“There is forgiveness with Thee.”
WE all know what _forgiveness of sin_ means, namely, remission of the
punishment due to it by Divine sentence, and restoration of the offender
to the position and privileges of the righteous. We all know, too, our
individual need, our ever fresh recurring need of this forgiveness; and
we also know, all of us, that forgiveness is granted only for the sake
and merits of the LORD JESUS CHRIST, and on fixed conditions.
Alas! my brethren, how little do we _feel_ what we know. With what vain
speculations, what idle dreams, what perverse errors do we too often
darken knowledge!
Forgiveness, ransom from eternal death, deliverance from the terrible
inflictions of Almighty wrath, gracious reception into GOD’S own family,
and full participation of His inexhaustible love and benediction, how can
sinners consent not to value this when given or offered, not to desire
and seek it when needed? Yet so it is. There is many an one of our
poorest possessions which we cherish more fondly; there is many an
unobtained bauble which we would make more real effort to obtain.
Ask yourselves, seriously, and answer to yourselves, honestly, my
fellow-sinners, whether it is not so. All of you believe that you have
been forgiven some thing, nay, many things. You do not suppose that you
are carrying about, each one of you, the unmitigated condemnation of
original sin; the full burthen of every transgression and omission of
your whole lives, from the first exercise of your self-will in childhood,
to that in which you offended but an hour since. You know, indeed, that
much remains written against you; but you believe that much more has been
blotted out; that GOD has been propitiated and reconciled to fallen man
by the sacrifice and intercession of His Son; that wrath has been
displaced by love; that the way of return is open; that the ears of mercy
are unclosed; that the arms of grace are stretched out to unfold all
those, who by birth inherited banishment, and were kept in exile by the
fiery sword which turned every way and allowed none to pass to the
paradise of bliss and the tree of life. What Adam lost, that and much
more has Christ won. In Him you already have regained much; through Him
you may have all and abound.
This you know. How much of it do you feel? Where is your joy of
deliverance? where your heart-leapings of praise? where your homage of
gratitude for what has been forgiven? And where are your yearnings, your
wrestling prayers, your strenuous efforts after the forgiveness yet
needed? the cries and struggles of drowning men, grasping in your fresh
peril the again stretched out rope of deliverance; imploring to be taken
up once more into the ark of salvation; to be landed yet again on the
shore of hope? Alas! where? Is not forgiveness obtained, unheeded;
forgiveness not obtained, unsought? Not altogether, GOD be praised!
There are some who never forget their deliverance; who have learnt from
it gratitude for the past, and hope and direction for the future. There
are some who are wont to gaze upon the book of the Divine account of them
(that is, so much of it as is revealed), and as they gaze, to keep moist
with the tears of humble penitence and love, the red stain of Christ’s
blood, which hides, nay, has obliterated so many of the black items
against them; and who, seeing how much is cancelled, cannot bear that
aught should remain uncancelled, and therefore rest not, nor cease from
pleading and entreating, while one single black figure is uncovered by
the crimson mark of remission.
Some of you, my brethren, surely there are, who, looking back, perhaps
upon a youth of wild and wicked folly, or a manhood of worldliness, or
much of an old age of dull, spiritual indifference, from the thraldom of
which, by GOD’S grace, you have been delivered, whose fearful guilt, you
have reason to believe, has been remitted; some of you, I say, surely
there are, who so appreciate the obtained mercy as to think nothing
comparable to it, no gratitude enough for it; and who, therefore, when
need of more forgiveness arises (as, of course, it constantly does),
betake yourselves early, with the first fruits of your desires, and the
quick steps of urgent, craving want, to the fountain that ever floweth,
by whose waters alone you can be cleansed and refreshed. Yes, there are
such; a few of them; and they do value, they do seek forgiveness.
But, do the many? Judge for yourselves, brethren. Trace back, all of
you, as far as you can, the course of your respective lives; review your
old habits, your former careers of transgression or omission; or pick out
some single sin, if you will of recent date; some one of those many
offences against which GOD’S wrath is pronounced, and on account of which
it must descend, unless forgiveness is secured. Is it a lie, a filthy
jest, a profane speech, a word of slander? Is it a thought of malice, an
encouraged lust, a meditated misdeed? Is it an act of fraud? Did you
use false balances, or adulterate your wares, or drive an unfair bargain,
exacting more, or giving less than was right? Did you pilfer from your
employer, or rob him of your bought service, or betray his interest? Is
it direct ungodliness? Did you act in defiance of GOD’S known
commandment? Did you profane His holy day? Did you disregard His fear?
Did you withhold aught that He claims of service, of prayer, of praise,
of money, time, talents, influence, of example?
