FORGIVENESS by G. C. Tenney

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 27, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 43.

FORGIVENESS

By G. C. Tenney

To FORGIVE an offense or an injury is to forego all feeling of resentment, to consider the wrong as if it had not been done, to hold the offender innocent, and to reverence all claims for reparation or retribution. Not long since one of the vilest men, deeply touched by the Spirit of God, in a mission service pleaded with his associates to avoid the terrible fate to which he was hastening. When asked to seek forgiveness of God for his deep-dyed sins, he exclaimed: “Forgive! Ah, you don’t know who you are talking to! God forgive sin?—No, no!” The sweet thought of pardon had never entered his mind. To him, punishment or revenge was the only adequate offset to such sins as his. In another service the people were urged to believe that every sin, past or future—each offense that had been or could be committed—was fully forgiven two thousand years ago, ages before it was committed.

Between these two opinions on the subject of divine forgiveness, there is certainly a very wide difference. One is the hopeless reasoning of fatalism. It contemplates a barren future, overhung by the dark cloud of irrevocable fate. The whispers of mercy or the gleams of hope never cheer the gloomy prospect. Surely this is not the view presented by the Gospel of peace. But it presents one extreme of the question, that which borders on the regions of despair. We turn from it, therefore, with grateful hearts, knowing that it does not represent our case.

The other view represents the extreme of levity, and sets a snare for unwary souls, who, in its light, will never come to see their sins in their hideous character.

Human feeling is so like a pendulum that in recoiling from one extreme, we need to be careful that we do not sway to the opposite extreme. Are sins unconditionally forgiven, and penalties unquestioningly remitted, even before the sins have an existence? Now, sin is not merely an abstraction, a quality existing apart from its agent. It is concrete. Before it exists, there is nothing to forgive. Indulgence may be granted for contemplated or possible sins, and forgiveness in advance is but the granting of indulgence.

It is true that we, as Christians, are to be constantly so possessed of a forgiving spirit that the desire or purpose of retribution will have no place in our hearts, no matter what the offense may be. But Christian forgiveness and divine forgiveness are not in all respects parallel. We are enjoined, “Avenge not yourselves; but rather give place unto wrath; for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” Of Jesus it is said that when He was reviled, He “reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed His cause [margin] to Him that judgeth righteously.” The fact that we forgive, or are called upon to forgive, does not imply that God forgives the same offense, at the same time, and upon the same conditions. Two judges ought not to adjudicate upon the same case. We can not judge impartially; therefore God says, Leave the matter with Me; you forgive and renounce all vindictive feelings; I will see to the matter in due time.

The conditions upon which God forgives sin are clearly laid down,—repentance and reformation (Isa. 1:16–18); confession (1 John 1:9); forsaking (Prov. 28:13). Jesus did not shed His blood to make sinning possible and practicable, but to make escape from it possible. This is not done by removing the embargo on transgression, and offering wholesale and indiscriminate pardon and indulgence, but by opening a way of escape through the valley of contention and repentance. The way of the transgressor is still hard. He who sins against God wrongs his own soul, and inflicts an injury that is not easily eradicated. Purity, if ever acquired, will have to be agonized for. So, then, while salvation is free to all, and pardon and mercy await every sin-sick soul, let us remember that the prodigal is far away from his Father’s house, and he must travel the journey if he would return. G. C. TENNEY.