The Divine Forgiveness.
By Lyman Abbott
THERE is probably no virtue which the average man finds it more difficult to exercise than that of forgiveness of wrong; there is therefore no grace of God which the average man finds it more difficult to comprehend. Theology has not illuminated, it has obscured the teaching of revelation on this subject. The principles upon which God acts in the forgiveness of sins are so large that the human spirit cannot accept them, and therefore it employs the intellect to explain them away. We look at God's love as we look at his sun, through a smoked glass, in order that we may look at it at all. His forgiving kindness is so large, so generous, so free, so trustful, that we cannot think it; when we come across passages in the Bible which teach it, we obliterate or eclipse them with others which we search after for the purpose; when an occasional prophet arises in the church who catches the spirit of Isaiah's prophecy, of Paul's experience, of Christ's life and death, and reflects it in paradoxes—for only a paradox can state the fullness and freeness of God's forgiving love—the church stops its ears against his teaching, as impossible, if not immoral. We have yet to learn that love and trust are greater deterrents from wrong-doing than fear; that men are more easily weaned from sinful courses by spiritual sympathy than by inflicted penalty; that more liars have been cured of falsehood by implicit confidence than were ever cured by the rod; that love casts hate out of the human soul, and wrath and bitterness intrench it there. Among the declarations of the Bible of divine forgiveness, which we thus habitually minimize, are those which reveal God's feeling and action toward the repentant. When men repent toward society, society receives them only after they have doubly earned a re-entrance; first, expiating their sin by a penalty, and, second, earning confidence and respect by a new life. This is partly a necessity. We have no way of judging of the sincerity of repentance but by a reformed conduct. But God, who reads the heart, answers to its first aspiration. The forgiveness is not merely a remission of penalty. It does not always even include a remission of penalty. Penalty may be a part of forgiveness—a necessary means for the redemption of the wrong-doer from the power and dominion of his sin. But it does always include a reinstatement in the divine confidence and affection. If a man has done wrong, and abandons his wrong-doing, and makes what reparation he can for it, and desires to be cleansed from it, and is willing to acknowledge it, and to bear the just and natural consequences of it, he is by that very fact brought back into God's confidence and esteem. There is no penance here, no purgatory hereafter. The prodigal may hold himself afar off from his father in fear; but his father does not hold himself afar off from the prodigal in distrust. He buries his sin in the depths of the sea; he blots it out of the book of his remembrance; he remembers it no more against him forever. David suffers for his adultery; but David retains his kingship, and is restored to his old condition of filial relationship with God. It is never once brought up as a reproach against him after he has repented of it and done what he can to atone for it. Peter denies his Lord with oaths and cursings,—proves himself both apostate and coward. But his Lord does not wait for him to prove himself faithful and brave. The angel's message after Christ's resurrection is, "Go tell his disciples and Peter." When the risen Lord meets the eleven, he breathes on Peter with the other ten; and in that last interview, just before his ascension, he re-commissions Peter to preach the gospel, and re-intrudes him with even the lambs, in a commission twice repeated, that Peter may know how fully abandonment and repentance of sin have reinstated him in the affection and esteem of his Lord and Master. In this, as in all else, we are to be followers of Christ; we are to be imitators of God as dear children. We cannot accept a gospel which we refuse to give, nor preach a gospel which we refuse to practice. When we pray, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us," we remind ourselves that God expects us to be magnanimous, generous, trusting, in our treatment of repentant wrong-doers, as he is in his treatment of us when we repent of our wrong-doing. Society, if it is Christian, must treat evil-doers who have abandoned their evil life as God treats them. It is true that there is a radical difference. God knows the heart; he needs not, therefore, to wait for demonstration; and he cannot be deceived by illusive repentings. We cannot read the heart. And if there is danger that a too sensuous judgment will drive back repenting souls into despair, there is also danger that a too charitable judgment will pacify their conscience with a mere sensuous and temporary regret. For regret is not repentance; one may regret the sin because of its consequences. Reformation is not repentance; one may reform because a sinful life costs much and pays little. Repentance is the revolt of the conscience against the wrong-doing, because it is a wrong-doing. Its language is that of the fifty-first psalm; that of the prodigal son; that of Paul in more than one passage of his experience. But words are cheap; and one may easily borrow the language of David or Paul who knows nothing of his experience. Only deeds can demonstrate the reality of repentance; and even deeds may be deceptive. Thus we must often wait for evidence which God does not wait for. But if a man has sinned, and we are satisfied that he has repented, and he has given evidence of his repentance by abandoning his sin and by acknowledging it, without concealment, palliation, or defense, and if he has borne unshunkingly the penalty, and has done all that conscience and duty call on him to do to repair the evil of his wrong-doing, the Christian individual, the Christian teacher, the Christian church, Christian society, should both preach and practice the divine forgiveness; they should bury his sin in the depths of the sea, they should remember it no more against him forever, they should blot it out of the book of their remembrance. This is the law of the Christian household, of the Christian church. When Paul preached this doctrine of divine forgiveness, he was denounced as immoral. Do you not see, said the Pharisee, the inevitable effect of preaching this doctrine of a free grace? men will continue in sin, that grace may abound. When Luther preached it, the Roman Catholic Church echoed this condemnation. Both Pharisee and Romanist were doubtless sincere. They both really believed that the preacher of free grace and full forgiveness palliated and excused sin. For they could not understand the love that so hated sin as to welcome to the adoption of son and brother the one who has abandoned and set his life resolutely away from his sin. But Christianity conquered sin, which Pharisaism was powerless to conquer; and the Reformation, with its preaching of free forgiveness, has done infinitely more to redeem Europe from sin than Rome, with its penance and its purgatory. It was not the purest spirits of Palestine who were eager to stone the guilty woman; the purest spirit stooped and wrote with his finger on the ground, that he might not see the shrinking figure and blushing face of the guilty one, and so add to her shame and confusion. We leave our readers to lay this standard of divine forgiveness alongside the actual teaching of the pulpit, the actual life of the home, the actual treatment of children by parents, and judge for themselves how far we fall below the divine forgiveness in our preaching and our practice; how little, indeed, we even understand what it is.