Brethren, most of you follow, or have followed, some bad habit; at least,
each of you has committed, and can now bring to quick remembrance, some
one evident, wilful sin. Now GOD forbade that sin, and warned you of
condemnation if you did it. GOD witnessed its commission. His
displeasure arose; He registered it in heaven; He wrote down _death_,
_eternal death_, against it; and angels, beholding what He did, prepared
themselves to fly with the lightning’s speed and execute that sentence,
at the first motion of His commanding will. The sentence is not
executed. The sin has, or has not, brought you inconvenience,
perplexity, contempt, pain, sickness, loss. But, at any rate, it has
_not_ brought you death. Brethren, why not? Do you know? do you
imagine? do you care? Is the sentence still impending, or has it been
reversed? Are you forgiven? or have you yet to seek forgiveness? Do you
concern yourselves at all about the matter? If you have forgiveness, do
you really value it? If you have it not, do you really seek it? Oh!
judge yourselves, brethren, that ye be not judged of the LORD.
I can imagine the comparatively religious ready to urge, “Thus saying,
you reproach us also; you bring all in guilty; you do not allow that any
are in the right.” Even so, brethren, for there is none clear in this
matter. The standard of right is so high, that all come short of it.
Infirmity checks the accomplishment of our best purposes. Sin defiles
even our holy things. The flesh ever resists the spirit, and too often
blinds and deadens it. And so our warmest desires are often all but
cold; our greatest industry is but little removed from sloth. We
_cannot_ do the things, nor think the thoughts that we would, in
perfection. Let us gather consolation from the fact, that this is a law
even of our regenerate being, when we fall short of what we desire and
aim at; but let us not thereby justify ourselves in spiritual
indifference, nor suppose that a general culpability exonerates the
individual. Much will always be amiss, through the opposition of the
flesh, and through the difficulty of discerning spiritual things; and
much allowance we may hope will be made for us: but, much that _is_
amiss, might be corrected, and ought to be; nay, unless it is, we shall
be without excuse. It is so, be assured, in this matter of forgiveness.
At the best, we shall never, in this world, appreciate it fully, when
bestowed; nor seek it with sufficient earnestness, when needed. But, if
we concern ourselves to think right thoughts about it; if we ascertain
more clearly what it is, and how obtained, we shall speedily become more
grateful for it, more eager to obtain it, more sure partakers of it. Let
me throw out a few suggestions, which, by GOD’S blessing, may help to
bring us nearer to this better state.
First, consider what Divine forgiveness is. It is not capricious
reversal of the sentence, “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” Divine
justice does not give up its claim. Divine truth does not belie itself;
Divine resoluteness become fickle. GOD is not a man, that He should
repent, or that He should say and not do, or that He should come to love
what once He hated. GOD might have been freely reconciled to the
transgressor, if He had not made transgression sin. He might, even then,
have left the sinner alone, imposing no other punishment than exile from
His presence, if He had not solemnly declared, “In the day that thou
eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” But now, His holiness, His
justice, and His truth are irrevocably pledged to banish and destroy
transgressors. It can never be otherwise. Holiness cannot tolerate near
unholiness: like Satan from heaven, like Adam and Eve from paradise, it
must be cast out. Justice cannot acquit the guilty. Truth can never
say, “Thou shalt not die,” to him to whom it has already said, “Thou
shalt die.” There is no such forgiveness. If you transgress, you are a
sinner; if you sin, you are condemned; if you are condemned, you must
die. GOD has said it, and there is no variableness, or shadow of
turning, in Him.
We are wont to think otherwise. We fancy that sin, though wrong, is not
destructive: we wrap ourselves in false security, and flatter and mislead
others, by a perverse assurance that GOD will not be extreme to mark what
is done amiss. Yea, we think we have Scripture warrant for so doing. We
read of Divine promises which were never realised, and Divine threats
which were never executed; and we gather from them that, like our poor
fickle selves, GOD easily goes back from His resolution of favour or
wrath.
But let us look again at those promises and threats, and we shall see
that, if they were not fulfilled, it was not because GOD changed, but
because the objects changed on whom He had resolved to operate, for good
or evil. Jerusalem (bound to GOD by a covenant of allegiance) was
promised perpetual preservation. Jerusalem forsook the allegiance, and
therefore was destroyed. Nineveh’s cry of wickedness provoked the LORD
to threaten it with destruction within forty days; but when those forty
days were expired there was no cry of _wickedness_ to be answered; but a
cry of repentance, a pledge of amendment, a nation’s voice and posture of
worship. GOD did not change, but Nineveh did. The judgment was ready to
fall; but there was no object for it to fall upon, and so it fell not.
