Until the sinner repents, God and he cannot be friends:
"Wash yourselves and be clean! Let me no longer see your evil deeds. Give up
your wicked ways." (Isa 1:16). "Go, steep yourselves in the brinish waters
of repentance! Then," says God, "I will parley with you!" "Come now, and let
us reason together" (Isa 1:18). But otherwise, do not come near me! "What
communion has light with darkness?" (2 Cor 6:14). How can the righteous God
befriend him who goes on still in his trespasses? "I will not justify the
wicked" (Ex 23:7). If God should be at peace with a sinner before he
repents—God would seem to accept and approve all that evil he has done. He
would go against his own holiness. It is inconsistent with the sanctity of
God's nature, to pardon a sinner while he is in the act of rebellion.
- Thomas Watson (The Doctrine of Repentance, Chapter 5)
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