It would instantly transform angels into devils, and turn Heaven into Hell!

(Edward Payson, "Joy in Heaven Over Repenting Sinners" 1846)

"There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." Luke 15:10

God rejoices when sinners repent because it gratifies Him to see them escape from the tyranny and from the consequences of sin. God is light-perfect holiness. God is love-pure benevolence. His holiness and his benevolence both prompt Him to rejoice when sinners escape from sin.

Sin is that abominable thing which he hates.
He hates it as an evil or malignant thing.
He hates it as a bitter or destructive thing.

Sin . . .
  is the plague, the leprosy, the death of intelligent creatures;
  infects and poisons all their faculties;
  plunges them into the lowest depths of guilt and wretchedness;
  pollutes them with a stain . . .
      which all the waters of the ocean cannot wash away,
      which all the fires of Hell cannot remove;
      from which nothing can cleanse them, but the blood of Christ.

Such is the malignity of sin's nature, that could it gain admittance into the celestial regions-it would instantly transform angels into devils, and turn Heaven into Hell! This is no exaggerated or melancholy representation.

Already has sin transformed angels into devils.

Already has sin converted this world from a paradise, to a prison; from a habitation of immortals, to an Aceldama and a Golgotha-a place of skulls and a field of blood.

Already has sin poisoned not only our bodies, but our souls.
It has brought death into the world and all our woe.

Even now sin stalks through our fallen world with gigantic strides, spreading ruin and wretchedness around in ten thousand forms. Strife and discord, war and bloodshed, famine and pestilence, pain and sickness follow in sin's train-while death mounted on his pale horse, with the grave and Hell follow in the rear.

Such are the miseries which sin has introduced into this once happy world. Such are the evils which attend its progress here, notwithstanding the various restraints which are employed to check its Hellward career.

Would we see these evils consummated and learn the full extent of that wretchedness which sin produces-we must follow it into the eternal world, descend into those regions where peace and hope never enters; and there by the light of revelation behold sin tyrannizing over its wretched victims with uncontrollable fury, fanning the inextinguishable fire, and sharpening the tooth of the immortal worm!

See angels and archangels, thrones and dominions, principalities and powers-stripped of all their original glory and beauty, bound in eternal chains and burning with rage and malice against that Being in whose presence they once rejoiced, and whose praises they once sung.

See multitudes of the human race in unutterable agonies of anguish and despair, cursing the giver and prolonger of their existence, and vainly wishing for annihilation to put an end to their miseries. Follow them through the long, long ages of eternity, and see them sinking deeper and deeper in the bottomless abyss of ruin; perpetually blaspheming God because of their plagues, and receiving the punishment of these blasphemies in continual additions to their wretchedness.

Such are the wages of sin! Such are the inevitable doom of the finally impenitent!

From these depths of anguish and despair-look up to the mansions of the blessed and see to what a height of glory and felicity the grace of God will raise every sinner who repents. See those who are thus . . .
  favored in unutterable ecstasies of joy and love and praise,
  contemplating God face to face,
  reflecting His perfect image,
  shining with a splendor like that of their glorious Redeemer,
  filled with all the fullness of Deity, and
  bathing in those rivers of pleasure which flow forever at God's right hand!

Follow them in their endless flight toward perfect holiness. See them rapidly mounting from height to height and darting onward with increasing swiftness and unwearied wing, toward that infinity which they will never reach.

View this, and then say, whether infinite holiness and benevolence may not with propriety rejoice over every sinner who by repentance escapes the miseries and secures the felicity here so imperfectly described.

Who can conceive of the joy with which the Son of God must contemplate an immortal soul, drawn to his feet by the cords of love-whom He has rescued from the roaring lion at such an infinite expense? How greatly must Christ love and prize and rejoice in every penitent sinner! His love and joy must he unutterable, inconceivable, infinite!

If He thus rejoices over one sinner who repents-then what must be His joy when all His people are collected out of every tongue and kindred and nation and people, and presented spotless before His Father's throne! What a full tide of felicity will pour in upon Him, and how will His benevolent heart expand with unutterable delight, and swell almost to bursting-when contemplating the countless myriads whom He has redeemed!