If the righteous ceases to be righteous, the promises made to his
righteousness cannot be fulfilled; if the sinner becomes sinless, the
sentence of sin cannot be executed upon him. “At what instant,” says
GOD, by Jeremiah, “I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a
kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation,
against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of
the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall
speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to
plant it; If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I
will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.” {90}
And the like is elsewhere declared of individuals.
Thus only does GOD change His word; thus only is there forgiveness with
Him. The sinner must change his sin, for sinlessness; and then for wrath
he shall have favour. But this change he cannot make. He cannot wipe
out or undo the past; he cannot bring a clean thing out of an unclean; he
cannot repair the breaches in his soul; he cannot strengthen the things
that are ready to perish. Vain, then, is his idle trust in the
non-fulfilment of a published threat; and vain are all his efforts to
avert that threat. While he is a sinner, GOD will not forgive him; and a
sinner he can never cease to be.
But, what man cannot do himself, Christ has done for him. Having in His
own person satisfied the Divine law, and stood sinless and accepted
before the Father, He has made Himself the human source of faculties and
graces, by which other men, joined to Him, may partake of the infinite
merits of His atonement, His tasting of death for every man; and may also
be cleansed, and restored, and strengthened, and become again sinless;
escaping the guilt, and putting away the corruption of sin. There is
_such_ forgiveness. Mark, it is not an indulgent Father’s concession to
the mere request of His loved Son. It is not, again, such a substitution
of the innocent for the guilty, that no more account of sinners is taken;
nor is it a compromise by which _one_ death is accepted instead of
_many_. It is a merited power, vested in the GOD-MAN, to be the source
of absolution and sanctification. It is a purchased right to apply that
power to all who will observe prescribed conditions. Christ holds and
exercises that power. It is in Him to save whom He will; it is in Him to
desire to save all.
But still, He has not handed over the forgiveness to all. Nay, let it be
said with all reverence, He _cannot_ so hand it over. Men must come to
Him for it; they must be joined to Him to derive it; they must become
like Him to be saved by Him. On conditions He received the power of
salvation, and on conditions He imparts it. Those who do not observe
these conditions, so far from escaping condemnation through what He has
done, and what He has attained unto, do thereby become subject to surer
and worse condemnation. The same work, the same authority, which made
Him the Saviour of all men, made Him also the Judge of all; and imposed
the inflexible law, that every one that would not be saved by Him must be
destroyed by Him.
Now, in this day of grace, He is labouring to save: and He will save to
the uttermost all who seek His salvation. But, by and by, He must come
to judge; and then, whosoever has not been already saved, must be utterly
destroyed. Are you forgiven? Christ has forgiven you. Are you seeking
forgiveness? If you seek it aright, Christ will bestow it. Are you not
forgiven? Will you not seek forgiveness? Then, rely upon it, you must
be condemned; and that not only or chiefly by the law, but by the Gospel,
the dispensation on the one hand of unspeakable goodness, on the other of
unpardonable severity. If Christ is not made your Saviour, He will be
your destroyer. There is forgiveness with Him. There is no forgiveness
elsewhere.
Let me press this upon you, dear brethren, even though in so doing I
repeat what I have already said. There is no forgiveness with GOD, the
Father, apart from Christ, the Saviour. There is no forgiveness, for the
Saviour’s sake, to those who do not belong to the Saviour. You must not
go to the Father and plead, while you continue in your sin, that, since
One has died for sins, there is no longer any such thing as sin. You
must not suppose that holiness, and justice, and truth are set at nought
in all other cases, because they have been maintained in one. You must
not expect that He who once refused forgiveness, now freely grants it to
the same persons in the same state; that He is changed, and, therefore,
you need not be. No! to find any comfort in the assurance, “There is
forgiveness with Thee,” and to verify it in your own case, you must have
observed, and be still observing, the prescribed conditions. You must
have become Christ’s, and Christ have become yours. You must have
obtained the pardon from Him, and you must hold it through Him; and He
must testify thereof, and plead for you, ere the Father will pronounce
His absolution: “The LORD hath put away thy sins: thou shalt not die.”
But how is all this to be done? Not by idly assenting to the truth, that
it ought to be done. Not by mere thinking and talking of Christ. Not by
working upon your feelings, and warming your affections, by the
contemplation of Him as a historical character; not even by making
mention of Him in your prayers, and pleading His merits, and asking to be
wrapped in His imputed righteousness; but by intelligently, and heartily,
and actively observing the conditions and using the means of salvation,
which Christ has proposed to you, and put within your reach.
