Regardless of whether or not we are ignorant, our sins still grieve our father. However, there is aggravation added to our sins when they are willful, grieving our father the more, though He ever a gracious father bears long with His children because He loves them. I think the true distinction to be made is between the wheat and the tares in the church. Often the weeds look very much like the fruitful plants God desires us to be, so He waits until the are grown, and the true child of God will bear fruit, and at long last the weeds will show themselves to be but weeds. And often times the coldness in our devotion to God is because the sheep are led astray by false shepherds, and they are blinded to much of doctrine by those who would see them lost. God purges His church of such wicked ones as would do harm to His sheep. He is ever patient with His children, for they are weak and frail and forgetful; much coldness in duty is from honest ignorance, for how could the one who partakes in Christ and the Holy Spirit, blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places, how could such a one not exude warmth of soul, though it be often dampened by inattention to duty? So there is the Christian who cares much for the world, and is so often carried away by its pleasures, though they truly rest in Christ. Then there are the aforementioned children of God, who through the false teaching, and influence of wicked men, have a learned carelessness in regard to spiritual duties; God will bear long with this child, though he grieves His heart to see a child so led astray, but it may be that that false minister may be the greater damned for his ill treatment of the sheep. The Lord alone knows the heart of man, and why one have a heart unprepared and lax in the performance of his duties in worship; when the heart is right, and as every believer still inhabiting this body of dust is still a sinner saved, but not living in willful sin, yet lacking the knowledge of how God wishes to be addressed, our father will in no wise turn such a one away, when with humble heart begs for forgiveness and acceptance in his worship. Yet, if one in apathy appears before the throne of grace clad in rags, this angers the LORD, though he be His child, and there are consequences, "Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep." 1 Corinthians 11:27-30. The Lord is not so pleased to be addressed in impudence, with high hand to assumes upon His grace when we are not clean in heart. The Psalmist well illustrates the heart of the one that God attends to, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah." Psalm 24:3-6. The one the Lord heeds and answers is the one who does not approach the LORD of glory falsely with reservation in his soul, nor hath "sworn deceitfully".
