williams, Isaiah 1.18 hangs on its first words, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD.” The Lamb’s blood can dye red sins white. But the sinner must be willing to reason with the LORD regarding the way of righteousness. The LORD desires to reason together. Does the sinner disbelieve in the doctrine of creation? There is an answer to that. “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38.4.) Does the sinner have a personal matter against God? “Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob” (Isaiah 41.21.)