As soon as Christ had accomplished His work on earth, and had been
exalted to be the new head of the human race, the source of pardon and
grace, calling in the powers of His Godhead, He established supernatural
means whereby other men might be actually joined, and kept joined, to
Him, and might derive from Him the properties and privileges of a renewed
and perfected nature. The Holy Spirit, the third Person of the blessed
Trinity, became the wonderful agent to effect and maintain this union and
communication, providing mysteriously for the gradual subjugation and
destruction of the old nature, with its guilt and proneness to sin, and
for the development and establishment of spiritual excellence in all
those who become objects of His operations. To become such objects, it
is necessary that men should be prequalified (and He gives them the
power, if they ask it), by realising the misery and condemnation of their
natural state, by sorrowing over and renouncing their sins, by desiring
pardon and grace, and by believing that Christ had them to bestow; and,
then, after becoming thus prequalified, it is further necessary, that
they should make appointed use of certain outward ordinances, in the due
observance of which He pledges Himself to meet them, and to apply to them
the merits and the graces, in the possession of which they shall be
accounted dead with Christ unto sin, and alive with Him unto
righteousness. On none but those thus qualified will the Spirit operate;
and on these only, when they come to Him and invite His operation in
appointed ways. Such, my brethren, is the doctrine of forgiveness; such
is the law of its bestowal. There is forgiveness with God of this kind,
and on these terms; but there is no other forgiveness.
It is because we are not fully persuaded of this truth, that we are so
indifferent, so apathetic, so unthankful, so unrighteous. We do not
appreciate forgiveness, through not understanding it; we do not duly seek
it, through not considering how only it is to be obtained.
Dear brethren, let us strive to be wiser and better. First, let us
qualify ourselves for the application to us of forgiveness, by realising
the guilt and condemnation of sin; by convincing ourselves that we are
sinners, and by ascertaining in what we sin; by sorrowing for sin,
loathing it, and desiring to get free of it; by giving up its work,
forsaking its haunts, and restoring, as far as may be, its plunder
(_i.e._, by labouring to undo what we have done amiss). Then let us
meditate on pardon, and holiness; on the happy freedom and glorious
privileges of those who are forgiven and sanctified in Christ, till our
reason and affections unite in demanding that our lips and lives should
seek forgiveness and sanctification. We have already learned _where_ and
_how_ to seek. Let us hasten to use our knowledge. Let us seek the
Spirit where He is to be found; let us submit ourselves to Him, and ask
His blessing in the prescribed ways; the ways revealed to us in the
Bible, and made accessible to us through the Church of Christ: baptism
once, for death and burial with Christ unto sin, and new birth unto
righteousness; holy communion frequently, for the sustenance of the new
life, the meat and drink of the Spirit; and the ministry of
reconciliation ever, as the constant salve for the soul’s constant
wounds.
Commending to your full and serious consideration the great importance of
all the Gospel-ordinances, and bidding you remember (and profit by the
remembrance) the sin and danger of neglecting any one of them, let me now
confine your attention, for a few minutes, to the application of
forgiveness by the authorised ministers of reconciliation, in what is
called ministerial absolution. Whenever you draw near to GOD in the
sanctuary, and make a public confession of your sins, whether in the
ordinary daily service, or in the office for the holy communion,
immediately after such confession, the priest is directed to stand up and
pronounce what is called an absolution; in the one case declaring, that
“GOD pardoneth and absolveth,” in the other, praying that He may do so.
Whenever private scruples and peculiar spiritual difficulties keep you
from the holy communion, you are exhorted to go to some discreet and
learned minister, that you may receive the benefit of absolution; and
whenever you are laid on a bed of sickness, and the clergyman is summoned
to your side, he is directed to move you to a special confession, if you
feel your conscience troubled by any weighty matter, and if you humbly
and heartily desire it, to absolve you from all your sins, in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. All of you know that
such things are to be found in the Prayer-Book. Some of you treat them
with perfect indifference, caring not that they are there, neither
assenting to them or opposing them. Others accept the poor explanation,
that they are mere kind, comfortable delusions for weak minds. Others
kick against them, and denounce them as relics of Popery and instruments
of priestcraft, indignantly repelling the notion, that there is any such
forgiveness promised or allowed by the Word of GOD.
Hear me dispassionately, dear brethren, while in few words (and, GOD
knows, without any party bias) I endeavour to vindicate the Church’s
teaching; and to guard it against both superstitious misuse and profane
contempt. You know, of course, that Christ, in His life-time on earth,
before His passion, commissioned certain disciples to go before Him into
every city whither He Himself would come, and when they entered into any
house, to pronounce peace upon its tenants, with the assurance that His
peace should, in such case, always rest upon them, if they were worthy.
You know, too, that just before His ascension, He invested the apostles
with the power of remitting and retaining sins; and that they both
exercised that power themselves, by absolving and excommunicating, and
also handed it on to others—so that St. Paul tells the Corinthian
presbyters, that to whomsoever they forgive anything, He forgives also,
and that his forgiveness is the forgiveness of Christ. And you likewise
know (if you are conversant with Church history) that the doctrine of
ministerial absolution, and the practice of administering it, have been
steadily maintained in all parts of the Church, from the apostolic age to
the present.
In one place, or time, the doctrine has been distorted; in another, the
practice has been abused: but everywhere, and at all times, by Greeks and
Romanists, by high-Churchmen, and by not a few low-Churchmen, it has
been, and is asserted, that Christ gave by commission, and continues by
His promise to be always present with His Church, power and command to
use ministerial absolution. The Church of England claims that delegated
power, and obeys that positive command. She does not blasphemously exalt
her clergy, and plant them on the throne of GOD, to usurp His
prerogative—to be judges between good and evil, and awarders of favour or
wrath; nor, on the other hand, does she degrade them to mere voluntary
reporters, such as any of yourselves might be, of statements contained in
a published revelation: she sends them forth to minister, as in other
respects, so in this, the grace which Christ would communicate through
them for the good of the fold, whereof they are under-shepherds. It is
nothing of their own that they minister; they can claim no honour, nor
thanks, for ministering it, and woe to them if they withhold it when
rightly sought; but to them it is intrusted to minister, and through
their ministry it is to be sought. GOD, the Father, the primary Giver of
every good thing, is nowhere directly approachable. Christ, the second
Adam, to Whom all that pertains to man’s salvation is committed, sits at
the right hand of GOD, the Father, and operates upon man only through the
agency of the Holy Spirit. GOD, the Holy Spirit, does not convey Himself
spontaneously and independently of means into every heart, but connects
the gifts of His presence and working power, with certain outward
ordinances, administered by appointed agents, and promised to be
efficacious in all faithful recipients. We sprinkle with water in
baptism, and, if there be no unworthiness in the person we sprinkle, the
Holy Spirit then and there regenerates. We administer blessed bread and
wine, and, on like conditions, GOD’S Spirit conveys into the recipient’s
heart the spiritual food of Christ’s body and blood. We say to those who
have confessed their sins, “He pardoneth and absolveth;” or, “Almighty
GOD pardon and deliver you from all your sins;” or, “By virtue of His
authority, I absolve thee from all thy sins:” and in the case of every
real penitent, there is then, there, and thereby forgiveness from GOD.
We do not bid you look to us for pardon; we tell you plainly that we
cannot pardon you; but we distinctly maintain, that if you want pardon,
you must seek it in appointed ways; that this is an appointed way; that
none have due recourse to it, and fail of spiritual blessing; that those
who despise it despise not men, but GOD.
Brethren, thus soberly and scripturally regard the Church’s ordinance of
absolution. On the one hand, do not superstitiously look upon it as an
inherent power, which any priest can give to whom he will, and withhold
from whom he will; or as an indemnity, to be bestowed without conditions,
to operate as a charm in absolving those who have not desired, nor
prepared themselves for forgiveness; and, on the other hand, do not make
light of its true exercise, and forego opportunities of having it applied
to yourselves, according to Christ’s appointment, and your several needs.
Prepare yourselves duly for it, and heartily accept the ministry of it,
and give GOD the glory. Yes! be sure you give GOD the glory. Use the
means, and reverence them, because GOD has instituted them; but let the
gift be more thought of, and let the Giver be adored. When, with
penitent hearts and humble lips, you have made your open confession, and
the herald’s consequent proclamation of pardon is ringing in your ears,
bethink you that it is GOD’S forgiveness which is being offered to your
acceptance. Bless Him for the ordinance; but look through it to the
Spirit who is present in it, to the Saviour who sent the Spirit, to the
Father who provided the Saviour, and let the vision both convince you of
the sinfulness and condemnation of sin (which could only be put away by
such a wonderful contrivance, and such continued operation of the Blessed
Trinity), and also prompt you to value the forgiveness which GOD has so
much at heart, and so labours to bestow. “There is forgiveness with
thee.” Take to yourselves the unspeakable comfort of so sweet an
assurance when it is offered; but be sure that you always respond to it,
out of grateful and resolute hearts: “Therefore, O GOD, shalt Thou be
feared, and served, and loved.”
SERMON VIII.
THE PRINCIPLE OF OFFERINGS TO GOD.